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Live Blog: Tony Blair @ Tufts

Interactive Map | Shooting in Davis Square

Somerville police arrested Malden resident Marcel Laurol, 32, after responding to reports of gunfire less than a block from the center of Davis Square. This interactive map chronicles the story of how Laurol was shot and allegedly hijacked a cab to run down the man who shot him.

Athletes of the Week

Heather Theiss, Women's Track and Field

In defense of The Primary Source

            These are strange days indeed when I find myself coming to the defense of The Primary Source. While I seldom agree with what I read in Tufts' journal of conservative thought, I do, unlike Benjamin Silver, the author of the Feb. 5 op-ed "We had a deal!", actually read the biweekly publication. I can happily report back to him that the writing is not wholly deserving of the term "trash" with which he labels it. Liberal or conservative, one can respect the quality of composition that some — though not all — put into the publication, and for that I am content to sift through the rather shoddy journal sitting in a dusty corner of Carmichael every two weeks.     But whether Silver refrains from reading the Source is mostly beside the point I wish to make in this brief response. After reading "We had a deal!" I found myself wondering: Of what deal is Silver speaking? He writes that his compromise not to read the Source "has changed [...] completely" following a portrayal of our newly inaugurated president as the Messiah on the cover, for this he cannot ignore. (Closing his eyes, we are left to assume, was to no avail.)     He "can think of no one at Tufts who should not be offended by The Primary Source's utterly disrespectful cover." Well, here's one. May a non-believer who voted for Obama look at a conservative satirical cover and not be offended? I'm actually more offended by Silver's implicit equation of "Christians, Muslims and Jews" with his aforementioned reference to every student at Tufts.     Silver is uncertain whether this portrayal was "an attempt at humor, criticism, both or something else entirely." Allow me to apprise him of what has evidently eluded him: It was an attempt at humor and criticism. (For what it's worth, he at least mentioned this in his guess.) Whether or not he found it humorous is another story and, I hasten to add, irrelevant to the fact that Tufts "(still) reluctantly supports this publication." The Tufts Community Union Senate, I'm glad to say, does not base its decision to fund The Primary Source on what he doesn't understand, doesn't find funny or is offended by.     Should the editors of The Primary Source "explain themselves" for "their thoughtless lack of discretion"? Silver doesn't hesitate to invoke his right not to read The Primary Source but comes dangerously close to claiming another, infinitely more pernicious right: the right not to be offended. Such a right, I must inform him, does not exist in the United States. Indeed, the most sinister part of Silver's short polemic comes near the end, when he claims to be against "strong censorship." Strong? As opposed to mild censorship, of, say, covers he doesn't like? And how revealing are the two subjects of criticism he chose to take up arms for — religion and the American president. In these times, I should say the last thing we need is more wariness in freedom of expression in the public discourse on these two subjects.     Returning to the mysterious "deal" Silver mentions in the title, I'm sad to say it seems that of which he speaks is emblematic of the overly sensitive and insipid left in this country: a deal which says people's feelings matter more than others' freedom of expression. Criticize the writing and artwork in The Primary Source in their own terms, not in those of whether such expression should be condoned or not. The Primary Source doubtless will not apologize for the cover, nor should it. This incessant whining about hurt feelings is unproductive and asinine at best and positively damaging to free speech at worst.

Trustees approve expenditures, renovations

Although the economic downturn has forced Tufts to postpone major capital projects, the university's trustees this weekend approved expenditures for a number of renovations. Specifically, the trustees' Administration and Finance Committee gave the go-ahead to ongoing or planned construction in Cousens Gym, the Pearson Chemical Laboratory and Packard Hall and to other projects on the Grafton campus.

And the winner is...

Spirit of Color (SoC) was crowned the best dance crew on campus Friday night at the Tufts' Best Dance Crew finale in Cohen Auditorium. SoC was tied with Sarabande at the end of the night, so they went head-to-head in an impromptu freestyle battle, which SoC won by a very small margin.

Logan Crane | If You Seek Amy

It always goes a little something like this. It was a hot and heavy night out at the bar or frat, and things are going incredibly well. You get back to his place, and clothes are flying. There's mass making out, a couple quick grabs, and it's made clear that it's time to get down to business. A new hookup is always so exciting, and you look forward to trying out new positions. You find that you have morphed into some kind of pretzel-like position where limbs are bending in unnatural ways. There might be a couple of position changes, and you're beginning to experience sheer terror. You can feel the buildup of air in your vaginal cavity, and it's only a matter of seconds before she blows. It was that last quick in and out, and the inevitable occurs: You queef.

Fall 2008 PDFs

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February 2009 PDFs

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PDFS

LIVE BLOG: Women's basketball @ Amherst

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Spring 2009 PDFs

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Questions arise about Birthright's future

To whom does the state of Israel belong? This question has been asked countless times by countless people in the last decade, and the range of responses is controversial and virtually limitless. But philanthropists Michael Steinhardt and Charles Bronfman believe they have an answer: it belongs to anyone of Jewish heritage, and as such they have the right of birth to visit.

NESCAC Weekend basketball preview

Women

Mikey Goralnik | Paint the Town Brown

I'm by no means breaking new ground when I refer to greater Boston and its outlying hamlets as a rock-driven music culture. The list of famous Bostonian bands literally reads like your favorite 1996-1999 modern rock radio playlist. Aerosmith, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Staind, Godsmack, Dinosaur Jr, The Pixies, Guster and, perhaps deceptively, Boston, all hail from Boston-area towns, and this regional legacy of loud guitars, louder live shows and generally traditional popular music aesthetics leaves little room for electronic music.     In some ways, the area's music climate bears this out. While comparably sized cities like Baltimore and Seattle have cobbled together diverse, vibrant popular music cultures rich in all kinds of electronic music, Boston's accomplished and promising producers have moved out and moved on to locales more friendly to their music.     In other ways, I'm a complete moron. For over a year and a half, Boston's BASSIC Crew — Dabu, Pandai'a, C-dubs, and Damian Silva — have helped local electronica blossom from the forgotten corners of a rock-heavy music scene to a small clique of castoff drum and bass, house and breaks DJs to a broad and truly exciting music culture rooted in Dubstep but splintering into anything that bumps. It's a culture that, whether Powerman 5000 likes it or not, is now an inseparable part of the city's musical identity.     As Dabu tells it, the evolution was pretty natural: "I was spinning at this weekly in Mission Hill, and whenever I played any Dubstep, people would always come up to me afterwards and want to know where they could hear more."     I, and tens of thousands of people worldwide, can relate. The first time I heard a Dubstep record played out live (it was "Midnight Request Line" by Skream if you're keeping score at home) was literally dumbfounding. The moment when the beat dropped — a wobbly, propulsive explosion dripping with sub-bass that the bar's sound system could just barely handle — was unlike anything I had ever heard or felt (as in physically felt in my body) before.     After the requests for more Dubstep, Dabu said he "thought we should try and put something together." So was born BASSIC, Boston's most successful live electronic event featuring two of BASSIC's resident DJs and the kind of national and international talent that Baltimore and Seattle wished they could get. Though the event started out as an ostensibly Dubstep party, BASSIC has changed as its members and the genre have. "For the first year or so, we were stepping on each other's toes," struggling to both find records with the massive bass drops that Bostonians craved but also play new and exciting tracks each month, he said. "Now, its just a place to play different things that fall under the umbrella of dubstep."     This makes BASSIC parties kind of like a circus: there's something for everyone, but all of it is totally absurd. On a given night, you can hear deep, decaying techno-leaning Dubstep; rootsy, reggae Dubstep; Dubstep with hip-hop; or the darkest, most evil, most bizarrely sexy music your virgin ears can handle, plus whatever electronic music all-star they bring to town.     BASSIC's January installment, hosted again at The Good Life, pitted Pandai'a's all-vinyl set of dark, downtempo Dubstep against Dabu's laptop set of experimental hip-hop beats, both of which set the stage for New York electro hip-hop kingpin Eliot Lipp, mixing a range of electronic music as broad as it was good. Blending the pummeling sub-bass of Dubstep heavyweights like Rusko with smooth hip-hop tracks by Tufts' own Obey City, Lipp put together a murderous set drawing on all electronic music genres. It was a fitting achievement for a BASSIC event, and one that encapsulates the legacy this production company is carving into Boston's live music culture, one month at a time.

Students want voice in responsible investing

What do Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Swarthmore, Barnard, Brown, Smith, Stanford, Vassar and Williams have in common? All of these universities have established committees on shareholder responsibility who have access to university investment activities. Just how large are these institutions' endowments? $18.8 billion, $11 billion, $4.35 billion, $930 million, $129 million, $1.46 billion, $1.24 billion, $8.61 billion, $547 million and $1.08 billion, respectively. Why isn't Tufts a part of this group of progressive, successful, responsible and to be frank, wealthy, institutions? Beats me.     The idea of socially responsible investing (SRI) was championed in the 1970s by three Yale professors who authored a book entitled "The Ethical Investor" (1972). They state that, "the 'moral minimum' of the shareholder to take such action as he can to prevent or correct corporate social injury extends to the university when it is a corporate shareholder." The impetus for the sudden swelling in interest stemmed from the discovery that universities may have had holdings in companies operating in apartheid South Africa. Even here at Tufts, students rallied against this tacit support of racism. Today, their work for divestment from South Africa is memorialized in pictures in Hotung Café and Tisch Library.     The conflict over investing in South Africa may have subsided, but the importance of SRI has only grown over the years. Barrons, The Financial Times and the Quarterly Journal of Economics have all commented that not only does SRI enact positive change, but it also "makes bank."     In the spirit of SRI, committees have been created at the aforementioned institutions to provide recommendations to the universities on how they should vote on a variety of important and far-reaching issues in regards to the companies the universities are invested in. As a major shareholder, a university has the power to vote on resolutions that corporations publish annually. Frequently, these resolutions deal with issues concerning the environment and climate change; women's rights; labor rights; lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender discrimination; and much more. The committees at these various institutions have the power to research these issues thoroughly, make sound recommendations regarding the vote of the university and to represent the opinion of the university community.     Currently, the only attempt our administration has made toward SRI is to create a disenfranchised Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility (ACSR), whose members have been forced to sign non-disclosure agreements; this prevents them from communicating with the community that they serve to represent. This also bars them from utilizing the resources that Tufts has to offer to inform their own research, by the way of professors, staff and other students.     The "committee" consists of three undergraduates, working incredibly hard to research the background behind each resolution that passes in front of them in an attempt to make responsible decisions about the companies in which Tufts currently invests. The ACSR as a body is blatantly ignored; their input is not taken seriously, their concerns are overlooked and the community they serve to represent is grossly uninformed about the activities of Tufts' endowment. Despite a Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate resolution from April 2008 supporting the strengthening of the ACSR, the administration has continued to retain the flawed set-up.     What is the answer? Empower the ACSR. This is the body that is supposed to represent the Tufts community; it is the body that is supposed to make recommendations to the Board of Trustees, which are respectfully considered; it is the body that is supposed to serve as a space for dialogue between the student body and the administrators who invest the endowment.     How will this happen? The ACSR needs to be expanded to contain representatives from all the constituencies on campus, including graduate students, faculty, staff and alumni. The committee needs to be free from the non-disclosure agreements that currently inhibit any proper dialogue on the subject of the Tufts endowment. As an expression of community solidarity, a resolution was unanimously passed just this past week by the TCU Senate supporting the ACSR and the elimination of the non-disclosure agreements. Most importantly, the input of this body must be considered in the decision-making process of the university's governing bodies.     Opportunities for positive change are literally slipping through our fingers as Tufts continually abstains from voting on important resolutions on which we have the right to vote. Tufts could be using its huge institutional clout to vote on resolutions that have real-life implications for the environment, labor groups and other issues which the Tufts community deems important. Instead, we are sitting back and letting each occasion pass us by. The ACSR would not be advising the administration on issues, which would affect the endowment's bottom line; instead, they would advise the administrators on issues which affect a moral "bottom line."     This is a "multi-issue issue," meaning that from whatever angle you view it, positive change could be made. Whether you approach SRI through the lens of greater oversight, women's issues, discrimination policies or anything else, the strengthening of the ACSR would result in a forum of discussion where these issues could be dealt with. Tufts could use its enormous power as a multi-million dollar investor in many companies to vote in a morally sound and responsible manner.     I'm tired of not knowing how the university's endowment is being spent. I'm tired of not having a place to voice my concerns regarding the investment activities of Tufts University. So why hasn't Tufts joined the ranks of Harvard, Yale, Columbia and so many others? Beats me. --

Admissions officers use Facebook to recruit prospective students

    It goes without saying that Facebook.com, which celebrated its fifth birthday yesterday, has grown from being an exclusive social network used only by matriculated college students to a near-universal communication tool. Today, Facebook hosts profiles and groups for everyone from the very young to the surprisingly old, and its ubiquity has led professional businesses and organizations to incorporate it into their practices.     Perhaps because of their proximity to the younger set, college admissions offices have been some of the first organizations to do so, attempting to use the networking site in the hopes of attracting more prospective students to their universities. In doing so, they are capitalizing on the existing trend of admitted students creating their own class Facebook groups.     Tufts Assistant Director of Admissions Daniel Grayson created the Tufts Class of 2013 Facebook group to provide a link between the admissions office and the university's recently admitted students. Students convene on the site to set up meeting times for those who live in the same city, discuss essay questions and answers and find other students with common interests such as music or dance, much as they would in a student-created Facebook group. The group also includes helpful links to sites that current Tufts students take for granted, such as TuftsLife and JumboAccess, so that students can learn about on-campus activities and professor reviews right away.     This new strategy marks a clear transition from the previous method that many current Jumbos can remember of reading up on their prospective schools in insiders' guides and The Princeton Review.     Freshman Adam Aronson recalled that when he joined the similar Tufts Class of 2012 group, it was helpful for getting many of his questions answered about starting school at Tufts.     "I do think these groups are a good idea. They are very effective at getting questions answered," Aronson said. "It also makes you feel like you're part of a community before you get to Tufts. The process of pre-orientation and orientation can be really confusing, and it's good to have a couple people going through the same thing you are."     Other students have found the group useful, although they have used it more as a source of information than as an arena for interaction and communication. Freshman Jordana Laks, who took a year off before starting at Tufts, joined the Tufts Class of 2012 Facebook group in order to see what other people were saying about their upcoming Tufts experience.     "I guess I joined to meet other people that were going to be in my grade, but I didn't really talk to any of them on Facebook," Laks said. "I read the threads that everyone posted, even though I never posted anything."     This year, however, the admissions office is hoping to make Facebook groups an interactive admissions tool. They paired with current students on Facebook to create a group called "I'm Interested in Tufts University," which reaches out to prospective students by giving them a chance to ask questions of current students. Grayson also heads this project, but most of the activity within the group results from the effort of current students.     One of the administrators of the group, freshman Eileen Guo, knew Grayson from her own admissions process and wanted to participate in the group.     "The main goal of the group is to try to show people that the admissions process is not scary where officers are these really intimidating people," Guo said. "The group is also a more direct way for prospective students to talk to current students."     In addition to connecting prospective students to current ones who can answer their questions about Tufts, the group showcases the many student blogs that Tufts sponsors, such as sophomore Pam Roy's exploration of the social world at Tufts. Another administrator of the group, senior Renee Birenbaum, stressed that the group exists to provide information to students about areas of Tufts that they wouldn't receive on a campus tour or in an information session.     "We try to stay away from telling kids what their chances are and helping with their applications," Birenbaum said in an email to the Daily. "We talk about professors, the social life, activities, the political climate, etc. I think these areas are so much more crucial to forming an opinion of a school than in what year we were given the cannon."     The group now has just over 2,000 members.

Tufts' investing strategy places heavy emphasis on hedge funds

    Editor's note: This is the second article in a two-part series exploring the university's investments. The first piece appeared yesterday.     While the outcome of Tufts' ill-fated $20-million investment in Ascot Partners was an exception, the financial vehicle the university used is increasingly becoming the rule. According to the most recent publicly available numbers, which are from the end of fiscal year 2008, Tufts has well over $1 billion of its $1.8 billion in long-term investments tied up in hedge funds.     The university began investing in hedge funds in 2000, and until the recent economic downturn clipped the wings of nearly all college endowments, the results had been overwhelmingly positive.     But recently, hedge funds have plummeted along with the rest of the economy, and their promises of independence from the fluctuations of the market have fallen flat. Colleges, which have funneled billions of dollars over the past several years into the funds, have been among the victims.     "For a while, it worked out great," Economics Lecturer Christopher McHugh said. "Everybody loved hedge funds until [last] year."     Over the past five years, the university's investments posted average annual returns of 11.5 percent. During that period of growth, Tufts investors veered increasingly into alternative forms of allocations, substantially expanding the university's real estate holdings and making a recent plunge into timber.     As the school braces itself for a 25-percent drop in its endowment and $36 million in budget cuts, Chief Investment Officer Sally Dungan does not expect to abandon this trend, and is instead looking to continue diversifying.     "We generally do not adjust our asset allocation or investment strategy for economic conditions, but only for changes in Tufts' risk tolerance," she said in an e-mail to the Daily. "We expect to continue to pursue a strategy of diversification with appropriate consideration for risk and return."     While investors once looked to hedge funds as a magic bullet, the funds had their worst-ever year in 2008. Reports indicate that the average fund lost 19 percent, although some economists suspect that the real deficits could be far worse since most funds do not have to publicly release their numbers.     As investors lose confidence in hedge funds, analysts have started to write off the vehicles as too risky. Meanwhile, regulatory groups are bemoaning the funds' lack of transparency.     But according to Dungan, Tufts' hedge fund investments are no riskier than other parts of the school's portfolio. And Tufts officials are quick to point out that hedge funds run the gamut of risk and often differ from more traditional forms of allocations only by their legal structure. In many cases, for example, hedge funds simply invest in the stock market.     "This has not been a good year for most of the investment industry," Trustee Chairman James Stern (E '72) said. "To say that investments in hedge funds are not viable is crazy … If you look historically, I think a lot of the best and brightest have set up their own shops, and those are the people you want to be invested with in the long term."     Tufts economists agreed that not all hedge funds carry additional risk, but since the university does not publicize the names of the funds in which it invests, they could not comment on the overall safety of the portfolio.     "Yes, it sounds scary," Economics Lecturer Michael Fenollosa said of the extent to which the university is invested in hedge funds. "But actually … the devil is in the details, and it really depends what they are."     McHugh, the chief financial officer of the hedge fund New Generation Advisors, agreed. "Hedge funds have a rap as having a lot of leverage and doing crazy things," he said. "That's one out of three or one out of 10. But most hedge funds [are] just souped-up mutual funds, and they're just souped-up in the sense that they might do short selling or they might do distress debt or something.     "They're not necessarily as bad as they're made out to be," he added. "But it really depends what hedge fund you're in."     If the 19-percent average loss is accurate, hedge funds are, on the aggregate, actually safer than the rest of the market. The average stock mutual fund lost 37.5 percent in 2008, and the Nasdaq was down 40.5 percent.     It's possible that this outperformance will continue into the future. "I wouldn't be surprised if at the end of the year, [Tufts investors] report that they had more hedge funds than they had equities and they beat the market by a little," McHugh said.     A mostly consistent strategy At Tufts, fiscal years begin on July 1 and end on June 30; the most recent numbers available are for fiscal year 2008, which wrapped up in June. At that point, Tufts had $1,054,940,000, or 58.4 percent of its total investments, in hedge funds, up from 37 percent the year before. But according to Dungan, this skyrocketing involvement does not reflect a changing strategy.     "The apparent ‘jump' in hedge funds from FY 2007 to FY 2008 [speaks to] how our auditors classified certain of our funds, not to any significant changes in our investments," she said. "In this case, our auditors decided that investments in various public index-related funds set up in a common trust fund should be reclassified from equity securities to hedge funds."     This reshuffling masks an investment strategy that in many ways has stayed consistent. In fiscal years 2007 and 2008, for example, the target allocation across asset classes was identical. In both years, the university placed the plurality of its investments in global equities, the class that Dungan said offers Tufts the best chance for long-term growth.     But in some cases, actual allocations diverged from projections. This shift is evident in some alternative investments, such as  real estate. Tufts' real estate holdings jumped from 1.1 percent of total investments in 2005 to 4.7 percent in 2008.     The housing market has suffered substantially in the past year, but Dungan declined to comment on how this has affected the university.     "The real estate portfolio is managed by external investment managers; we do not discuss specific managers or investments," she said. The dangers of imitation     In beefing up its real estate and timber holdings, Tufts is following the example set by the nation's best-performing endowments. Yale, in particular, is noted for its reliance on innovative, pioneering strategies.     But some worry that harmful effects can come from following in the footsteps of the endowment giants. "It looks like they're piggybacking on how Harvard and Yale made their money," McHugh said of Tufts. "I think what might have worked for first-comers who have a chance to get in with the better stuff might not work for the ones who come in later."     Still, it is unclear how much Tufts' investments have in common with those of other institutions. The Daily contacted 12 colleges, and none of the seven spokespersons who responded would comment on hedge fund numbers.     "We don't discuss that publicly," Colby College spokesperson David Eaton told the Daily. "We just simply don't talk about how the endowment is invested or the strategies we use to invest it."     Harvard, Yale, Dartmouth and Columbia also stayed away from providing specifics on hedge funds, while Williams and Princeton both gave limited details.     "We always have been public about the fact that our portfolio includes a range of accounts that include investments in international and domestic securities, fixed income accounts and yes, we do employ hedge strategies," Princeton spokesperson Cass Cliatt told the Daily in an e-mail.     While Cliatt acknowledged that Princeton mixes traditional and innovative models in its hedge fund investments, she declined to give precise numbers.     "As a matter of policy, we do not comment on the specifics of investment strategy, our portfolio or its return drivers," she said. "We do not find it fiscally prudent to do so."     Meanwhile, a Williams financial report for fiscal year 2007 refers to the school's growing dependence on hedge funds and other alternative investments. "We set our allocation targets for each asset class annually and over the last few years have increased our allocation to hedge funds, real estate and international equities, while reducing our allocation to domestic equities and bonds," the report reads. Calls for regulation     Tufts and Williams are hardly alone in turning to hedge funds. As the number of hedge funds has exploded over the last decade, so has the amount of money they collectively handle. The Chicago-based group Hedge Fund Research estimated that hedge funds controlled nearly $2 trillion at the beginning of 2008, as compared to $375 billion in 1998.     According to McHugh, as hedge funds become less exclusive, their promise to remain independent of the larger market is losing sway.     "They'll say that they're not correlated, and that was a big selling point of hedge funds," he said. "That's a claim, and it holds up pretty well in the '80s and in the '90s, but what happens is once the hedge funds become so big, they become the market."     And as hedge funds corner the market, opponents of Reagan-era financial deregulation are growing increasingly concerned.     "One of the things that I think is really scary about that is that hedge funds haven't been subject to much regulation," Cheyenna Weber, the organizing director for the New York-based Responsible Endowments Coalition, told the Daily.     President Barack Obama's economic team has indicated support for tightening up restrictions on hedge funds, particularly following the collapse of Bernard Madoff's alleged Ponzi scheme. But Weber said that in the short term, the onus is on individual investors.     "I think that if investors can't rely on the government to … regulate the economy and make sure the investment vehicles are safe … then it's up to the investors themselves," she said. "[But] you can't do that if you've outsourced all of that to hedge funds and fund managers."     At Tufts, the $20-million investment in the hedge fund Ascot Partners, which was entirely invested in Madoff, has prompted the university to take a fresh look at its strategies and at how much campus investors are willing to tolerate outside control and unregulated allocations.     "We will look closely at our experience in this case and fully review our processes and procedures to see if there are ways to strengthen them," Dungan said.     Still, it is likely that the university will remain heavily invested in hedge funds — just with lower expectations for returns in the ailing economy.     "[Tufts has been] boasting a great return on their endowment," McHugh said. "That's fine. An economist will tell you, though, ‘Well, you don't get double-digit returns forever.'"

Leonard Carmichael Society celebrates 50 Year Anniversary

Let's face it -- the college years are a time of considerable self-absorption. Our thoughts often linger on topics from meal plans to majors, frat parties to French homework, internships to iPods. These years are frequently marked by a period of soul-searching and career hunting.     One group at Tufts, however, has proven that it is essential to look beyond oneself and give back to the community. The Leonard Carmichael Society (LCS), now celebrating its 50th year, has consistently provided crucial opportunities for students across campus to get involved in civic engagement and break free from the college bubble. The group's rich history and efforts to aid local communities have proven to be a pillar of life at Tufts.     Richard Dorsay (A '60), the organization's founding member, never dreamed LCS would take off the way it did. First organized in 1956 by former Tufts professor, Franklin Patterson, the first LCS meeting took place at the professor's home and consisted of an informal discussion among students.     "He asked me to invite a bunch of the students to his home for an open discussion on what was missing at Tufts -- what Tufts needed," Dorsay said. "From that nucleus of people that I brought to his home, we decided that there was no real connection between the campus and the people of the community."     With the goal of bridging the gap between the population at Tufts and the people of the wider surrounding area, Dorsay and a few of his peers set to work. The group began volunteering at Waltham State Mental Hospital, pairing each member with a child at the facility. Every Saturday, they drove to the hospital and took the children out on the town, whether to the local bowling alley or to a Tufts football game. Over 50 years later, Dorsay still remembers the young girl, Carol, with whom he was paired.     Although Dorsay and his fellow students volunteered frequently at the hospital, their group was not recognized as an official organization at Tufts until 1958. The students had no trouble receiving permission to start the club, but they did have some difficulties mobilizing.     "It took us a year to decide we wanted to be an organization and another year to write up a charter," Dorsay said. "You'd think we were writing the Constitution."     The group also struggled to come up with an appropriate name for the organization. Ideas such as "Hand Helping Hand" and "Working with the Community" were bounced around but ultimately abandoned for want of something that sounded more professional. Looking to Harvard's service organization, the Phillips Brooks House Association, as inspiration, the group decided that the club should be named after someone dignified and recognizable. After a written request to former Tufts president Leonard Carmichael, who was then working as the secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, the Leonard Carmichael Society was born.     Throughout his time at Tufts, Dorsay remained an active member of the LCS, watched it grow at an unprecedented rate. After graduation, he remained optimistic about the group's success and was determined that its tenets of community service and civic engagement not leave campus with him.     "It was very important to me that the organization continue after I left," he explained. "I know that it went through some tough times, but I'm just thrilled that it's doing what it's doing."     Dorsay has ample reason to be thrilled as the Leonard Carmichael Society is now the largest student-run organization on campus, with over 1,000 volunteers in 40 different service programs. The club offers a wide array of volunteering opportunities ranging from trips to local homeless shelters to raising cancer awareness to tutoring local schoolchildren.     Current co-president and Tufts junior Fred Huang sees the existence of a service organization such as LCS to be crucial to the Tufts campus. "It's the ideal destination for students interested in service," he said. "LCS empowers Tufts students to make their service dreams come true while also giving back to the community."     LCS has come to be one of the most widely recognized and well-respected organizations on campus by students and faculty alike. The organization has a close relationship with the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service, as they have similar goals in helping communities near and far.     "LCS and Tisch College are closely tied not only by a mutual commitment to civic engagement and public service, but the belief that Tufts students are essential to creating positive change," Rachel Szyman, program coordinator at Tisch College, said in an e-mail to the Daily.     To this day, Dorsay talks fondly about the organization he founded over 50 years ago in the small room of his professor's house. He acknowledges both the difference the club has made on those it has aided in the community and the impact it has had on his own life. After his time at Tufts, Dorsay went on to help others by becoming a doctor. He credits LCS for his altruistic outlook on life, acknowledging that his time in the group truly changed him.     "My job is to do more than be a doctor and make money. My job [is to partake] in acts of kindness and love in the world," he said. "LCS has influenced me to do good deeds for the rest of my life."

Games of the Week

Looking Back (FEB. 1) | Nadal vs. Federer