It can be hard to stand out on this campus, what with the crazy haircuts and eye-popping body piercing. For students looking to make a more permanent mark, tattoos make for an alternative canvas on which to paint their individuality.
Junior Stephan Goeman proudly wears a tattoo of the logo of the Tufts Freethought Society. Although he was initially hesitant to get inked, Goeman said he eventually decided that the permanence of the tattoo wasn't an issue when he considered the importance of the meaning it would carry.
"The Freethought Society has been really important to my development. It's more than a memory, and it's something that I hope will stay with me after I graduate," he said.
Goeman got his tattoo from Matt Crocker of the Boston Tattoo Company, a rapidly growing tattoo shop in Davis Square. Crocker, heavily tattooed up to the neck and down his arms, got his start in professional tattooing while apprenticing under a friend at a tattoo shop in Harvard Square. Initially, he practiced by giving his friends small tattoos.
"They were loyal," Crocker said. "When I got good, they came back to me and I covered up the s---ty ones I did. It was the least I could do."
Crocker is also known for fielding any tattoo request as long as it is feasible and logical.
"If it's something that won't work as a tattoo, I won't do it," Crocker said. "It's hard to drive that home for people - people want what they want, when they want it."
Crocker also stressed the importance of going traditional when it comes to tattoos. The style of the tattoo, rather than the type of ink used, determines how well a tattoo will age. With their bold lines and vibrant colors, he said, "old-school" tattoos tend to fade more slowly than do their modern style counterparts, which often use detailed, subtle shading. Detailed portraits and drawings can be striking at first, but they tend to blur relatively quickly.
"I'll have an old biker come in, and the lines will have stayed. 'Bold will hold,' that's what we say. I try to steer every tattoo I do into that traditional style," Crocker said.
Along with style and design, one of the more important decisions in choosing to get a tattoo is placement. Most inked Jumbos focused on discretion when choosing where to get their tattoo. Because of this, students said their design choices rarely presented them with challenges. Still, there were occasions when having tattoos could be slightly uncomfortable. Senior Luke Pyenson, who has a tattoo of an eggplant on his chest, mentioned that during his time abroad, the cultures in which he was immersed weren't necessarily accepting of tattoos.
"I studied abroad in Morocco, and Islamic culture is a little less ... down with tattooing. But Berber culture is fine with it. My host family thought it was a little weird, especially because it's a vegetable," he said.
Freshman Emily Ehrmann's concerns about her tattoos struck a bit closer to home, but she said she hasn't experienced any difficulties.
"One of my friends was telling me that whenever people see [my tattoo] that they'll judge me, but I haven't really had any problems with it. I don't think it would ever affect work," she said.
Most students expressed no regret over their decision to get a tattoo, and many doubted that they ever would. Some students, however, were concerned with how their future children might perceive them.
"Being a dad on the beach with an eggplant tattoo will be a little weird, but I've made the choice. Now, I can't imagine not having it. It's as if I was born with it," Pyenson said.
With her foot tattoo of the Chicago skyline and a tattoo of Virgo on her side, Ehrmann echoed these thoughts, saying she is afraid it might give any of her children the wrong impression of their mother.
"I would never discourage my kids [from getting] a tattoo, but I would have no leverage if I wanted to," she said.
Junior Mariah Gruner doesn't regret getting tattooed, but she has found that her tattoos can still surprise her. She has two tattoos - one is a map of Virginia's James River on her back, and the other is the Latin phrase "paxvobiscum," meaning "peace be with you," on the inside of her upper arm.
"Sometimes I forget that I have them and I get sort of startled, especially by the one on my back because I can't see it on a daily basis," she said.
Gruner added that despite her efforts to make her tattoos discreet, they could still attract unwanted attention.
"[Having tattoos] makes you visible in a way that's sometimes not what I want. Sometimes at parties, people feel like they can just grab you and ask you about it. It's a consequence," she said.
Despite the possible negative attention, Jumbos agreed that tattoos could be surprisingly addictive. Once a person has overcome their trepidation about getting a first tattoo, it's easier to be more open to getting additional tattoos in the future.
"After I got the first one, I really wanted to get another one. I'm on my third one now. They say it's addictive, and it is," senior Ellie Bernstein said.
Bernstein currently has two tattoos. On her arm, she has a Bronze-Age fish design and on her leg, she has a tattooed copy of a line from a letter. Though she's satisfied with the two tattoos she already has, their addictive potential already has her thinking about what she might do for a third.
"I'm sort of into the idea of a pure geometric design. I'm interested in getting something on my spine, like a line down my spine, or dots," she said.
