When junior James Hartley attended the O-Show as a first-year in fall 2023, one group in particular caught his attention:BlackOut, Tufts’ all-male step team. Even though he had no dance experience, Hartley was inspired by their performance.Following a club fair event hosted by the Africana Center, he met a member of the team, who encouraged him to audition. Hartley is now the team’s captain.
I have been thrifting since early high school, digging through my small town’s local thrift spots and coming back from every trip with bags full of vintage clothes. Now that I live in Boston, I knew I had to discover what the local thrift scene here had to offer. With the semester ending, here’s a recap of my finds from the 2024–25 school year!
What a week for football! In the UEFA Champions League, we had intense matches and an almost remontada — not by Madrid. Arguably the most exciting game was Aston Villa versus Paris Saint-Germain . PSG had a comfortable aggregate score of 5–1 by the 27th minute, but in the span of just 10 minutes, Villa had closed the gap to 5–4. The French team managed to hold back the British side from the 57th minute in a cardiac game that left PSG fans frightened — but nonetheless victorious. Barça wasn’t particularly on form against B. Dortmund, losing 3–1 (but still beat the Germans 5–3 on aggregate).
Well folks, this is it. After over a dozen pieces, two semesters and countless tickets lying forgotten in my calendar, “Adventures of an A-Lister” is officially coming to an end. However, before I say goodbye, I have to highlight my journey. From being chased down by rats in Boston Common to sitting in shock at ticket prices to silently sobbing in an empty theater, this column has been an adventure through and through.
In the reading room of the Cambridge Public Library, two murals face one another. The first is a triptych nestled within a curved, dome-like ceiling depicting ancient milestones in the art of printing. We see a king imprint his royal seal onto blocks of clay in Babylon, paper being woven from papyrus in Ancient Egypt and the first daily newspaper in the form of a piece of parchment in Ancient Rome. On the other side of the room, we see modern printing developments that led us to the world of literature we know today, from the invention of the first printing press around 1440 in Germany to the invention of the cylinder press in the early 1800s.
I’ve spent the past year being what my friends jokingly like to call a “professional hater,” writing columns where I rant about the bleak state of our world’s social and economic conditions, usually while drinking coffee, as my column name suggests. To be clear, there’s no shortage of issues worth addressing, and I can always think of more to critique. Maybe this makes me a cynic, a pessimist, a subscriber to realpolitik or all of the above. But beyond venting, I’ve come to realize that the true value lies in the process itself — the act of recognizing the significance, complexity and multidimensional nature of these problems. It has made me realize that — in a self-conceited way — the ability to critically think about social and economic issues is what’s the most important. That said, all I ask is for you to do three things.
On April 7, the Los Angeles Dodgers visited the White House to celebrate their 2024 World Series title with President Donald Trump. Just over a week later, they took the field wearing No. 42 for Jackie Robinson Day, honoring the former Dodger who famously broke baseball’s color barrier. In the span of eight days, the same team posed with a president who has championed policies that undermine diversity, equity and inclusion and then celebrated the life’s work of a man who embodied them.
It took me a while to figure out what I was going to write about for this column. Initially, I was thinking about taking up a friend’s offer to ghostwrite for me, but I quickly thought otherwise because, come on, my loyal fans would’ve spotted an impostor. Later on, I found myself sitting on Prez Lawn, enjoying the beautiful weather and sun. It was one of those moments of peace and serenity — something that I realized I hadn’t felt in a while. I distinctly remember looking around and seeing an inordinate number of students lounging on Adirondack chairs and picnic blankets, smiling and laughing with each other. It brought a smile to my face.
The time has come: The final installment of Coffee with Creatives is here. Wipe your tears and pull up your breeches, for we must carry on. I’m choosing to end this magnificent run of creatives on a rather mythical note with the one and only Holly Simon.
It was yet another exciting season around the National Hockey League — a season full of milestones, surprises and, yes, disappointments. From Alex Ovechkin scoring his 895th career goal to pass Wayne Gretzky for the all-time goals record to Connor McDavid reaching 1,000 career points to the fascinating 4 Nations Face-Off tournament that captured the attention of the entire sports world, the 2024–25 NHL season was certainly one to remember.
On March 27, the Rapid City Area Schools district in South Dakota received a letter from the Trump administration’s Office of Civil Rights. Having concluded a 14-year investigation into school-based racial discrimination about a year ago, the district had finally agreed to provide equitable access to education for Indigenous students, who had disproportionately high disciplinary rates compared to their white peers. A civil rights agreement was settled, and an action plan was implemented to combat Indigenous discrimination. Now, President Donald Trump has nullified this agreement due to “DEI” and the district is no longer obliged to treat students equitably.
I’m genuinely torn on Major League Baseball’s future. On one hand, baseball is a revived product with high-scoring games, intense extra-inning battles and engaging pitching personalities that finish off the most intense matchups. I made the trip to Fenway Park on April 10, where I witnessed a feisty Boston Red Sox team close out a win in their four-game series versus the Toronto Blue Jays. While I only witnessed the final six innings, due to the brutal Thursday 4 p.m. start time, I certainly caught the majority of the relevant action, as the teams brought a 2–2 game to extra innings, featuring heavy hitters such as Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and pitching talent like Aroldis Chapman.
Folks, this is it. The last iteration of this epic, earth-shattering column that was initially cooked up in a dusty old basement under Curtis Hall in the wee hours of the morning. It’s been such a delightful journey for me, from browsing the shelves at Waterstones in Chelsea to digging through stacks at Porter Square Books in Cambridge, as I try to find the next best read.
Hi everyone! It’s me again, coming to you live from the comfort of my bed. I’ve missed it desperately (in particular, my mattress topper) during my recent adventures abroad — the main subject of today’s edition. As an English major, a lot of what I study is rooted in ancient Western literary traditions. Just think of all the mythological references in Shakespeare, or the use of epic form in “Paradise Lost”; almost every work in the English canon can be traced back to the OGs of Ancient Greece and Rome, if you will.
Every free-agent cycle, there always seems to be the same free-agent quarterbacks on the market. Quarterbacks who just can’t seem to hold on to their jobs at their subpar organizations and end up like a seed in a hurricane, passed from one city to another. These so-called journeyman quarterbacks are about as ubiquitous as the attention-dominating superstar quarterbacks, yet they don’t share the same spotlight.
¡Hola! Sí, hoy cambié el saludo ¡porque estoy escribiendo desde la Amazonia! Aquí no se habla quechua; hay muchas otras lenguas nativas chéveres, como Ese Ejja, pero desafortunadamente no entiendo ni un palabra. Advertencia de antemano: No encontré a Tia Lucy, ni a el hogar para osos jubilados. Pero yo no estoy decepcionada y tú tampoco deberías estarlo porque encontré a Paddington de nuevo — esta vez en forma de un peluche enorme en un armario en mi hotel. Además, vi a Pedro, el pajarito rojo de la película “Rio” doblada por will.i.am mientras estaba parada al lado de un río. Esa experiencia es realmente uno de mis mejores recuerdos de este viaje, pero ocurrieron muchos más, así que empecemos.
One of the seven core principles of conservatism is the commitment to the rule of law. It’s a principle that ensures stability, predictability and fairness — the very conditions under which societies flourish and individuals thrive. Hand in hand with this is another value conservatives proudly uphold: the pursuit of economic growth and wealth accumulation through a free market economy. These principles intertwine because without a robust legal system that regulates the market, the ultimate goal of profit cannot be achieved.
Parsnip. Magnanimous. Sepulcher. This could be the beginning of a particularly esoteric New York TimesConnections puzzle, but it is also how I chose to begin this week’s column. By selecting and recording arbitrary words that popped into my mind, I demarcated this piece of writing as a piece of writing; I began a series of words that followed from this obscure beginning and, taking this series in sum, I thus constructed a unified column upon the parsnip-laden ground. This is the raw power possessed by my first words.
Last Tuesday, the Denver Nuggets informed their championship coach Mike Malone and general manager Calvin Booth that they were both fired. Let me repeat that again, the Nuggets gutted the two most important decision-makers in their organization — the week before the playoffs. What is going on in Denver?
On April 4, I was co-moderating a discussion on risks and art at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University for the event “Arts and Society: Dialogues.” I was looking at my phone and going over the sample questions to ask the participants when I received a text from my mom saying, “We were outside with your brother and our dog, the explosion felt far but the ground was shaking.” Momentarily, I tracked back my thoughts to before the event. Right before the discussion, I saw a notification that there was an air raid alert in Kryvyi Rih, possibly due to the missile carriers being launched in Russia. I had a feeling that this was not a precautionary alert, yet never in a million years would I assume that the attack would be that deadly.
