Tufts holds 13th annual Community Day event with Medford and Somerville

The 13th annual Community Day was held on the Academic Quad last Sunday afternoon to provide free food and entertainment to the public.

The event, which Tufts co-sponsored with the cities of Medford and Somerville, ran from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. and featured music and dance performances from student groups, educational displays from university academic departments and family-friendly activities such as pumpkin painting and face-painting, as well as food and refreshments.

According to Barbara Rubel, director of Community Relations, the goal of the event was to welcome people from communities near Tufts to the campus and engage with them.

“It's about being neighbors and having a chance to show Medford and Somerville all the wonderful things going on here,” Rubel said. “We invite community groups so they can share their resources with our neighbors too.”

This year’s Community Day drew crowds of children, youth and adults, most of whom were seated at round tables between Bendetsen Hall and Ballou Hall. A food stall near Goddard Chapel provided lunch.

There were also a total of 12 performances from different student musical groups including the Beelzebubs (Bubs), Jumbo Raas, Amalgamates, Enchanted and B.E.A.T.S.

“This is the third time I performed at the Community Day,” Bubs President Adam Gotbaum, a senior, said.

According to Gotbaum, performing at Community Day is always a a lot of fun for the all-male a cappella group.

“Because we get to showcase our talent to the residents of Medford and Somerville...this day [is] all the more special,” he said.

In addition to a cappella and dance group performances, there were other shows in front of Barnum Hall, including singing and dancing from Tufts' children's theater troupe, Traveling Treasure Trunk.

The event also had informational tables and displays from community groups from Medford and Somerville, including organizations like Jumpstart and the Medford Family Network.

The City of Somerville sponsored an “imagination playground” with sensory toys at Community Day, and the Medford Fire Department provided a fire truck for the event.

Academic departments at Tufts, including the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL), the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project, the Biology Department and Tufts Emergency Medical Services (TEMS), also set up informational tables.

Each year, more Tufts groups come to show neighbors the work they are doing in labs and classrooms around the university, according to Sue DeAmato, assistant director of Community Relations.

“For example, this year, for the first time, we had people from the Biology Department demonstrating the diversity of microbes in our foods," she said.

Visitors were able to look through microscopes to see the microbes living in yogurt, salami, cheese and other foods at the Biology Department's display. Other displays, such as one from the university's Starks Lab, exhibited honeybees and beekeeping, and another from the Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) allowed participants to construct a small circuit around pieces of Play-Doh.

The Tufts Racing Team also had a stall at the event with a racing car on display.

“This is the car we built last year in order to compete at the electric division of the Hybrid Formula Racing Group,” Grace Olsen, captain of the Tufts Racing Team, said. “We secured first place in that event after beating both [Carnegie Mellon University] and [Massachusetts Institute of Technology].”

Olsen, a senior, explained that the displayed vehicle was an all-electric car created, maintained and driven by Tufts students.

According to Rubel, 38 community organizations, 37 Tufts academic departments and programs and 16 student groups participated in Community Day.

Additionally, there were more than 60 student volunteers at the event who did anything from changing the recycling bins to running academic stalls, Rubel said. There were also 11 student coordinators, three artists, two photographers, as well as students with Tufts Recycles, the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD), TEMS and AV Services. 

“Many university departments work to make Community Day happen," DeAmato said.

Rubel explained thatCommunity Day could not happen without the support of all of these people.

“Sue DeAmato [is] the magician who pulls it all together,” she said.

Rubel explained that she and her team cast a wide net to student performing groups, and the ones who responded were all accommodated in the schedule.

“While we had some space limitations, we were able to find room for all the Tufts groups -- student and faculty -- that wanted to be part of Community Day,” she added.

Community Day has grown over the years and brought somewhere around 2000 people to the campus in 2014, according to DeAmato.

“Sometimes we hear about something that we've overlooked -- like better information about accessibility," DeAmato said. "Otherwise, the comments are overwhelmingly positive."

Both Rubel and DeAmato said that Medford and Somerville residents love the event and hate to miss it.

“They love the student performances, and they love our dining services,” Rubel said.