The year started off with a political bang, as election frenzy gripped the Tufts campus. It was the first chance for many of us to vote in a presidential election, but quite a few of us were turned off by the non-stop mudslinging. Political Science Professor Jeffrey Berry told the Daily at the end of October, however, that "campaign attacks are part of American politics ... it goes way back, and I'm not sure it's been any more gruesome than it usually is."
New York Times Magazine national political correspondent and Tufts alumnus Matt Bai (LA '90) visited Tufts that same month, shortly after writing a controversial profile on Kerry that focused on the Massachusetts senator's worldview and foreign policy outlook. In the piece, Kerry told Bai that "we have to get back to the place we were, where terrorists are not the focus of our lives, but they're a nuisance."
Almost immediately, the Bush campaign seized upon the quote as an indication that Kerry did not take terrorism
seriously. President George W. Bush said the quote showed that Kerry "just doesn't get it"; Vice President Dick Cheney said the quote reflected "an unacceptable mindset" that "says a lot about a lack of character."
The Bush campaign's criticisms of Kerry apparently held water with voters, as Bush was reelected in November. In the wake of Kerry's loss, dejected campus liberals regrouped and reorganized: "The strong domestic policy of the party was overshadowed by the fear factor and the war on terror of this election," sophomore and Tufts Democrats Vice President Kayt Norris told the Daily in March. "So we want to focus on the Democrats' stances on these policies now, which really should have been the focus of the election and should be the policy makers' focus."
A week after Bush's victory, Hillary Clinton came to Tufts to deliver the Fares Lecture. Nearly 5,000 members of the Tufts community turned out to hear Clinton speak, but not everyone was pleased by her presence. Decrying Clinton's support of the Iraq War - which at that point had resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 U.S. soldiers - protesters, led by the Tufts Socialist Alternative, distributed leaflets outside of the Gantcher Center. But in a coup for civility, no one gave this year's Fares Lecturer the finger.
Celebration reigned when the Red Sox broke the curse and won the World Series. For weeks, it seemed that three out of four Tufts students were dressing themselves daily - and proudly - in either official Sox gear or oh-so-clever "What Would Damon Do?" T-shirts. (The following year, though, Tufts students who had bought shirts of the latter variety and outfitted their dorm rooms with life-size cardboard cutouts of Johnny Damon in his bearded, long-haired glory felt very silly - and very sad - when Damon did the unthinkable: shaved his beard and cut his hair. Oh, and signed with a little team called the Yankees.)
It was another long, frigid winter for Tufts students, who trudged through snow and ice on an almost daily basis (and who, as always, ran through it, naked, on the last night of fall classes). But the chill was alleviated by the hot air many guests - including Mr. "SuperSize Me" himself, Morgan Spurlock - brought to the Tufts campus. Spurlock, looking noticeably trimmer than he did at the end of his month-long odyssey into the belly of the McDonald's beast, laughed off McDonald's' recent attempts at making its menu healthier: "We're getting a fantastic lettuce curtain in front of a big fat stage," Spurlock said. "They're doing what they do best: misleading us with propaganda."
At an incendiary October panel on homosexuality's sociological implications, one panelist, conservative activist Brian Camenker, said that there is "no such thing as gay people" and that "these various things [homosexual] people do are symptoms of their own past, some often very tragic." Camenker's comments touched off a firestorm of controversy on campus.
Later that year, the Leonard Carmichael Society - which holds on-campus blood drives - petitioned the Red Cross, asking that the organization reconsider its policy on homosexual donors. As the Daily reported in April, "the Red Cross donor survey currently prohibits men who have had sex with other men since 1977 from donating blood because it considers them at an increased risk for transmitting disease to recipients."
In April, the Daily's News department randomly surveyed 346 students on various campus and national issues. Forty-four percent of students said they felt that campus social life was "good." Thirty-six percent said campus social life was either "terrible" or "not so good." Of the mere 24 students who described social life on campus as "very good," not a single one was an upperclassman. Perhaps those less-than-enthusiastic responses were due in part to the fact that the administration put the kibosh on two fraternities' ability to serve alcohol at social events, and that Delta Tau Delta was shut down and then placed on probation in the wake of a pledging incident.
The findings of another survey, Health Services' first-ever Alcohol and Drug Survey, were released this year. 1,921 undergraduates participated in the survey. The Daily reported in February that the survey found, among other things, that "more whites and males identify themselves as moderate and heavy drinkers, while more minorities and females consider themselves light drinkers or abstainers."
Other "fun" facts? The Daily reported that "Eighty-three percent identified hangovers, 70.7 percent said they had vomited in private, and 51.8 percent said they did something they later regretted. Another 31.9 percent said they had vomited in a public setting and four percent said they had been transported to the hospital." Lovely.
Also lovely were the beer cans that angry, inebriated students flung at Concert Board volunteers when wet weather prevented Spring Fling headliner Busta Rhymes from taking the stage. When the rainfall turned into a downpour before Rhymes' set, Tufts' master electrician and Scorpio Sound company, citing safety concerns, pulled the plug - but not before Tufts students had enjoyed several memorable hours of muddy musical fun.
