Firstly, the couple thousand dollars that fund these student groups come nowhere near being large enough to make a significant contribution toward so great an endeavor as making Tufts 100 percent need-blind. If you want student activities fee funding to matter towards making Tufts need-blind or increasing faculty salaries, it would take the entire student activities fund to even contribute - never mind the fact that activities fee money is for student activities, not grand, university-wide initiatives.
Secondly, any group of 15 or more students with an interest sufficiently unique enough to warrant an independent group should be able to have one, so long as the group's aims are not offensive or harmful. Simply because you do not subscribe to one of these religions does not make them unworthy of funding. And seriously, show me the Office of Student Activities bylaw where it says student groups with opposing or contradictory ideas cannot exist.
That is like saying the Tufts Republicans and Tufts Democrats cannot both be funded by the TCU, or the Primary Source and - maybe I am dating myself - Radix.
Essentially, you are saying that any group you are not interested in shouldn't be funded, that if you don't believe in what the group believes, it is not valid. Personally, I wouldn't have been caught dead at a Tufts Right to Arms or an ACLU meeting while I was at Tufts. I wasn't in the Vietnamese Student Organization or the No Homers Club or the Ayn Rand Interest Club or Baseball Analysis at Tufts, either, but that doesn't mean they don't serve a purpose for someone else.
Lastly, for those students who are religious, having a community of like-minded individuals on campus can provide them with solace, strength and direction - things all college students need at some point. To many people, having access to Father O'Leary or the university's associate chaplains is tantamount to a visit to Counseling Services.
My four years at Tufts taught me to be more open to and tolerant of others' beliefs. It's a good thing you are only a sophomore, Mr. McLoone, because apparently you have not fully grasped that lesson yet.
Jillian Harrison (LA '06)Former Managing Editor, Tufts Daily
