When members of the Class of 2008 first set foot on the Hill in 2004, they learned very quickly that Tufts students are, to say the least, a politically active bunch. Matriculating in the heart of the 2004 presidential election season, the then-freshmen watched and participated as the campus kicked into full campaign frenzy, with student groups on both sides of the aisle holding political events, discussions and rallies (including the Tufts Democrats' "Kegs for Kerry" event, which drew hundreds of partiers and raised money for the campaign of Democratic Sen. John Kerry).
In the first election where many of Tufts' newest students were able to vote, President Bush won four more years of office after a neck-and-neck race that was at times quite dirty.
A week later, nearly 5,000 Jumbos turned out to see another presidential candidate-to-be (though they didn't know it yet), as Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) delivered the annual Fares Lecture, in which she urged conciliatory dialogue and international involvement in the Iraq war and quipped that she would prefer to be "speaking about the prospect of a Middle Eastern foreign policy from the perspective of a President Kerry."
Despite what many students on Tufts' liberal-leaning campus saw as a defeat in the presidential elections, the year was not without revelry for Jumbos. Just over a month after the Class of 2008 began their college careers, they witnessed (and celebrated) history as the Red Sox won their first World Series in 86 years. Tufts - and Boston - cheered a victory that was nearly a century in the making; hundreds of students gathered in front of the president's house after the final game to celebrate the win.
The year offered no shortage of contentious and diverse political discussion at Tufts, with speakers such as Republican agitator Ann Coulter, "Super Size Me" director Morgan Spurlock and Leon Kass, the chair of President Bush's Council on Bioethics visiting campus for lectures and panels.
Such discussions were not without controversy, however; Parents Rights Coalition speaker Brian Camenker, researcher John Diggs and political analyst James Lafferty ruffled feathers during an October panel in which they analyzed homosexuality from a conservative outlook. Their blunt views - like Diggs' declaration that "there are only heterosexual people, and homosexual problems" - drew much criticism from Tufts' LGBT students.
The panel was not the year's only homosexuality-related controversy. The campus was shocked by accusations that a student had assaulted another student for being homosexual, and some LGBT students pushed buttons themselves with chalkings on Coming Out Day that Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman later called "profanity." After a drawn-out discussion stemming from a student's complaints, the Leonard Carmichael Society petitioned the American Red Cross to change its blood donation policies, which prevent men who have had sex with men from donating blood.
The year saw more pitfalls for Tufts' ever-flourishing Greek system. In the fall, the Council on Fraternities and Sororities decided to prohibit freshmen from attending events at fraternity houses during orientation. Several houses were barred from serving alcohol, and a freshman Delta Tau Delta (DTD) pledge stopped breathing during a pledge event after consuming too much alcohol, causing DTD to be put on probation until 2007. In one of Tufts' more infamous stories, a Delta Upsilon brother was caught with 280 grams of cocaine and drug paraphernalia stored in his bedroom and vehicle. The student was arrested for drug trafficking.
In the midst of such events, Tufts' Office of Institutional Research released its first-ever Alcohol & Drug Use Report in 2004. The survey found that over 80 percent of underage respondents drank alcohol, 51.8 percent of whom said they had done something while drunk that they later regretted and 70.7 percent of whom said they had vomited in private after drinking.
Students finished off the year with a muddy and rapper-less Spring Fling, as the show's headliner, Busta Rhymes, was unable to perform due to rain.
