What Senate actually did

Dear Members of the Tufts Community Union,

For the past year I have had the distinct honor of serving as your Tufts Community Union (TCU) president. I came to you last April with an upbeat attitude, an open heart and an ambitious agenda that reflected my values. This agenda was not left to sit on a shelf collecting dust but, rather, served as a foundation for many of my decisions as president.

I'm writing this letter today because you deserve to know where progress has been made, where initiatives fell short and where there is still work to be done. But let me be clear: I am not directly responsible for the vast majority of the progress that Senate made in the past year; so many people have worked tirelessly behind the scenes to make this university a better place, and they deserve the credit.

I have put together an End of Year Progress Report," which is available on the TCU Senate's website. This report tracks the progress with respect to the proposed initiatives from last April, and I am excited to share this document with you today. I am excited that all of you can see how your senators helped bridge the gap between Tufts as it is and Tufts as it can be. While I encourage you to go online and check out the document yourself, here are some highlights.

We designed and implemented a new orientation program called Orientation Extended, which will provide first-year students with additional support throughout their first semester on the Hill. Members of our Education Committee helped to bring a new company - Project Lever - to campus, which will better connect students to professors with similar research interests. A number of senators, even after their terms expired, worked alongside Students for Sensible Drug Policy in an effort to bring about reforms to the university's alcohol policy. (The university's task force on alcohol and other drugs just recommended a number of reforms, including the implementation of a Good Samaritan policy.) Senator John Kelly has worked tirelessly to improve the university's sexual assault adjudication process. After a coordinated Senate and student activist lobbying effort, the faculty decided to eliminate the policy that didn't recognize American Sign Language as a language worthy of being on the same academic level as spoken languages at Tufts.

Senators have called for tangible and immediate changes to improve the quality of pre-major advising. (Such reforms include the creation of a Trunk site dedicated to providing students with academic resources and the elimination of policies that limit who can serve as a pre-major advisor.) In an effort to foster more university pride, all first-year students were provided with a copy of the Tufts Ivory Book, which highlights Tufts' rich history. (Shout-out to Editor-in-Chief Yulia Korovikov!) After many years of student lobbying, course evaluations were finally moved online. I had the honor of appointing Stephen Ruggiero to be the first-ever TCU community outreach liaison