Tufts Observer
VOLUME CXXXIV, ISSUE 5
April 10, 2017
Greek Life and the Archives
Tufts' Complicated Relationship with Chinatown
Examining Mental Health Coverage
Page 2
Page 18
Page 24
The Time Issue
Tufts Observer The Tufts Observer has been Tufts’ student publication of record since 1895. Our dedication to indepth reporting, journalistic innovation, and honest dialogue has remained intact for over a century. Today, we offer insightful news analysis, cogent and diverse opinion pieces, creative writing, and lively reviews of current arts, entertainment, and culture. Through poignant writing and artistic elegance, we aim to entertain, inform, and above all challenge the Tufts community to effect positive change.
@tuftsobserver www.tuftsobserver.org
April 10, 2017 Volume CXXXIV, Issue 5 Tufts Observer, Since 1895 Tufts’ Student Magazine
The Time Issue This issue is about time. In what ways are the past, present, and future connected? How do we see ideas stretching across time, appearing and reappearing in different forms? We’re looking at how time shifts, moves, and impacts our lives in tangible ways.
Staff
Feature Ben Kesslen
Editor in Chief
News Alexandra Benjamin Misha Linnehan
Managing Editor
Opinion Liza Leonard Jamie Moore
Creative Director
Arts & Culture Susan Kaufman Will Norris
Art Directors
Campus Dana Guth Emma Pinsky
Claire Selvin
Sahar Roodehchi Chase Conley
Rachel Cunningham Annie Roome
Multimedia Director Greta Jochem
Photo Director Lily Herzan
Lead Copy Editor Eve Feldberg
Lead Artists Jake Rochford Ben Rutberg
Voices Julia Doyle Poetry & Prose Carissa Fleury Web Julia Press MT Snyder Columns Henry Jani Photo Kyle Scott Conrad Young
Contributors Ray Bernoff, Judy Chen, Daniel Corral, Jacqueline Enderle, Annahstasia Enuke, Nina Hofkosh-Hulbert, Merissa Jaye, Madeline Lee, Kyle Lui, Asha Nidumolu
Design Abigail Barton Matt Beckshaw Benson Cheng Josh Goodman Kira Lauring Lily Pisano Hannah Vigran Interactive Deanna Baris Cathy Cowell Hannah Freedman Sibonay Koo Kayden Mimmack Justin Sullivan Video Anastasia Antonova Evie Bellew Aaron Watts Publicity Alyssa Bourne-Peters Yumi Casagrande Michael Dunkelman Alexis Walker
Staff Writers Sam Crozier Yaa Kankam-Nantwi Lena Novins-Montague Layla Rao Katie Saviano Grace Segers Alexis Tatore Wilson Wong Copy Editors Nicole Cohen Owen Cheung Nasrin Lin Christopher Paulino Alexandra Strong Fact Checkers Erin Berja Sivi Satchithanadan Editor Emeritus Carly Olson
Contents
8
Arts & Culture
13
Inset
26
Campus
The Marginal Press
Self Portraits
Greek Life in Review
Ben Rutberg
Ray Bernoff, Daniel Corral & Annahstasia Enuke
Claire Selvin
FEATURE
2
Unearthing the Archive
Merissa Jaye & Ben Kesslen NEWS
6
The Standards for Campus Speakers Will Norris
OPINION
10 This Guy Jamie Moore
OPINION
18 Patterns of Contradiction Kyle Lui VOICES
20 The Art of Suspension Asha Nidumolu ARTS & CULTURE
22 Morse Code Greta Jochem
POETRY
NEWS
12 I Am Here, You Are There
24 The Value of Mental
Judy Chen POETRY
Healthcare
Henry Jani
17 Glenneyre Alexandra Benjamin COVER BY NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT
FEATURE
e h t g n i h t r a e e v i n U rch A
Feature
nd a e, f i L sm k ee rali en r G ibe essl , n fL nK o i t so Be a d eg litic e an r g Po Jay e S e a th eriss M y B
4
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
FEATURE
Feature
Content Warning: racism, racial slurs
O
n October 26, 1950, the Tufts Weekly—which would later become the Tufts Observer—published an op-ed by Richard Goodwin entitled, “An Ideal Thwarted.” Goodwin described a “malignant, hypocritical system of fraternities” at Tufts, calling attention to racial and religious segregation occurring within Greek Life. Goodwin’s op-ed created a campus-wide debate. For rest of the 1950-51 school year, and continuing into 1951-52, students filled the opinion pages, letters to the editor, and cartoons in the Weekly with their thoughts on university-sanctioned segregation and discrimination on Professors Row. Some students believed that Greek Life would inevitably change. In 1951, Bob Zinman wrote in the Tufts Weekly, “present trends clearly indicate that these [discriminatory] clauses will soon be eliminated.” Students debated desegregation in an open forum sponsored by the “Liberal Union” on March 21, 1951, and the campus was rife with debate on the subject. It seems like much of the conversation was in vain. On October 21, 1955, almost five years after Goodwin’s original op-ed was written, the Weekly published an article specifying identity-based restrictions of certain fraternities. Sigma Nu, a fraternity that remained on campus until 2015, was deemed “anti-negroid”; Alpha Tau Omega (ATO), which later disaffiliated to become ATO of Massachusetts, only allowed “white Christian men.” This story doesn’t start or end with a fight between Goodwin and disgruntled fraternity brothers. In March 1951, Dorothy Avid Doubleday took an even more radical standpoint in an interview with the Weekly, saying, “However, to abolish the traditional stupidity of discriminatory clauses is not enough to ameliorate the situation...the act must be practiced by admitting qualified students of the human race into any fraternity or else abolish fraternities all together.” In 1941, long before Goodwin, a Jackson alum named Delilah Reimer-Rubin challenged AntiSemitism in the Greek system. Leonard Carmichael, then President of Tufts, responded to Reimer-Rubin, writing, “After talking with Dean Bush and some other
ART BY JAKE ROCHFORD
student leaders I am convinced that there is absolutely no trace of anti-Semitic feeling in our student body.” In 1962, 12 years after students both called for and protested against an end to segregation in Greek Life and 21 years after Carmichael’s insistence that Anti-Semitism did not exist on the Tufts campus, Greek Life still practiced racial and religious discrimination, yet the Tufts Trustees stated that Tufts “looks forward to the time when no Fraternity or Sorority on the Tufts campus will be operating under such provisions.” However, the Trustees’ statement reflected a greater pattern of believing in the inevitable improvement of problematic institutions without insisting on dramatic structural changes. The Trustees said while
The language of liberal ideals masks the agency of Greek-affiliated students to act on their own values. they didn’t support discrimination in Greek Life, they wouldn’t get involved in stopping it. The next year, administrator Alvin R. Schmidt wrote to Chi Omega sorority, “Any charter, bylaw, written or oral rule or practice that implicitly or explicitly that would bar a candidate on the basis of race, religion, or national origin ... shall be implemented and enforced by the college administration.” The Letter then gave Chi Omega a list of various racial and religious backgrounds, asking them to check off which identities (including “Moslims” “Negroes” “Orientals” or “Hebrews”) were barred from joining. The Tufts Digital Collections and Archives contains student letters, Tufts Weekly articles, and notes from the Board of Trustees that all demonstrate that the University knew about, sanctioned, and continued the practice of racial and reli-
gious segregation within Greek Life in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. We found documents all protecting the structure of Greek institutions that attempted to ensure no Muslim student, Jewish student, and/or student of Color would live on Professors Row. While this was the norm at many universities throughout the nation, most striking was the particular way Tufts defended the segregation that occurred. The defense of segregation in the 40s, 50s, and 60s, was not one of the explicit racism we might assume to be associated with the time. There were no swastikas or white robes with pointed hoods or claims of racial superiority to defend segregation within the Greek system—that we know of and/or were documented in the Archives. Instead, segregation in Greek Life was enacted mostly by liberal students and administrators who cited their own set of progressive values, while simultaneously upholding and maintaining racial and religious segregation. Archival research reveals that segregation in the Greek system was letters to nationals asking for a change in policy, but then sitting idly by while nationals maintained the policies students claimed to oppose. Segregation was holding campus-wide meetings to change the culture of fraternities and worries about the erosion of free speech. Segregation was “civil debate and discourse” about an issue that should never have been up for debate. Segregation was stating desires to reform Greek Life without suggesting any tangible structural change. The Tufts Archives showcased a history of segregation in Greek Life that White students during that time thought were a set of good intentions and progressive values, but were enacted as a maintenance of White Supremacy. While the racism found within the Archives on this subject wasn’t explicit, it was nonetheless there. The difference is that liberal racism does a better job at going unnoticed by White people, particularly within Predominantly White Institutions (PWIs) like Tufts. This type of liberalism is dangerous in that it can often prevent those in power—and yes, even those who call themselves liberal or progressive— from seeing the injustices and violence they are enacting. And this type of oppressive liberalism didn’t go away when Greek April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
3
FEATURE
Feature
The Tufts Archives showcased a history of segregation in Greek Life that White students during that time thought were a set of good intentions and progressive values, but were enacted as a maintenance of White Supremacy. Life was finally banned from participating in religious and racial segregation. It still lives on our campus today. One major defense of segregated Greek Life was that discrimination happened everywhere on campus, not just within fraternities and sororities. In an initial response to Goodwin’s op-ed, also published in the Weekly, two fraternity brothers, Tim Mulholland (’51) and George McGovern (’52), addressed the racial and religious discrimination within the fraternity system saying, “There is discrimination inherent in any process of selection, but a reasonable discrimination such as this does not constitute prejudice.” They went on to say, “We do admit that there are some practices carried on by a fraternity which seem inconsistent with the ideal democratic system. There are men whose fundamental beliefs coincide with our own but whose racial background does not, and those who cannot be admitted because of physical limitations of space. These are problems...which are not only the burdens of fraternities but those of colleges, civic organizations and the government itself.” Their response, like many published in the pages of the Weekly, was that racial discrimination happens everywhere, not just within fraternities, and it doesn’t seem right to single out the Greek system. Another way Tufts students sought to defend segregation was by blaming their national chapters. Responding to Goodwin in a Tufts Weekly “Letter to the Editor” written in 1950, then ATO President, Richard Tenney, said, “We are in the unfortunate position of being members of a predominantly southern fraternity which 4
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
naturally excludes negroes.” Tenney explained that discrimination is a problem with ATO nationals rather than the Tufts ATO chapter. He asserted his chapter wanted to take Black members, but simply couldn’t because nationals would not allow it. And that “to withdraw from the National [organization] would hurt Tufts by destroying the fraternity system here.” Tenney seemed to believe he was doing a good thing by not desegregating his fraternity, and was actually helping his university. Tenney ended his letter by saying, “Until discrimination is officially outlawed, we are doing our best, don’t you think?” Like Mulholland and McGovern, Tenney thought these decisions were largely out of his control—meaning he was unwilling to make significant structural changes—and believed that he was doing his best to make reforms within the system, despite those reforms still maintaining racial and religious segregation. Goodwin had a response for Tenney. He said, “I do not think that ATO is doing its best or anywhere near its best. It can only be a lack of moral courage which compels this fraternity or any fraternity to remain within a national organization that compels them to obey standards of discrimination in which they do not believe. A withdrawal from the national would not weaken Tufts, but rather strengthen its position as an educational institution which seeks to practice the ideals it professes.” Greek Life members also used the few students who were racial and/or religious minorities and a part of Greek Life as a way to excuse racial and religious segregation throughout the various University chapters. Tenney said, in regards to ATO’s laws,
“our constitution is worded such that some Jews were unable to join. Yet recently I was very excited to tell a Jewish ATO transfer that he was sincerely wanted here by all members.” And in the same piece where Zinman said time is needed for change, he also said, “Last fall at least four houses rushed members of other religious and racial groups and at least two rushed students of a different color. This year two more Tufts fraternities in national conventions eliminated discriminatory clauses from their charters. True, there are still a few houses whose hands are tied by National restrictions.” Zinman believed that sanctioned systemic discrimination was fine, as long as certain chapters allowed one or two racial and/or religious minorities into their ranks. What’s more, members of Greek Life often used their philanthropy work to justify segregation. Tenney spoke of the work his fraternity did with the Black community in Medford, despite the fact ATO did not allow Black students into their chapter. Discussing the purpose of this charity work, Tenney said, “We sincerely hope that our [philanthropic] action will set a precedent. If each fraternity would undertake such a project each semester or even each year, it would then eliminate some of the valid criticism that has been directed at fraternities by outside observers.” Tenney’s hope certainly came true. All fraternities on campus now do engage in some of sort of philanthropy work. But it doesn’t “eliminate some of the valid criticism” of Greek Life. Greek Life can be both philanthropically inclined and deeply rooted in racism and White supremacy—to view these two things as mutually
FEATURE
Feature
exclusive would be to misunderstand the history of Greek Life at Tufts. In a follow-up op-ed, Goodwin responded, “We do deny, most emphatically deny, that a university which accepts democratic values, a university which attempts to instill the traditions and ideas of democracy into its students, has any right to stand by approvingly and permit a basic perversion of these tradition and ideals to go unchecked.” Goodwin believed if the university claimed the liberal and democratic values it espoused and prided itself on, it couldn’t then allow such discrimination to persist. Something of note is that none of the student perspectives found in the archives explicitly defended segregation or argued that White people are racially superior. In order to embrace a discriminatory fraternity system while holding on to their liberal values, Greek Life defenders went to lengths to obscure the systematics of Greek Life by describing the ways that segregation happens everywhere, talking about philanthropy, tokenization, and blaming discrimination on nationals. The parallels between the claims of good intentions and progressive values embedded in discussions surrounding Greek Life in the 50s and the conversations happening now on campus are striking. Today, Tufts students still talk about being
at the will of nationals, or how those calling for the abolition of Greek Life are unfairly blaming Greek Life for problems that exist everywhere. On March 30, 2017, when discussing the protests students conducted against Greek Life, Alpha Omicron Pi Chapter Alumni Advisor Katherine Tapper told NBC News, “It seems like Greek Life is a scapegoat for issues that are not unique to Greek Life but prevalent throughout the Tufts University campus.” Tapper’s defense of Greek Life is noticeably similar to those employed in the 1950s. And the similarities don’t end there. Students today often excuse problems with Greek Life with the claim that they serve philanthropic causes. At the same time, they often tokenize gay members to mask their issues with queer people and queerphobia. Recognizing the parallel liberal values in past and present defenses of Greek life does not mean equating individuals defending the existence of Greek life with those defending segregation in Greek Life; instead, these parallels work to complicate seemingly liberal or progressive values themselves. Examining the liberal language of the 50s in relation to the language of present day Greek Life reform can help us understand how discussions of progressive values become diversion tactics when those conversations do not center around and result in substantial structural change. The language of liberal ideals masks the
agency of Greek-affiliated students to act on their own values—students can drop Greek Life altogether, or even leave their national chapter. When we comparatively view the arguments defending the Greek system in the 1950s and the defenses of today, it’s hard not to be moved by their obvious likeness. And the comparisons of today and the 40s, 50s, and 60s prove two important points. First, liberal values don’t make Tufts special. Our liberal values conceal, rather than eliminate, White Supremacy. Second, a meaningful conversation about Greek Life is not a conversation about values, intentions, hopes, and dreams. It’s a conversation about structures and logistics. A real conversation about structure involves discussions about the end of dues, whether women should be able to host parties, how they can refuse the gender binary, what it means that national organizations lobby Congress to protect sexual assailants, and much more. If these changes seem too hard to enact right now, it may be worth remembering that is exactly what they said in 1951.
April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
5
FEATURE
s d s r e u a h p T nd m s a a r t S r C ke o a F pe S News
By Will Norris
O
n the evening of February 23, Tufts students disrupted a discussion between Alan Solomont, Dean of the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life, and Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, with chants and coordinated walkouts. According to a press statement by Tufts United for Immigrant Justice (UIJ) and Tufts Student Action (TSA) organizers, the demonstration was staged to protest Baker’s record on “immigration, education, and racial and economic justice.” The UIJ/TSA statement described the university’s decision to bring Baker to campus as “unacceptable” and “deplorable;” that they disputed not only Baker’s positions but also his presence at Tufts made the protest particularly contentious on campus. “To protest as a means of pushing politicians and policymakers to take a stand on tough issues is one thing,” wrote the editorial board of The Tufts Daily. “But to protest the rights of these politicians to speak publicly at Tufts is a different story.” The incident came at a moment when a surge in protests against largely conservative speakers invited to colleges across the country has become a national political issue. Like recent protests of speakers at Middlebury College, University of California, Berkeley, and other schools, the action at Tufts raises tough questions about free speech on college campuses— 6
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
what it encompasses, who it applies to, and who should have a say in such questions. The roots of the modern debate over free speech in academia can be traced to the Free Speech Movement, which was started by UC Berkeley student Mario Savio in 1964 to protest the school’s ban on nearly all political activities. The first demonstrations of the movement came around the time that UCLA’s Speaker Ban, which was used by the university to prevent socialists and political activists like Malcolm X from speaking to students, was finally lifted. “Savio supported freedom of speech not merely on instrumental grounds but as an end in itself, since speech acts were in his eyes the essence of what it meant to be human,” his biographer, Robert Cohen, wrote. Critics claim a new generation of liberal student protesters has lost sight of this ideal, and has instead adopted a perverted definition of free speech that may be applied selectively. “Somewhere along the way, those young men and women—our future leaders, perhaps — got the idea that they should be able to purge their world of perspectives offensive to them,” wrote New York Times columnist Frank Bruni in a widely-circulated op-ed after students at Middlebury interrupted an interview with conservative political scientist Charles Murray last month. Murray co-wrote The Bell Curve, which has been widely discredited as racist pseudoscience, in 1994. “Speech codes are not the way to go on campuses, where all views are entitled to be heard, explored, supported or refuted,” the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) website states. “How much we value the right of free speech is put to its severest test when the speaker is someone we disagree with most.”
Sophomore Parker Breza, a member of TSA and an organizer of the Baker protest, rejects this concern. “Tufts is a private institution,” he said, and “we get to decide which speakers do and do not speak here. So, I think the whole free speech thing is just kind of irrelevant.” Tufts, he said, purports to value the place of refugees and undocumented students at the university, and to invite someone like Baker is a betrayal of those values. Baker has declined to support legislation that would make Massachusetts a sanctuary state, announced in 2015 that he would veto in-state tuition for undocumented students, and said he does not want Syrian refugees to resettle in Massachusetts. “Really what we’re trying to do in these protests is highlight the hypocrisy here in saying that you can’t simultaneously say that you’re an institution that supports undocumented students, that supports international students, that supports refugee students, and at the same time bring [to campus] someone who is actively working against all of those students,” Breza said. Freshman Leticia Priebe, a TCU senator and member of UIJ, agreed. “A politician whose policies perpetuate the oppression of some of the most vulnerable communities in the US should not be welcomed to speak at this university, especially when Tufts claims it is committed to protecting its students,” she said. Solomont said he encourages students to protest, but nevertheless maintains, “I draw a line in terms of disrupting an event. I think it’s very important we have a free exchange of ideas—that’s what universities are based upon.” Students, he said, should focus on persuading their peers and exposing the injustice of positions a speaker holds by engaging with them. “At the end of the day, what’s the purpose of a protest? It’s to win support from others. It’s not just
A surge in protests against largely conservative speakers invited to colleges across the country has become a national political issue.
FEATURE
News
to express yourself,” he said. “I mean, really, you’re looking to effect change. You want to have more people look at the governor with a critical eye. One has to think, if that’s what I’m trying to do, what’s the most effective way of bringing other people along?” This is a common refrain in the debate over campus protests, but Breza thinks that in this case, the “more dialogue” argument overlooks “who’s given the platform, who’s given the mic, [and] who’s given the ability to speak.” “I think people in the wake of this are really focused on this idea of dialogue, that we just need to engage in more dialogue and then we’ll understand each other better and then all of a sudden we’re going to have a great world,” he said. “If someone has actively taken a policy position against your community, can you really, actually have a fair and equal platform, especially considering the fact that this is the governor, who has the actual ability to make these policy changes?” “It was pretty obvious there was a dialogue between two people, Dean Solomont and Governor Baker,” he added. “There were two seats pointed at each other ready to talk in front of the rest of the crowd.” Baker mostly recited anecdotes from his life, said Breza, and only addressed substantive issues when protesters called on him to do so. “This event was not set up for dialogue.” The Baker talk was part of Tisch College’s Distinguished Speakers series, which has also hosted conservatives like former Massachusetts Senator Scott Brown, former Virginia Representative Tom Davis, and Andy Card, George W. Bush’s Chief of Staff. Solomont said he invites speakers “any time there’s an opportunity to bring someone to the Tufts campus who occupies an important position in public life,” regardless of their political leanings. This could even extend to someone like Rush Limbaugh, Solomont noted, who “has a very negative impact on American politics. He’s an important player—a really important player,” he said. “And I’m not so sure that if I had an opportunity to bring him to campus I would not. He’s going to say things that I couldn’t disagree with more. But I think it’s important people understand—and you can’t shut that out. He’s appealing to millions of Americans.” “It is inevitable that some programs and speakers will be offensive to some
ART BY ANNIE ROOME
members of the community,” the Tufts Student Handbook states. “That offensiveness will not be seen as a reason to prevent the program.” Does arguing that Baker shouldn’t be given a platform at Tufts im-
ply that this is the wrong approach? Breza doesn’t see it in those terms. “I think a lot of people in the aftermath of this protest are bringing up these big questions, like should Tufts have a policy of never allowing speakers who have certain views to come to Tufts,” he said. “I’m not even advocating for that kind of policy. All I’m saying is that in this situation, we saw
someone be given a platform that we found inappropriate based on his past actions and current positions, and we wanted to mark that and say that’s not okay with us.” As a student organizer, he said, these “big questions” are not his prerogative. “Tufts was right to bring Governor Baker to campus, and students were right to protest,” senior Ben Kaplan, the president of Tufts Democrats, said. “This is the marketplace of ideas in action.” But the protesters argued Tufts was not, in fact, right to bring Baker to campus. This is where the ‘Marketplace of Ideas’ concept breaks down: to veto a guest speaker is to make a choice not only for those who object to that speaker but for the entire school. Protesting is commendable, said Solomont, but that’s “different from interfering with the right of other people to listen to somebody, and I can have an honest disagreement with students who think he shouldn’t have been invited. That’s subject for debate. But I don’t think any group of students or faculty has a right to dictate that to the rest of the community.” But defenders of the protest see this differently. Tufts chose to invite Baker to campus, and in that choice, “undocumented students, international students, and a variety of other communities were not considered,” said Breza. Were they wrong, then, to object to his presence? “When someone’s viewpoints and policies have deeply negative impacts on actual human lives,” said Priebe, “not wanting them to infiltrate what is meant to be a safe space for students has nothing to do with free speech.” Tufts student protesters condemned the school’s choice to invite Baker but did not attempt to shut down the event, instead continuing the demonstration outside the venue. “I think Tufts should be proud of the fact that there’s more civil dialogue and discussion in responsible ways than there is at a lot of other [schools],” said Solomont. “For the most part, the discussion has taken place in a very robust way. There are some places where people felt folks went over the line and didn’t help their cause, but nothing like Middlebury,” which spiraled into violence. But the Baker protest reaffirmed a fundamental disagreement over the nature of free speech on campus—a disagreement which does not appear likely to dissipate anytime soon. April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
7
FEATURE
Arts & Culture
8
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
Content Warning: suicide
COMIC BY BEN RUTBERG
FEATURE
Arts & Culture
April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
9
FEATURE
Opinion
A
midst all the other news flying at us from our phones, computers, and TV screens (Where is Trump golfing this week? Is Chelsea Clinton gearing up to run for office? Is Mark Zuckerberg gearing up to run for office? Russiagate!), it’s easy to forget that Paul Ryan is probably the most conservative Speaker of the House of Representatives this country has ever had. It’s not just him, either. The Congressional GOP, particularly in the House, is led by the “Freedom Caucus”—if you don’t recognize that name, that’s because they used to be called the Tea Party. This is likely the most conservative that Congress has ever been. It’s no accident; the Congressional Republicans, particularly in the House, have been drifting to the right for years now, and the Freedom Caucus forced out the old Speaker, John Boehner, precisely because he was too moderate, in the “too willing to collaborate with Democrats to do inconsequential stuff like draft and pass legislation” kind of sense. They then hand-picked Paul Ryan to be his successor with the expectation that he’d avoid that kind of foolishness in the future. (House Majority Leader Eric Cantor was primaried out in 2014 for the same crime.) Until now, Ryan has escaped similar criticism. Although he’s had to moderate as Speaker, he’s had the benefit of working for the vast majority of his tenure under a Democratic President, which, in turn, solidified GOP voters in the House into a (mostly) cohesive voting bloc. Between 2011 and 2014, for example, the House voted to repeal the ACA (in whole or in part) a total of 54 times. Ryan himself, as Chairman of the Budget Committee, always included language in his budgets to repeal the law. Not much ever came of this, of course: the Senate never even bothered with ACA repeal efforts during President Obama’s tenure. However, the House GOP’s drift to the right hasn’t been complete. A number of moderates remain, some of whom currently serve districts that Hillary Clinton carried in November—a key predictor of electoral precariousness. As we saw in the case of the political trench warfare that led up to the 10
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
AHCA’s failure, there is tremendous potential for disagreement within the party. FiveThirtyEight political writer Clare Malone, speaking on Slate’s “TrumpCast” podcast last week, noted that the Freedom Caucus, despite having risen to a position of power within the House’s hierarchy and having planted hardcore-conservative fellow traveler Paul Ryan in the office of Speaker, acts almost as a “party within the party” to the rest of the House GOP. According to a FiveThirtyEight study, the Freedom Caucus not only grades out as being ideologically very far to the right, but, perhaps more importantly, is particularly disposed to being “less establishment”— essentially, they hate cooperating, and often would rather break with party orthodoxy than compromise on perceived key issues. During both the Obama administration and Trump’s brief time in office, this growing intraparty divide hadn’t been much of an issue for Ryan—until it came time to pull off the much-discussed “repeal and replace” of Obamacare, which, thankfully, was killed on March 24. The bill failed because it was bad, certainly, and because people all over the country made tremendous efforts to sway the votes of their representatives. But it also failed in part due to a growing revolutionary sentiment among House Republicans. The House GOP, which had for years been working with the sole goal of opposing President Obama, no longer has the threat of veto hanging over it. In response, it’s fractured: while moderates have obviously begun to, well, moderate, the Freedom Caucus has gone in the opposite direction. Their reaction to the AHCA was telling. The bill, as initially presented, was a typically Paul Ryanesque act of reckless budget slashing; for years, he’s been a fiscal conservative darling for exactly that kind of thing. And the Freedom Caucus hated it. Even after an emergency session that featured Freedom Caucus members essentially rewriting the AHCA to make it even more stringent, preliminary whip counts from the New York Times showed major opposition to the bill from the group.
As FiveThirtyEight points out, opposition to the AHCA within the House GOP didn’t break down neatly along a spectrum of less-to-more conservative. Plenty of moderate Republicans (after receiving thousands of phone calls from angry constituents) opposed the bill. Instead, as noted above, what makes the Freedom Caucus stand out from the rest of the “no” coalition is their utter unwillingness to compromise and their complete lack of fealty towards the concept of joint governance. According to FiveThirtyEight, the Freedom Caucus members who declined to support the AHCA did so essentially because they viewed the bill, even after being rewritten, as a compromise effort. It appears that Freedom Caucus members, more powerful than ever before, have decided that the only way to implement their legislative vision (an entirely privatized, Ayn-Randian dys/ utopia—a world without unions, taxes, or any semblance of governmentfunded public services) is all at once, everything else be damned. Paul Ryan, meanwhile, has somehow become the most responsible man in the room. This is, for reference, the same guy who once called the potential passage of the AHCA—a bill that would have stripped basic medical care from millions—something Ryan was quoted as saying he’d been dreaming about since he was “drinking out of a keg.” To the Freedom Caucus, though, it’s not enough to merely drive the first knife into the back of the lumbering, diseased welfare state, as Ryan intended to do; one must try to decapitate it. So, the AHCA ended up being a nowhere bill. It was too hardline for the moderates, and too moderate for the hardliners, and too important for a White House that desperately wanted some kind of win, and all it did was piss everyone off. It’s important to note there that despite everything Trump has latenight rage-tweeted since the AHCA’s failure, the Freedom Caucus won this battle; they stuck Paul Ryan with the failure to repeal Obamacare. There’s going to be round after round of recrimination and pettiness, and it might
FEATURE
Opinion
have a major impact—the divisions forming right now could surface during the process of drafting other major bills. Perhaps more importantly for the GOP as a whole, it could have a major impact on the 2018 midterms, when Trump has called for primary challenges for a number of Freedom Caucus members, including the group’s leader, North Carolina representative Mark Meadows. Meadows, speaking after the bill’s withdrawal, claimed that repealing the ACA was still in the works, albeit in “private” talks, and reaffirmed the Freedom Caucus line that the halfmeasures taken by the AHCA will adversely impact their constituents.
This won’t end here. There are still Democrats, a lot of them, organizing away on the margins. There’s still the Senate, and an active FBI investigation into the campaign of the sitting President. 2018 and 2020 loom. In the shorter term, there are a lot of bigmoney projects to think about: President Trump has promised not only a wall, but massive tax reform and infrastructure bills as well, and sooner or later someone’s going to have to, you know, write an actual budget for the country. Just the basic business of governing, let alone actually dealing with such things, will require compromise, both by Paul Ryan and by the GOP as a whole.
This Guy: An Article About Paul Ryan By Jamie Moore
ART COURTESY OF CREATIVE COMMONS
April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
11
FEATURE
Poetry
I Am Here, You Are There By Judy Chen a longing heart sickens and sickles into thin stretched blades that tire miles of time travel to reach memory hanging onto brooding shoulders inviting golden sunsets that remind purple dawns of constant love stretching long in a heart that sickens and sickles sometimes but also sings always
12
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
ART BY NICOLE COHEN
Self Portraits This week we’re featuring three artists who are interacting with self-portraiture as an artistic mode of expression. Selfportraiture is an intensely personal, reflective, and vulnerable way in which people can interact with themselves and the world around them. These works are inherently individual and the Photo team wanted to give each artist space for their work to speak.
—Lily, Kyle, and Conrad
March 13, 2017
Tufts Observer
13
We—especially when we are fat, queer, brown/black, trans, disabled, or otherwise not the Ideal Tufts Business Major Hockey Star—live in a society that dismisses and oppresses us through our bodies and encourages us to deny them, shrink them, hide them, and pretend they don't exist. To make self-portraits is to push back against that, to insist that you are real, you do exist, you deserve to be seen and take up space. To make self-portraits is to insist to see yourself on your own terms instead of someone else's. — Ray Bernoff
Before I completely submerge myself with any idea I typically begin by photographing myself. Self-portraiture allows me to reflect and develop concepts further and formulate those ideas into a more deliberate body of work. After many years working this way, I’ve developed enough self-imagery that it has become a part of my process. For me, self-portraiture is not only a record for documentation of my shameless selfies but deserves its own recognition. Collectively, my self-portraits as a body of work, are about me and the progress I’ve made throughout my photographic career. — Daniel Corral
As an artist, as a woman, as a person that has worked hard to feel comfortable alone and in isolation, self-portraiture has been my most valiant companion. The camera acts as my own eyes, looking back on my current self or a self that I can’t see by looking inward. It presents the self as stranger, dissolves the excuses I grant myself. If I look hard enough I can see how I’m really doing. Self-portraiture is how I meter my own well being, how I dispel the demons in my eye. It’s the safest space to perform the full force of my womanhood and its infinity, confining moments of it for posterity and for a record or where I’ve been and where I’ll one day go. — Annahstasia Enuke
FEATURE
Poetry
Glenneyre By Alexandra Benjamin
I was young at the library In a way, so were you. I don’t think about it much, until you call to remind me how verdant the earth used to be in our patch of Good Hope. And I cry because I’m learning that guilt is like time– there’s too much until there’s not enough. These days you’re magnetic, and I can’t sleep when there’s a full moon So I roll over onto my good hip– your bad, and wonder If opposites really attract, while my tongue turns to papier mâché and I taste the pulp you used to strain so willingly, Because I thought I knew best And you didn’t object for there was time, and I was young.
ART BY RACHEL CUNNINGHAM
April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
17
FEATURE
Opinion
Patterns of Contradiction: Tufts in Chinatown By Kyle Lui
T
ufts’ relationship with Boston’s Chinatown is complicated, both historically and in the present day. There are currently various university efforts attempting to alleviate the rapid gentrification of Boston’s Chinatown, which will hopefully repair some of the past displacement inflicted by Tufts. This semester, Professor Penn Loh, Director of the Master in Public Policy Program and Community Practice at the Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning (UEP), is teaching a class, for UEP graduate students that allows them to get real world work experience by collaborating with community organizations. For the first time, the course is working with the Chinatown Community Land Trust (CCLT). A community land trust (CLT) is a non-profit, community based organization designed to ensure stewardship of land and long term housing affordability. CLTs acquire land and legally separate ownership of the buildings and homes from ownership of the land. The CCLT obtains land from homeowners and converts their property to permanent affordable housing on behalf of the Chinatown community to mitigate displacement and gentrification. Students in Loh’s class research mechanisms that the CCLT can use to incentivize homeowners to give or sell their land to the trust and transfer it into affordable housing stock. We must consider Tufts’ history in Boston’s Chinatown in order to contex18
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
tualize the contradictions in this project. Over the past several decades, Tufts Medical Center has gradually taken land from its host community, Boston’s Chinatown. Tufts University Medical School and New England Medical Center, which make up Tufts Medical Center, occupy over one third of Chinatown’s land. During the urban renewal era in the 1950s and 1960s, the government took land from the Chinatown community through eminent domain, displacing over 700 residents, and sold it to Tufts Medical Center. In the 1990s, community members protested New England Medical Center’s decision to build an eight-story, 455-car garage that would displace a local community center and preschool and create health and safety issues for the neighborhood. Organizers eventually managed to prevent the project’s construction and instead built residential units and community space on the same land parcel. Unfortunately, Chinatown’s fight against displacement and gentrification is ongoing, largely due to the Dental School and Medical Center’s presence. Many of Loh’s students voiced concerns about doing this work with Tufts when it is a major contributor to gentrification in the Chinatown community. Several expressed skepticism about the prospects for securing land in Chinatown for affordable housing. Lydia Collins, a senior in the Field Projects class and UEP 5-year MA/BA program, explained, “It’s so close to being impossible because Tufts
took all of the land. Chinatown is just in this incredibly ripe space. It’s so close to transit, so close to the financial center. It has entertainment and food. It is also really dense and people love density. And Boston’s housing market is one of the most competitive in the country already.” The CCLT is unique because most community land trusts secure land in communities with blighted or low value plots of land that the government does not want. However, the Chinatown Community Land Trust is attempting to secure land as wealthy real estate developers are vying for the same properties. Allison Curtis, a first year UEP graduate student, said, “A lot of the work in the land trusts is a reimagining of what the land could be but it is still entrenched in a capitalist system that creates a lot of barriers for people trying to do this type of work.” As a result, students in the UEP course share a goal of helping the Chinatown community but understand the bleak prospects of success. Collins struggles with the idea of working for Tufts when the institution could easily solve problems that it caused in the first place. “It’s also interesting that Tufts is funding work that is fighting against Tufts. Much of the research that is helping the community comes from the institution that is harming it…So much of the research in UEP is independent of Tufts’ actual impact in the community,” said Collins. Neoliberal institutions like Tufts present themselves as liberal and benevolent, but they don’t practice what they
FEATURE
Opinion
preach. They use entities like UEP in the attempt to work for positive community change, but need to connect these groups with larger institutional entities in order to better serve their community. While the university’s relationship with the Chinatown community is contradictory and undoubtedly harmful, studying the multiple relationships Tufts has with the community can help us understand which relationships need to be nurtured, and which harmful and imbalanced relationships need to be addressed. Loh explained, “The first thing I would say is you can’t really understand it unless you understand that the university is not one thing. Just like you say the Chinatown community is not one thing. The university has a planning department and an institutional master plan…However, at the end of the day there is a governing body and there are people and bodies that are and should be held accountable.” Additionally, the structure and rigidity of the university, especially in the way it handles its finances, makes community work increasingly difficult. Loh believes it’s not effective because “we’re just one unit working here in a massive thousands of people working here. The university is not as nimble as a single non-profit. It has a lot more resources but how it thinks about programming those can sometimes be very constraining too. You get a lot of questions asked when doing anything outside of the normal. Funneling that cash flow to community work involves shifting a much more complex institution.” Tufts’ report “Working Together|Tufts in the Community: Chinatown” discusses the university’s alleged contribution to Chinatown’s growth when the historical reality reveals that its impact has been nearly the opposite. The report addresses the research and medical care that it has brought to the community, yet fails to mention the most vital issue: housing. In the report, Dr. Catherine Hayes, the Chair of the Department of Public Health and Community Service, says, “As public health dentists, we don’t see the individual patient as our patient. We see the community as our patient.” But there is no acknowledgement that the dental school
ART BY EMMA HERDMAN AND COURTESY OF CREATIVE COMMONS
has contributed to the shrinking of the community. Taking care of a patient also means making sure they are able to continue being a patient. In order to increase transparency and truly benefit the community, Tufts Medical Center could have used the report to discuss its institutional master plan and how it seeks to preserve affordable housing in the community if it keeps expanding. Students and professors concerned with community work must think of ways that these entities within Tufts working for good can collaborate with the entities that are ignoring the needs of the Chinatown community, such as the Tufts Medical Center, in order to ensure that all of Tufts is working together to meet its host community’s needs. If the university supported and listened to the positive work being done in UEP and dismantled structural confinements, UEP could make an even greater impact. Community input must be taken into account by university institutions beyond just UEP. Collins’ experience in the course and her work with the CCLT has led her to think of solutions to Chinatown’s housing affordability crisis. One is for Tufts Medical Center to give back some of the land they took. “The reality is that Tufts is there now, and won’t tear down their children hospital. They could give their parking lot back that they took and then give a really nice press spin to it to give themselves good publicity. Tufts is so integral to the economy that they can push for these policies—but only if they want to be political, which they don’t.” Professor Loh, too, has a simple solution that employs urban planning strategies and a diplomatic framework that Tufts could work within. “Tufts sometimes sees itself as its own thing and then decides for itself what it’s going to look like in the city as part of its institutional master plan. We’re one element of this community. Can we convene with others to decide together? That requires getting to know each other and getting to know where people’s interests are. At the very least hopefully you can avoid some of those conflicts when you could’ve figured out something else out to begin with.”
April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
19
FEATURE
Voices
“You think it’s hard for you?! At least you have a culture; you don’t know how hard it is for me to be the fucking bridge between you two all the time!” I had burst. And I think that was the first time my dad really listened, really heard me. As he described to me later, in that moment, he jolted out of his anger and into a sad state of realization that remained with him for the rest of the day. We were under the Sydney Harbour Bridge, standing at Milson’s Point. I had cornered him with the intention of talking him down from his anger at my mom before we had to spend the whole afternoon with our family friends. They had invited us to walk the bridge, apparently a tradition they had with all visiting friends. My brother had already refused to come. It embarrassed me that we would be showing up, greeting this family, after we had argued our way to the subway station, after I had pleaded with my father to still get on the train with us, after the silent ride there, and the silence that persisted between my parents. But this wasn’t new. My brother, father, mother and I had spent the last week angrily “exploring” Sydney streets, arguing with one another about where to eat, how to spend the day, if my dad could stop talking about his new business ideas, if my brother would just respond with more than one syllable, and if my mom could just relax for a second. We used the streets and our self-righteous strides to make our points. I learned to navigate Sydney geography through the curt smile of my mother and the silence of my fuming father. But this was our precious vacation time together. We are only together once a year, and we were going to make it work. My dad had woken up that morning in a particularly chipper mood; a mood that soon got in the way of my mother’s and my goals to mobilize everyone out the door for the family activity of the day. At one point, fed up, my mother snapped at my father, saying, “God, it is exhausting to be around you sometimes.” And that’s when it all changed. My father became the victim. He insisted that we had insulted his “self,” his “being.” He bitterly explained how he can never tell with Americans, what to express and how to be with them. He told us that he was too westernized for Indians and too Indian for Americans. And usually I am all game for talking through my father’s dilemmas as the only Indian male in our very White, intentional community in coastal California where I grew up. Usually I am all ears when it comes to hearing out the ways in which his move back to India to start his third business venture has made him even more aware of how he is of “neither here nor there.” But enough was enough. 20
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
The A Suspen
By Asha N
My newborn body, seven pounds, nine ounces, and 20 inches long, was the first attempt to brave the enormous gap between the worlds of my mother and father. As I grew older and taller, I was able to cover more distance the harder I tried to reconcile their differences. But the gap between the worlds of my mother and father continues to grow. Today, my five foot nine inch body is still not enough to bridge its entirety and the only thing I have gotten from trying to do so is an internal sense of unrest, of suspension, and the ability to read the slightest flick of my mother’s lips and darkening in my father’s eyes. My mother, White, an LA girl at heart, descendant of a large IrishCatholic family from Iowa, married my father, a South Indian, born in the northeastern village of Machilipatnam in Andhra Pradesh. It was a miracle my father’s family let the marriage go through as my mother was an older, already-divorced, White woman and, by Indian standards, that’s pretty much three strikes out. And I think my father’s family still had some reservations about the marriage when my mother showed up to India to meet the family for the first time. But she showed up with a chubby, rosy-cheeked baby in hand. Thinking about it now, she might have done better to have just handed me over once and for all as a peace offering and called it a done deal. But instead, in that moment I became the bind; a bind that dissolved all skepticism
FEATURE
Voices
Art of ension
a Nidumolu
of my parents’ interracial, cross-cultural, almost impossible, yet sustaining marriage. And of course I still feel like glue. How could I not when my dad says it is so different when I am around because there is a Lakshmi in the house, goddess of wealth and prosperity. How my brother still talks about how he is scarred from when our parents fought the whole time during the only family vacation I had missed. How my mom insists that I stick it out on the family Skype call until the end, as if the family ceases to exist the minute I have to sign off. But it’s a lot more than just me being my parent’s cross-culturallytrained family therapist since birth. It’s about me learning to bridge divides at a young age, actively seeking opportunities, and even expecting myself to do so. When I think about my 15-year-old self reading this now, I think about how she could’ve been able to stop, slow down, not try so hard to be a best friend to everyone, to be simultaneously everywhere and do everything. She would be better at listening to herself. She wouldn’t have taken art over choir that one year just to spend long hours gossiping with friends, many of which she knew she couldn’t relate to. She wouldn’t have continued to
ART BY ANNIE ROOME
play volleyball, recreational soccer, and swim just to prove to herself that she could be both “sporty” and “artistic.” She wouldn’t have exhausted herself every weekend bouncing from one social gathering to another just to sustain a large network of friends whose Whiteness mostly left her feeling exhausted and just slightly alienated by the end of the night. She instead may have stopped trying to resolve the world of all difference, of all gaps. But even at 22, I’m still learning. I’m learning to sit with difference. I hear my mom describe my grandmother and how “she is so protective over the house” without acknowledging that the home is the only world my grandmother has ever known. I can easily write my mother off as White, oblivious to her privilege, too quick to simplify Indian culture. But then I hear my father talk about how my grandmother is thrilled to still be doing work around the house at her old age. And I can easily collapse him into the role of the dominating Indian father, unaware of the incredible amount of work the women around him are constantly doing. I can see these perspectives and know that neither of them particularly empathize with the true reality of my grandmother’s life as a constant sacrifice for her family. And I can continue to think that it is my job to advocate her position, take on the lonely task of simultaneously relating to and pushing back against both sides. But instead, I am teaching myself to stop and sit in the middle, to know that the love and understanding I show my grandmother is enough. That I will never be able to fully reconcile my mother and father’s difference in perspectives. After my burst, I walked quickly from under the Sydney Harbour Bridge as my father called after me. “Is that really how you feel? Come tell me about this!” I was too angry to respond. Instead I went straight up to meet our family friends to start our walk. I booked it across the bridge. I was fed up with it. Impatient. Not wanting to really see the view from the bridge, because quite frankly that’s the only view I’ve ever had. But the further I got, the better I felt. It was finally enough to just acknowledge that yes, I was on a bridge, and no, the view was not particularly stunning, but that I would be okay as long as I let myself acknowledge my constant state of suspension. A suspension that would keep me from falling even without the supports of this bridge I had spent so much time building. I am beginning to realize that I might be the one who relies on this bridge the most as a way to dodge discomfort and avoid having to make too many choices. But what if I decided to trust the air instead? Ground myself in it. Stop grasping for right and wrong, constantly looking for two warring sides. Only then might I stop subjecting myself to the vastness of my parents’ differences rather than recognizing their, and my, and our, ability to sustain them. April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
21
FEATURE
Arts & Culture
Morse Code Questioning Content on WMFO Freeform Radio By Greta Jochem
22
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
ART BY JAKE ROCHFORD
FEATURE
Arts & Culture Content Warning: Islamophobia and racism
O
n the March 16 episode of conservative talk radio show Chuck Morse Speaks, “Trump Travel Ban,” host Chuck Morse said that allowing Muslims into America would change the dynamic of our society. He thinks that Islamic law is not compatible with American democracy and that under the religion, women can be killed. He said, “Since the influx of Muslim immigrants in this country, there has been an increase in these sorts of killings. And for reasons that are quite interesting, the New York Times, which is the left leaning establishment mouthpiece doesn’t report this. They’ll report there was a killing, that a girl was killed by her father or her brother, but they won’t report that the family was Muslim, they leave that out.” Chuck Morse Speaks is a Tufts WMFO radio show. At 10 a.m. on Thursdays since early this November, Morse talks about a range of current events in a racist and Islamophobic way under the guise of the “conservative perspective.” Morse, who identified himself on air as Jewish, said that it was immoral to deny Jews entry into the U.S. from Nazi Germany, but letting in Muslims could change our society. It has nothing to do with race or even religion, he said on air, just their “ideology”—which he said is to destroy nation states worldwide. In an episode of his show titled “Censorship at Tufts” he asked, “Do we want to allow Muslim immigration into this country? It’s a difficult question. I would respectfully say no.” Morse is a middle-aged community member and DJ. He speaks favorably of Trump, saying that his inaugural address is “something by conventional meaning every school child should learn and read and memorize,” and he’s written several nonfiction books, with titles like The Nazi Connection to Islamic Terrorism, Was Hitler a Leftist? and The War against Judaism. In “Censorship at Tufts University” Morse said he believes that Tufts students are afraid to speak out because of bias reports, what he calls “thought police.” He said that Tufts has created “an apparatus, a group of people who are taking phone calls from students who want to report
someone who has engaged in politically incorrect conversations.” He added that saying something racist in this day and age is unlikely, and that what is offensive is a subjective decision. In contrast, Tufts defines a bias incident as “any act directed against a person or property that includes the use of slurs or epithets expressing bias on the basis of race, color, national or ethnic origin, age, religion, disability, gender, sexual orientation, or gender identity and expression.” On his show, he compared the system to communist China. “Tufts isn’t that bad but we seem to be moving in that direction,” Morse said. “Do we want a society where comments we don’t agree with are reported to the authorities?” When junior and Tufts Observer staff member Kayden Mimmack first heard the show playing a few days before the recent presidential election at Brown & Brew, he was surprised and upset to hear Morse speaking about the “gender fluidity movement.” He said he’s heard the show several times and is always upset by it—and concerned that Morse’s words represent Tufts. Mimmack explained, “He’s consistently pushing ill-informed, deeply biased perspectives regurgitated from right-wing news sources as well as borderline hate speech, and I don’t think we should be embracing this and allowing his show to be representative of or influential toward the people who live and work here.” According to WMFO Co-General Manager and senior Hunter Howard, and Web Master and senior Ben Tanen, the show has received complaints about the content. Acting in accordance with their policies, they are in the process of investigating the claims and deciding what the best course of action is moving forward. Morse said he believes the charges are “frivolous,” but added, “Nevertheless, I respect the right of Tufts University, a privately owned institution, and WMFO to censor my performance....I will do my best to stay within censorship guidelines.” He said that his show aims to share his insights and “diverse opinion” with Tufts to create dialogue.
According to Howard, WMFO follows regulations from the FCC, Federal Communications Commission, as well as Tufts rules—like those for anti-discrimination and sexual harassment. Howard explains, “With that, though, there is ambiguity; it isn’t clearly defined what you can and can’t say.” Complaints, Howard said, are usually technical. If it’s against FCC rules, WMFO goes through a suspension and possible removal process. If it’s less explicit, like violating Tufts values, they typically reach out to the DJ. Howard points out that the FCC prohibits a station from censoring someone’s material based on their personal views. While Howard recognizes the station’s responsibility for quality control, he said that their guiding principal is “freeform ideology.” He explained, “We really try and place as few restrictions on the variety of things we can get.” Tanen elaborated, “If you have an interest in having a show and you’ve shown the technical ability to have a show and you adhere to all the regulations that we talked about and we make sure everyone sticks to those regulations, your voice is allowed on WMFO… We encourage people to have a show if they want one.” First-year Charlie Billings, a WMFO DJ host of Blue Noise, said, “I think that it’s inappropriate for people to spew hate speech on the radio, but, even though I totally disagree with [Morse’s] stances and there’s some seriously messed up intrinsic and very thinly veiled bias at play here, I believe that most of what he’s saying is covered under free speech.” Mimmack believes that WMFO shouldn’t allow the spread of a hateful ideology, or the attack of specific groups, “Allowing a show like this one with blindingly obvious hateful, racist, and bigoted content to air under the defense of ‘free speech’ makes WMFO and Tufts as a whole complicit in what is said and legitimizes those viewpoints...This show isn’t just political disagreements over tax rates or party politics, this is the demonization, dehumanization, and humiliation of entire groups of people, and that should have no place on WMFO.” April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
23
FEATURE
News
The Value of Mental Healthcare The psychiatric side of American health insurance By Henry Jani
O
n March 24, many people covered by Obamacare breathed easily for the first time in months, as the highly divisive American Health Care Act (AHCA) was pulled from the House floor due to its general unpopularity amongst Democrats and many moderate Republicans. One of Trump’s most prominent critiques during the presidential election was of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), more commonly known as Obamacare, prompting his insistence on a more privatized, conservative healthcare system. Changes such as threats to reproductive healthcare and overall higher premiums, amongst a myriad of other reforms, galvanized protests ranging from local demonstrations to the Obama-backed Organizing for Action’s large online petition. One lesser-known movement was the work of the American Psychological Association (APA) and practicing clinicians across the country who expressed their concerns about the dangerous implications of repealing Obamacare, considering millions of people in need of therapy and counseling services are funded through this current program. As more information is released about Paul Ryan’s determination to keep pushing a reform, it is increasingly important to understand the ways in which the ACA bolstered mental health services for millions of Americans and the possibly devastating results conservative healthcare policies could have on psychological care. A December 2016 letter to Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell from the APA, speaking on behalf of over 100,000 mem24
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
bers, included several key points as to why repealing the ACA was particularly dangerous towards providing “comprehensive mental health, behavioral health, and substance use services.” The letter first explains how the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008 (but put into effect in 2014) helped offer psychological care to “over 60 million Americans” who were previously uncovered. Assistant Professor of Community Health Andrea Acevedo explained that “...the 2008 parity law prevented health plans and health insurance issuers that provide mental health and substance use disorder benefits from having less favorable benefit limitations on those benefits than on medical or surgical benefits. This applied to group health
plans only, like which you may get from your employer, but not those for which the individual gets health insurance for themselves directly. The ACA extended parity to individual health plans.” Many healthcare companies favor insuring physical healthcare at better rates than mental healthcare, considering how costly mental health services can be. A 2013 study by HealthAffairs.org found mental disorder treatment to be one of the most expensive conditions to treat, with annual spending totaling $201 billion. Despite these statistics, the ACA included equal parity to ensure that as many people as possible could have access to crucial mental health resources, such as clinical therapy and addiction recovery services. These actions seemed to work. Another HealthAffairs study included an analysis of data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health which found “…that mental health treatment rates increased significantly among people with serious psychological distress in 2014, when ACA-driven Medicaid expansion and private insurance exchanges were initiated.” Psychology Professor Dr. Alexander Queen, who is also a practicing clinical psychologist, likewise noticed a significant increase in patient numbers while working in community mental health after ACA increased coverage to people, especially those with Medicaid and Medicare. On a more macro-level, covering more people indirectly granted previously underserved populations various types of mental health services. Acevedo pointed out that 47.5 million Americans lacked any type of health insurance before the ACA and yet an estimated 25 percent of adults had a mental illness, experienced addiction, or both. Covering more people implicitly allowed those foregoing therapeutic treatments to consider them now that they were once again affordable. With the ACA and parity acts combined, people had a chance to consider therapy now that they were covered and were certain of its affordability, as health insurance companies were no longer allowed to favor physical treatments. These extremely valuable systems would have been jettisoned if the repeal of Obamacare had proceeded as planned. On top of equal parity laws, the ACA ensures that preexisting psychological
FEATURE
News
conditions can no longer justify denying people coverage. Various mental health diagnoses were considered preexisting conditions under the previous healthcare system, such as bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and depression. According to Dr. Queen, people with these diagnoses “could not purchase private insurance” prior to the ACA. The Freedom Caucus, a highly conservative faction of the Republican Party, targeted the issue of preexisting conditions in Trump’s healthcare plan. The group was created by many members of the Tea Party and centered itself around pushing its party even further to the right. Many members, for example, were some of the key players in the movement to defund Planned Parenthood. This specific attack on preexisting conditions, though harmful for anyone with a diagnosed mental illness, particularly highlights the AHCA’s focus on isolating marginalized communities who were more easily able to gain access to psychological care under Obamacare. The Affordable Care Act, of course, is nowhere near perfect. A study by the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation found that non-elderly people who are Latinx, Black, American Indian, and Alaska Natives were still more likely to remain uninsured than White people despite increases in enrollment rates across all populations of people of color. Professor Acevedo explained that part of this issue was due to a Supreme Court ruling which made Medicaid expansion optional for states, leading to several Southern states with large populations of people of color opting out of this legislation. But despite these shortcomings, people using Medicaid for their mental and behavioral care services still certainly saw improvements under the ACA in terms of accessibility. Another Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation report explained that “Medicaid coverage has expanded considerably with the passage of the Affordable Care Act and other policy changes, reaching more adults with behavioral health needs. States may now expand Medicaid eligibility to include almost all adults at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty level (FPL), or $27,821 for a family of three in 2016, and receive enhanced federal funding to finance the cost of this expansion.” Acevedo also noted
ART BY JACQUELINE ENDERLE
that the ACA could be expanded to better serve Medicaid users by “[making it] more universal...[For] instance Medicaid expansion could be included for all states or changing to a single payer plan. For many people, the premiums are still too high for them to afford them, and sometimes the deductibles are high as well.” Meanwhile, Republicans in support of the AHCA and its future iterations are planning to significantly cut enhanced federal funding to Medicaid, resulting in an uncertain future for many people who have benefited from various types of therapy. A specific example of this reform was the AHCA proposal to eliminate Medicaid coverage of opioid addiction recovery treatment. Of the over two million esti-
47.5 million Americans lacked any type of health insurance before the ACA and yet an estimated 25 percent of adults had a mental illness, substance abuse disorder, or both.
make another proposed bill in the near future probable. The neglect of mental health care in these plans is likely to persist through reduced funds in mental healthcare, because of high costs targeting Medicaid and other marginalized groups first. There are, thankfully, some options for those who may lose Medicaid benefits from a future version of the AHCA. “First, look into community mental health centers. Often these agencies will accept Medicaid, or can offer low-cost therapy,” advised Dr. Queen. “Seeking services at a training clinic, such as those affiliated with a graduate program where graduate students provide services under supervision, can also be a great way to get good treatment for a low fee.” For others who may not be as directly affected by such legislation, it remains important to be aware of healthcare changes and resist discriminatory practices against covering comprehensive psychological care. Healthcare policy can often seem mystifying and inaccessible, but taking the time to understand and push back on bills like the AHCA could protect countless people from losing access to crucial psychological care.
mated Americans suffering from a prescription opioid or heroin addiction, 3 out of 10 are covered by Medicaid according to the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Medicaid expansion, an integral part of the ACA, would have quickly been reduced under the AHCA. States would again be allowed to voluntarily cover these treatments. Considering their generally high prices, behavioral health programs would have likely seen considerable reductions in funding, leaving millions of Americans without an insured way to overcome their addictions. So while the life of the AHCA was prematurely curtailed, conservative sentiments expressed by many Republicans April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
25
FEATURE
Campus
G
Greek Life
in Review By Claire Selvin
26
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
reek Life on campus is in flux, and students want to know more. A series of emails from the administration regarding the status of Greek organizations coupled with the existence of a closed Student Life Review Committee (SLRC) have left many students curious about the specific methodological and strategic tactics being used to address the issue. On November 8, members of the Tufts community received an email from university administrators in response to an article in the Tufts Observer “alleging profoundly troubling behavior in our fraternity system.” The same email explained that the behaviors described in the article violate the law, as well as university policies and values, and that the university “launched an investigation into those allegations in the article that had not been previously reported and addressed.” The Panhellenic Council released a statement on November 9 acknowledging “the current state of toxic hyper-masculinity in our country and in particular within Greek Life at our university.” The letter also issued a series of demands addressed to fraternities including transparent new member processes, the instatement of a Diversity Inclusion Chair for fraternities, the attendance of a member of each fraternity at every Inter-Greek Council Sexual Assault Task Force meeting, accountability, responsibility, an apology, and more. That same month, the Inter-Greek Council (IGC), the student-run governing body for both fraternities and sororities, voluntarily imposed a suspension of all social activities among Greek organizations. This hold did not affect multicultural Greek organizations (MGCs). On December 22, university community members received a message from the Office of the President announcing President Monaco’s inception of the SLRC “to undertake a holistic assessment of the culture of undergraduate student life at
Tufts, with attention to the roles of residential strategy, student organizations, athletics and clubs as well as the Greek system.” The Committee met for the first time on January 23. Currently, all Greek organizations except for MGCs, Alpha Omicron Pi, ATO of Massachusetts, Kappa Alpha Theta, and Zeta Beta Tau are on Cease and Desist, according to Dean of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMahon. Zeta Beta Tau was initially under a cease and desist order, but it has since been lifted. A Cease and Desist Order, according to the Tufts University Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life General Policies handbook, “includes but is not limited to a ban on individual initiated member/new member gatherings, recruitment events, social events or all or new member meetings in the chapter house or at an off campus location” and “any necessary fraternity business meetings must be pre-approved through the chapter officers to the OFSL.” Also, “organizations on Cease and Desist may participate in departmental and council led educational opportunities and business.” Cease and Desist orders are issued by the Dean of Student Affairs Office, which, along with the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, functions as the oversight body for fraternities and sororities. “There are active investigations through police. Our police work closely with local police and any relevant police organizations,” McMahon said. She could not offer the Observer details regarding these investigations. A February 2 email to the Tufts Community reported that two chapters were “believed to have violated the terms of their Cease and Desist orders.” The same email also reported that “one Greek Organization has elected to dissolve after being presented with the results of an investigation conducted by TUPD,” though Pi Delta, the fraternity in question, was not explicitly named in the message. McMahon explained that it is part of her office’s best practices not to release peoples’ or organizations’ names with respect to an investigation or disciplinary action. Pi Delta did not release a statement announcing its dissolution, nor have any other Greek organizations publicly responded to their disbanding. ART BY MADELINE LEE
FEATURE
Campus
The SLRC has been initiated to take a big-picture, large-scale look at student life on campus, which includes Greek Life, first-year experiences, athletics, and student organizations. Keeling & Associates, a consulting group, is assisting the Committee in collecting data and information from students, researching the state of student life at other colleges and universities, and summarizing topics covered during meetings, and consolidating feedback from exercises like the “Idea Wall” in the Campus Center. Keeling reports that it has been in contact with about 800 students over the course of the semester, according to McMahon. Aside from the SLRC, McMahon said that there is a group of police, senior administrative staff, general counsel, and members of the Dean of Students Affairs Office who meet on a monthly basis to assess the state of investigations, Cease and Desist orders, and general communications with Greek organizations. This group seeks to tackle questions like: “What’s the state of different investigations, what’s new, what has come up?” said McMahon. Dr. Susan Murphy, Vice President Emerita of Student and Academic Services at Cornell University, is the chair of the Committee. Daniel Doherty III (H03) serves as the Vice Chair—he is an alumnus of Delta Upsilon fraternity. His status as an alumnus of Delta Upsilon fraternity was only recently added to his biography on the SLRC web page and is not mentioned in his biography on the Board of Trustees web page. Deborah Jospin (J80, A14P) also serves as Vice Chair; Deborah is also a member of the Board of Trustees. A second Delta Upsilon alumnus, Kevin Cloherty (A86), also serves as a member of the Committee. All but one of the current students on the Committee were at one time or are currently members of a Greek organization at Tufts. One of those students is in an MGC. When asked if members’ ties to Greek organizations will influence the Committee’s doings and ultimate recommendation, Murphy said that there are “many members without such ties” and that “even among members with current or former ties to Greek organizations, there is a
broad range of perspectives as well as relationships with many types of Greek organizations, including multicultural as well as Panhellenic and IFC organizations.” According to Murphy, two of the student members of the Committee were chosen for their positions as President and Vice President of the TCU Senate. “President Monaco solicited recommendations for the other student positions on the Committee from faculty, administrators, and student leaders,” Murphy said. Senior Shai Slotky, Vice President of TCU Senate and member of the SLRC, said there was little transparency about which students would be selected to sit on the Committee. “This was a big issue and the students selected didn’t actually know what other students were going to be selected,” Slotky said. “We didn’t know how many other students or members of the Committee [there would be].” Slotky said that his request to add more students to the Committee was denied. “That was tough and other students were upset about that, as was I, but hopefully if the effort continues there will be far more student voices than are currently on the Committee,” he said. Committee meetings are closed and confidential “to facilitate the open exchange of ideas and information,” according to Murphy, but any student can submit a message to the Committee on its web page. Student focus groups and presentations from faculty, administration, and staff help the Committee assess the state of student life at Tufts. Murphy said the Committee’s goal is to “develop recommendations that support holistic, inclusive engagement in undergraduate student life, including student organiza-
tions and clubs, athletics, the undergraduate social and residential experience, and the Greek system, and to do so in a way that aligns with the university’s values.” The Committee has been involved with a variety of ways of collecting information about Tufts student life and assessing its health.
April 10, 2017
Tufts Observer
27
FEATURE
Campus
“With the assistance of outside experts, we have consulted broadly with members of the Tufts community including students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents. We have been using a variety of approaches ranging from one-on-one interviews and small group discussions on campus to open forums for alumni and parents. We have received hundreds of individual email messages from students, alumni, and parents sharing their experiences and perspectives. At the same time, we have also been reviewing Tufts internal data, collecting comparative data, and learning about policies and practices and other institutions,” Murphy said. The Committee will submit a preliminary recommendation to President Monaco in May. It is possible that the recommendation will be that the Committee needs more time to work. “I have real hope that it [the Committee] will offer a path forward that will significantly improve the Tufts student experience. I also recognize that, because it’s working as a committee that people can’t sit down and engage with every minute, there are a lot of questions about where that’s going to go, and I recognize that people are wondering and waiting for signs of what that means,” said McMahon. According to Slotky, the Committee was hesitant to engage with the particular issue of Greek Life at the beginning of the semester, although it is a prominent conflict on campus. “There was a reluctance to call it [an issue]. We [the students on the Committee] really pushed the Committee to say, ‘Hey, this is a pertinent issue,’ that we need to be focusing on Greek Life a lot more than we are focusing on it, and that worked,” he said.
28
Tufts Observer
April 10, 2017
Slotky said that student pressure from both within and outside of the Committee made it more focused on Greek Life. Indeed, the meeting just before Spring Break was solely devoted to Greek life, according to Slotky, and Committee members were asked about the pros and cons of Greek Life on campus. Student members of the Committee are pleased with some of the progress made over the course of the semester, though it took some time for every mem-
“While there have been comprehensive efforts before, this degree of how we wrestle with these questions is a different and distinct opportunity to think about what we’re doing.” ber to get on the same page. “There were massive learning curves with different members because people are just coming in with different relationships to the current student body. I think we’ve been able to push the committee to think of things in different ways or even just to acknowledge how much they don’t know, and kind of direct what each person needs to catch up on,” said junior Benya Kraus, Diversity and Community Affairs Officer of TCU Senate, and member of the Committee.
Slotky said he has mixed feelings about the Committee’s productivity, and he feels there was a lot of time spent playing catch up in terms of knowledge of student experiences and campus culture. He discussed the ways in which some members of the Committee believed social life at Tufts during the ‘70s and ‘80s would be comparable to campus today. Slotky said progress was slow because committee members had differing levels of knowledge about student life on campus today. “Coming in, I think a lot of people assumed there there’s a baseline experience that you can have as a Tufts student…So it took a lot of catch up which I kind of wish we had started earlier,” he said. Slotky also noted “really productive” conversations, particularly in the preSpring Break meeting that focused on Greek Life only. On Thursday, April 6 and Friday, April 7, the SLRC met to hear presentations from its student members about their experiences with various aspects of campus life, including Greek Life. The Observer asked McMahon about the level of momentum and vigor tangible on campus as related to the issue of Greek Life and how it might compare to similar efforts in the early 2000s. “One thing that people who have been here for a long time have said to me—faculty members, staff members— is this level of engagement around the question of student life is new. While there have been comprehensive efforts before, this degree of how we wrestle with these questions is a different and distinct opportunity to think about what we’re doing,” she said.
FEATURE
Feature
@FENDIPENDII
March 13, 2017
Tufts Observer
31
Tufts Observer Since 1895 www.tuftsobserver.org observer@tufts.edu @tuftsobserver