Let's face it. Tufts can be a pretty nerdy school. When all is said and done, most students come here to learn and won't let much get in the way. The Tufts student is steadfast in commitment to education and accomplishing goals that will allow him or her to move forward in life.
True, scholasticism is pretty important to the whole college experience, and I'm not going to argue that doing well in class hasn't always, in the end, been my primary objective (at least through my first three years). But in all seriousness, how many people out there want to read a front page article about Tufts e-mail?
We all know that Tufts e-mail is pretty crappy, and getting those stupid reminders that your mailbox is filling up is enough to make you want to strangle someone with your Ethernet cable. But do we have to read about it? Are we that nerdy?
Sadly, I thought that this saturation of e-mail-related front page stories was a recent occurrence in the slow news world of the Daily, but after looking up some archives from my freshman year, I found this little beauty: "Coral email system down for six hours yesterday." And even sadder, it was written by one of my friends. Does this school legitimately care about something like that? If your e-mail was out for six hours yesterday, would you want to read about it the next day on the friggin' front page?
Apparently, according to my inside source, the newsroom doesn't have a specific agenda at the Daily. Somehow, though, the list of front page topics seems to limit itself to the following topics: noted speakers speaking, the Senate doing anything, a faculty member saying or doing something outside the classroom, anything involving a Tufts student -- especially a Greek one -- getting in trouble, and something involving e-mail. The saddest thing about this list is the lack of positive news. There just isn't that much front page reporting on Tufts students doing good things.
Does everybody out there remember the LCS Katrina relief concert held in Cohen a few weeks ago? Probably not, since the Daily didn't report on it. The show consisted of Tufts bands and performance groups, and even the event's organizer wowed the audience when he sat down at the piano. And while I don't know the exact number, I'd estimate at least $2,000 was raised that night. Seems like a pretty worthy news story.
Another group raised money for Katrina relief just a couple weeks earlier: Zeta Psi. With a Mardi Gras theme, the brothers held a party that featured a Tufts band, a Tufts DJ, and the return of a house that had been on probation for over two years. Most importantly, though, was the money raised that night: another $2,000.
Theta Chi teamed up with LCS to sell beads for charity, and while their efforts were noted in an editorial, the main reporting done by the Daily on this fundraising focused on questioning whether selling beads was an appropriate way of raising money, as if that were more important than showing students doing something good.
In my time at this school, I've noticed that the student body is not one big happy family. We're a diverse group of people, and so it would be expected that we're not always going to get along. Clashing ideologies make for the occasional shouting match, and this type of spirited dialogue is healthy and a necessary part of growing at college. However, part of the problem is that students are pretty oblivious to good things other students are doing.
Everybody knows that a couple students, only one of whom was of legal drinking age, were caught with open cans of Natty Light. But not everyone knows that a small group of Tufts students have raised a ton of money for Katrina relief even though it should be imperative that we know who is actually doing something during these difficult times. And here, it is up to the Daily to let people know of the positive actions that students undertake.
In a recent viewpoint, Joseph Alexiou was spot-on in saying "There is no sense of camaraderie [at Tufts]," and this is indeed upsetting. Maybe I'm wrong in thinking that there doesn't exist a large number of students out there who think people getting caught with beer is really exciting stuff. Or maybe I shouldn't call Tufts a nerdy school as much as a cutthroat one, where we happily read about the little mistakes made by our fellow students rather than wanting to hear about their achievements.
Well, if that's the case, then it's time to grow the hell up, Tufts. We're going to one of the best schools with some of the most amazing people in the entire world, and we should take pride in our ability to be a part of it. So I call upon the Daily to emphasize the positive undertakings of the students at this university rather than picking them apart.
And just for good measure, enough of the e-mail stories already.
