As juniors, we jet-setted off to international locations at the start of the year like so many Jumbos before us, but our focus was drawn stateside as many of us watched the tragedy in the wake of Hurricane Katrina unfold via foreign news broadcasts in our host families' living rooms.
At Tufts, students and faculty welcomed roughly 50 displaced Tulane University students and hosted a number of charitable events to aid the victims -- Tisch Library's Jumbo-Laya fundraiser for the Southern University of New Orleans library in March was just one such notable event. Later in the year and into the next, volunteer vacations with the Leonard Carmichael Society, the Tufts Christian Fellowship and other student groups would focus on area in an attempt to ease a slow recovery process.
Tufts also welcomed a new dean of arts and sciences in Robert Sternberg, a former Yale University psychology professor who assumed the post in August to replace Professor Susan Ernst, who stepped down to focus on teaching in the biology department.
Tragedy struck at Tufts in the death of senior Boryana Damyanova, who was killed by two motorists shortly before Thanksgiving break. The international relations and economics double major, known as "Bory," was an international student from Bulgaria sponsored by trustee Bruce Male (A '63). She was remembered as an ambitious, creative and positive member of the Tufts community in a memorial service that January in Goddard Chapel.
Tufts also mourned the deaths of Elizabeth Van Huysen Mayer, for whom the Mayer Campus Center is named, in April; former Academic Resource Center director Nadia Medina in February; computer science professor Jim Schmolze in February; and physics professor David Weaver in February.
This year, Tufts saw a number of significant donations made. Alumnus and eBay founder Pierre Omidyar (LA '88) with his wife Pam Omidyar (LA '89) donated $100 million in November, bringing Tufts' endowment to over $100 billion total. The donation was a historic one for Tufts, and generally, as the largest private donation to microfinance by an individual or family. "This will be profitable for the University," Bacow said at the time. "But more than that, it will help the flow of capital into the developing world."
In May, trustee Jonathan Tisch (LA '76), chairman and CEO of Loews Hotels, donated $40 million and his name to what was the University College of Citizenship and Public Service, now known as the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service. Bacow said Tisch's donation "ensures in perpetuity" the college, which began with a $10 million start-up donation from Pam and Pierre Omidyar in 2000.
Other major ventures were well underway throughout our junior year, allowing the Class of 2007 to gloat as we looked forward to a senior year with the new, "green" dorm Sophia Gordon, a new music building, additional parking with the new 137-car garage under the South Hall tennis courts, and a new, $2.6 million boathouse on the Malden River in Medford.
Though a flurry of changes enveloped the Tufts community, one important facet would remain constant despite rumors to the contrary. In December, The Boston Globe noted that President Bacow was on the shortlist to replace Larry Summers as Harvard president, but he assured the Tufts community in an e-mail that he was here to stay.
This year was another great one for Tufts speakers. Sponsored by the Massachusetts Democratic Party, John Kerry spoke on grassroots politics in the Crane Room. Sponsored by the Tufts Democrats, political commentator and funnyman Al Franken spoke seriously on the Bush administration's policy regarding the war in Iraq. The Tufts Republicans brought Tufts alumna running for State Senate Samiyah Diaz (LA '99), a black, Hispanic and Muslim single mother, to speak on her platform in April. The Merrin Distinguished Lecture Series began with a lecture by Paul Rusesabagina, a man who saved the lives of thousands in war-torn Rwanda and was the basis for the Academy Award nominated film "Hotel Rwanda" (2004). One major lecture was quite the disappointment, however; as with our freshman year, there was no Fares Lecture due to complications in securing a speaker.
