We at Tufts love to ban things. Basically, each year some students decide to try and ban one or more "luxuries" from our campus in order to contribute to an overarching cause. It's known to students as activism, active citizenship, citizen activism, social justice and other fun terms; I know it only by the entailments this grim reality imposes despite its connotatively cheerful vernacular.
Bans begin when Tufts students first realize that they possess the unique ability to know what is right for the world and, therefore, other students at Tufts. Instead of making a personal choice to refrain from the behavior, they force an entire student body to do so as well, often without legitimate consent.
I applaud these students' lofty goals, which I read firsthand in uninspiring Facebook event headers as well as through catchphrases sewn into bracelets that often coordinate with a practically requisite "Save Darfur" T−shirt. From time to time, I even envy these students' thick layer of high school−esque naïveté, which seems to fuel unparalleled empathy for all things of this universe.
It's unnecessary to crush these students' spirits with news of the futility of their individual actions; they are already routinely informed of this news every day. Still, we have a right to be frustrated when one day a proposed ban is successful and the next day a handicapped student finds out he probably can't transport his food and drink to his dining hall table because trays waste water.
To those unfamiliar, let's go back to when a campaign by a small yet vocal group of students led to a question on the potential ban of dining hall trays in a student life survey. While students routinely ignore these surveys and sometimes express a preference for nothing more than paper towels in bathrooms, the tray vote was taken seriously. The movement culminated in the banning of trays from Tufts dining halls until further notice.
My sophomore and freshman years at Tufts also featured bans. There was the hush−hush backdoor ban on table tents, the folded flyers that adorn dining hall tables and advertise events like AOII bake sales or the I−Cruise where the boat never actually leaves the harbor. The ban on table tents was initially successful; however, it was overturned in months once people realized the arguments in favor of the ban did not make any sense.
The second ban was on bottled water. The goals of the organization behind the ban are to shed light on the harm caused by bottled water production and the dishonesty of the corporations behind it. But they didn't stop there. They made it their goal to make others feel bad for drinking bottled water, as if they were violating a social stigma. My friends and I bonded over the ban and spent hours fashioning trap doors in our dormitories as a means of concealing Poland Spring 24−packs.
The top−down approach taken in the eradication of table tents was much different from the grassroots Think Outside the Bottle campaign in that the latter relied more heavily on shaming those who defied expectations. Still, it was an exciting time to be a Tufts student caught up in the politics of that era.
With the start of my final year at Tufts, I find myself most cognizant of the short time I have left to live among bans. I want to cherish such an opportunity, though this time around, I hope to use my column as a way of finally contributing to this charade of shame, using my limited wisdom — and worldly education — as well as the advice of my readers to identify which witch we can burn next; I'll hopefully lay the foundation for some open−minded activists to step up and carry on the cause. Now is the time to ban together!
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CJ Saraceno is a senior majoring in political science. He can be reached at christopher.saraceno@tufts.edu.
