Five weeks, several meetings, one rally and dozens of media references after the publication of the controversial carol "O Come All Ye Black Folk" in The Primary Source, "Tufts' Journal of Conservative Thought," students and administrators are preparing to unveil a host of initiatives to begin the semester.
Among them will be a town-hall-style meeting, a conference on responsible journalism, a Senate ad hoc committee, and efforts to put in place standards for journalistic accountability.
The unifying thread for all the initiatives will be an attempt to address the role of diversity on campus following The Primary Source's poorly received critique of affirmative action and to translate the emotional response to the carol into concrete programs.
"Now the hard work, which is pushing forward some tangible results and tangible goals, begins," Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate President Mitch Robinson said.
One of the first efforts this semester will be an attempt to reach out to the black freshmen on campus, "the ones directly targeted by the carol," Provost Jamshed Bharucha said. Trustees are planning a reception for them which will be held today.
The first opportunity the entire Tufts community will have to discuss race and diversity as a group will come on Feb. 7 at a meeting open to students and administrators and sponsored by Dean of Arts and Science Robert Sternberg and Dean of Engineering Linda Abriola.
"It's going to be an opportunity for students to really have a dialogue with themselves and with the administration," Robinson said.
The Senate will also form an ad hoc committee in response to the carol. "That ad hoc committee is going to be working directly on issues of race and culture on campus," Robinson said.
These and other Senate initiatives have earned the praise of University President Larry Bacow.
"In responding to the offensive parody, the administration has worked hand in glove with the leadership of the student Senate," he said in an e-mail.
"I am pleased at how students responded to fellow students in voicing their views regarding how this publication violated our expectations for civil discourse on campus," he said.
The administration has also undertaken initiatives of its own and plans to sponsor "a conference on campus journalism and journalistic efforts," Bacow said.
According to Bharucha, a date has not yet been set for the conference, which is expected to include presentations from prominent Tufts alumni in the media field.
"We will try to make it this semester. It's important that we do it sooner rather than later," he said. "It's important as an educational institution that we're always following up on events of these kind with events that are educational in nature."
A second effort by the administration was highlighted last week in an announcement that Lisa Coleman, formerly the head of Tufts' Africana Center, will become the University's first Executive Director of Institutional Diversity.
According to Coleman, though, the creation of the Office of Institutional Diversity "has been in the works for a while" and did not come in response to the publication of the carol.
Beyond the efforts of the Senate and administration, many students, a large number of whom participated in the end-of-semester Unity Rally, have also been pressing for action.
In the weeks following the publication of the carol, many members of the community called upon the Senate to reconsider the amount of funding that The Primary Source receives, and such requests are still being made.
According to Janice Johnson, the treasurer of the Pan African Alliance (PAA), the group plans to release a survey early in the semester asking students their opinion of The Primary Source.
If students feel that the Source should receive less money, the PAA will present its finding to the Allocations Board (ALBO).
"Basically what we're trying to come to is to have more of a student voice in how student publications are funded," she said.
"If students have such a disdain for how The Primary Source is displaying their message, then they should have a voice in how it's funded."
Robinson is open to such requests, although the call for complete de-funding that some students have made will almost certainly not be honored, he said.
The PAA will also support steps to reform standards for student publications. Johnson said the group will call for the use of a Media Advisory Board with some powers of oversight.
Another goal will be to encourage greater student accountability for the articles that they write. This drive arose because the name of the author of the carol was not published alongside it.
"If you're writing something that you agree with and you want to stand behind and you're proud of, then you shouldn't be afraid to put your name on it," Johnson said.
Incoming Editor-in-Chief of The Primary Source Douglas Kingman said in an e-mail that such guidelines are not necessary.
All articles in the Source are signed by their writers, he said, unless they are part of a special section.
The carol was included in one of these sections and was unsigned because it reflected a collaborative effort, Kingman said.
Still, all such sections do have accountability because they have the "approval of the editorial board of the magazine, which is clearly listed on page four," he said.
"It would be unwieldy to attempt to reflect the input size and content each contributor added to a certain special section page."
Beyond that, Kingman said that the Source is committed to preventing something like the publication of the carol from occurring in the future and that he and the other editors will make sure the magazine's views are presented more clearly.
"One key step that has been taken is setting aside several pages of the upcoming magazine to discuss affirmative action," he said.
Throughout all of these efforts, students and administrators will have to battle against the storm of negative press in national and international news that Tufts received as a result of the carol.
Even so, many of those involved, including Robinson and Bharucha, are not overly concerned about fallout from the media coverage.
"I think that it's only done the school damage if we as a student body don't respond to it positively," Robinson said.
Bharucha agreed and said that the student body has done just that. He said that he is "extremely impressed" by students' maturity, strongly supports all of the diverse initiatives that they have taken, and encourages future action.
"We hope that this is just the beginning of a continued dialogue," he said.
