Students who feel disenchanted with the Tufts social scene have a new forum for voicing their troubles: Facebook.com.
On Sept. 25, three sophomores, Erik Aurigemma, Brendan DiPiazza and Julien Chemouni Bach, created the Facebook group "Bringing the Social Life Back to Tufts," which aims to be a "brainstorming center where students with a common goal centered on the revival of the Tufts Social Scene can gather," according to the group's official description.
As of press time last night, the group boasted 976 members. Like their counterparts in the political blogosphere, the group's creators hope that they can use the Internet to mobilize Tufts students to rally the administration and implement changes that would improve the campus social scene.
"The ultimate goal of the group is to get the [Tufts Community Union] Senate, the Greeks, the various culture houses, and the class councils together and collectively try to talk to the administration," Aurigemma said in a roundtable interview with DiPiazza, Chemouni Bach and the Daily. "We want to form new lines of communication."
The group made its first foray outside of the digital world today, when members attended a town hall meeting organized by Dean of Arts and Sciences Robert Sternberg to discuss "intellectual life on campus in the context of the freshman-year experience."
Approximately seven of the group's members attended. Senior Eli Cohn, whose Sept. 25 Daily viewpoint entitled "Tufts a party school? If the freshmen only knew" sparked the group's creation, addressed the panel of deans about the issue.
"Tufts is lacking in its social aspects," Cohn said at the meeting. "I think it's a big issue on campus right now. Tufts is making a lot of great strides, but we don't just go to school here. We live here too, and if kids aren't having fun, everything suffers, including the academics."
"I know it's an issue," Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman said. "There will be no change this year in the University's social or alcohol policies, but the concerns about their enforcement is something to think about."
Reitman said that his office would initiate a "community conversation" which would include representatives from the police and any interested students, and that an e-mail would be sent to the student body to announce the meeting.
When Aurigemma, who also attended, asked Reitman when such a meeting would occur, he responded by saying that it would take place later this week or early next week.
DiPiazza and Chemouni Bach said their concerns are mostly with on the on-campus social scene.
"Off-campus is a more complicated issue," Chemouni Bach said.
Aurigemma says that the group has three main goals. The first is to open a dialogue with the Tufts administration to understand the parameters in which parties can occur.
"What time can we be out partying, making some noise, essentially being college students?" Aurigemma asked. Most students are unclear about Tufts' policy towards on-campus partying, he said.
The second goal is to forge a mutual respect between students and law enforcement officers, an aim that comes as a response to complaints by students about police behavior.
"Students have been harassed on the street three times in a single night," Aurigemma said. "Officers should respect students because we are adults. We're eighteen at the youngest ... It's about achieving mutual respect."
Third, the group seeks to create a dialogue with the administration about the trajectory of the Greek system at Tufts.
The Tufts chapter of Alpha Epsilon Pi was suspended from campus for the fall semester a probation violation, and the Tufts chapter of Delta Tau Delta was shut down and the chapter closed for a year in the wake of a pledging incident in April 2005.
"From an outsider's point of view, it seems that the Greeks are getting targeted," Aurigemma said.
The three sophomores founded the group upon the ideas in Cohn's viewpoint on Sept. 25.
"We were sitting in Carmichael, reading Eli's [viewpoint], and Eric had been talking about writing a viewpoint on the same issue," DiPiazza said. "We read it and said, 'if he did that, we should keep going.'"
The next thing they knew, their fledgling Facebook group was exploding with new members.
"It's an amazing tool in bringing people together," Aurigemma said.
Despite the ease with which a user can simply click "yes" to a Facebook group invitation, the group's founders are confident in their near-thousand man army.
"There are people posting and bringing up ideas," Aurigemma said. "There are frontrunners in the group, but even the people who aren't posting are behind us."
Approximately 20 group members had posted 58 messages as of last night. The tone of the posts ranges from silly - "I WANT AN 80'S DANCE PARTY!" - to angry - "F**k the police" - to sophisticated - "we need to pressure the status-quo in a way that will actually have the decision-makers put in uncomfortable and pressured situations."
Most posts suggest some kind of action to further the group's cause. As sophomore Zach Grossman asked in one post on Sept. 25, "so now that we have this group on facebook, what can we do to make things happen in the real world... that is, the reality that exists outside of facebook."
Proposed actions have varied. Aurigemma, DiPiazza and Chemouni Bach are trying to steer the group down a moderate approach focused on improving communication and dialogue with the Tufts administration and TUPD.
"Right now, we're endorsing more diplomatic guidelines," Aurigemma said. "If what we're looking to do is exhausted and comes up empty, we'll look to other methods.
On the other end of the spectrum, some group members have proposed a protest on the President's lawn, a petition, a poster campaign, and a boycott of neighboring businesses which was proposed by Cohn, the author of the incendiary viewpoint.
Aurigemma says that he has deleted only one post, which he says was "disrespectful to the police," an issue that hits home with the sophomore, who hopes to be an FBI officer after he graduates.
"Certain people view [the group] as just people looking to party. As a bunch of rabble-raisers," Aurigemma said.
"We're trying to represent the student body," DiPiazza said. "We hope to see that the administration understands and is willing to start working with us together."
This article is the first of a series on social life on campus.
