As seniors, the members of the Class of 2008 witnessed a year of highs and lows. It was a year of controversies, concerns and of major steps forward for Tufts.
The semester opened on a somber note, as Tufts lost three members of its community. Professor Gerald Gill passed away in July, and recent alumni Paul Farris (LA '06) and David Rawson (LA '07) both died earlier in the summer.
Gill, who was a beloved and well-respected history professor at Tufts for many years, was commemorated this spring by the introduction of the Gerald R. Gill Lecture Series, which brought Indiana University Professor Khalil Muhammad to campus to discuss stereotypes of black criminality. "I'm constantly amazed at the number of alumni from a number of different eras who cite Professor Gill as the person who has had the greatest impact on them while they were students at Tufts," Provost Jamshed Bharucha said before the lecture.
The fall also brought news that Nicolas Chacon, the Somerville man who was arrested for the string of sexual assaults that occurred near campus the previous spring, had been arraigned in court - a comforting thought for many Jumbos. But shortly thereafter, the Daily reported that Kenneth Hall, a former employee in the Office of Residential Life and Learning, had been convicted as a sex offender and was fired.
Students' safety became a ongoing issue throughout the year, as several robberies and assaults occurred near campus - and those that involved Tufts students demonstrated that, for better or worse, some Jumbos have a lot of gall. In the fall, junior Jason Safer was robbed at gunpoint of his cell phone and laptop but had the wherewithal to ask his assailants to return the phone's SIM card so that he would not lose his contact information. Remarkably, the robbers complied. In another incident, a student who was robbed at gunpoint lied to his assailant, claiming that he was not carrying his cell phone when, in fact, he was. The robber then took all of the money in the student's wallet - a mere $1 - and fled.
These and other incidents - including the knifepoint robbery of a graduate student who stepped in to prevent an undergraduate female from being harassed - sparked a resolution by the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate recommending changes to the Tufts University Police Department's escort service. Public safety also became a key issue in the spring's TCU presidential race; before the election, winner-to-be Duncan Pickard said, "Improving public safety is going to be the first thing that I'm going to do."
Just as the previous year's Primary Source scandal faded into the background after Dean of Undergraduate Education James Glaser overturned all punishments against the publication in the fall, a more pervasive story came to light surrounding the firing of Office of Student Activities Director Jodie Nealley, who allegedly embezzled $300,000 from Tufts. The story, which gained regional and national attention, led to moves for reform in the way student groups' funding is handled.
Amid such negative stories, however, Tufts made major improvements as an institution. In January, the university announced that it was replacing all loans for students in the sub-$40,000 per year income category with grants, allowing admission of the most economically-diverse class in school history. Tufts also announced the start of its Loan Repayment Assistance Program, a pioneering system that will forgive tuition loans for alumni who take jobs in the non-profit or public sectors.
The Daily reported in January that Tufts, boosted by large gifts from alumni in the past few years, had quietly taken a monumental step in its push for a need-blind admission process: Starting with the Class of 2011, Tufts' admission process has been need blind, despite a lack of any formal policy on the matter.
Later in the semester, the release of alumnus Frank Doble's (A '11) trust fund granted Tufts the largest single gift in its history, a $136-million donation. "There's an important dynamic at play: that one generation of Tufts students enables the next," said Brian Lee, the vice president of University Advancement, of the gift.
The end of the year brought the socially-conscious rap of Common and the unique, celtic-punk tunes of The Dropkick Murphys, as the Class of 2008 celebrated its second completely rain-free Spring Fling.
