The same morning the Supreme Court heard arguments for the case that could end affirmative action in America, Tufts students received an email affirming the university’s commitment to inclusive, holistic admissions.
One of the biggest challenges in the transition to college is time management. Students find many different approaches to deal with this problem, but one tip we recommend is to avoid activities that waste your time — those that truly have no purpose and bring no joy. There are many examples that might sound familiar to Tufts students: arguing with strangers on Sidechat, refreshing Instagram for the millionth time in a day or waiting in long lines for the bathrooms on the main floor of Tisch (it’s almost always faster to use the ones downstairs). A reasonable addition to this list of activities that you are better off without would be worrying — or even thinking — about Tufts’ spot in college rankings.
The time has come to end legacy admissions at Tufts. In November, the Tufts Community Union Senate passed a resolution calling on undergraduate admissions to remove questions on applications regarding whether applicants have a familial connection to the university, whether to current students, alumni or faculty. Last month, the faculty senate passed a similar resolution to end legacy consideration in the admissions process at all levels of the university. Additionally, this past year, The Fletcher School as well as Tufts University removed questions about legacy status from their applications. Graduate school applications for the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering also do not ask about legacy status. Given this support by students, faculty and administrators alike, Tufts should move to end legacy consideration in admissions at all levels of the university.
Though COVID-19 restrictions may be easing, Tufts students and the Tufts community still face a number of challenging decisions. At the Daily, we strive to report honest and timely accounts of academics and campus life to keep the Tufts community safe and informed.
Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Tufts community has drawn attention to the fact that Russian securities make up a small but notable portion of the university’s endowment. In the wake of this scrutiny, university representatives have expressed an unwillingness to divest from the four commingled funds Tufts has invested in that include Russian securities because it is “too risky.” Tufts is currently invested in between 80 and 100 commingled funds, a type of pooled fund with assets from multiple accounts that are managed by a third party and not the university. Together, such funds make up the vast majority of the university’s investments.
Students have long expressed frustration over the university’s lack of budget transparency and its implications for admissions. The rate of Tufts’ students receiving financial aid has remained low and stagnant, hovering around 46% for the past five years, according to the university factbook. Tufts has long practiced “need-aware” admissions, meaning a students’ ability to pay is a factor when deciding whether or not they will be admitted. As such, the university should take steps to ensure Tufts is more accessible for lower-income students.
For Tufts students, it’s clear the university is expanding — it’s also clear that Tufts cannot bear this expansion. From longer lines in the dining halls to difficulties registering for classes, and the ever-present chaos of housing strains, the university is already struggling to accommodate the needs of all its current students.
At this point in the spring semester, Green Dot training for varsity athletes is approaching quickly, and a campus-wide revival of in-person social events makes it even more important now than during semesters spent in partial lockdown. Promoted at Tufts starting in 2016, Green Dot is an on-campus organization providing trainings and workshops that encourage bystander intervention in cases of social misconduct — sexual and otherwise.
As many classes return to an in-person format, Tufts students who remain isolated or in quarantine due to positive COVID-19 tests or contact tracing continue to face many difficulties compared to classmates who are able to attend every class session. In response, some professors remain aware of the challenges that a COVID-19-related absence may bring and have adjusted their syllabi accordingly. However,many have reenacted pre-pandemic course policies that place a cost on missing a lecture or attending virtually due to COVID-19 exposure.
With omicron variant cases rising around the world — straining hospitals, canceling flights and altering colleges’ plans for returns to campus — Tufts students remain unsure as to what their spring semester will look like. After moving finals online following Dec. 17, Tufts has left students anxious as to what to expect this spring.
Already buzzing with conversation and collaboration, the Joyce Cummings Center opened to students two weeks ago today and has seen an influx of students, faculty and staff traveling to and from the new$90 million academic building. But with heavy Green Line Extension construction and no easy-access crosswalks in sight, students have been forced to navigate busy streets and illegally jaywalk over College Avenue in order to access the building.
As the semester nears completion, the anxiety provoked by yet another semester of masking, COVID-19 cases and general uncertainty will grow exponentially. In 2019, we published an editorial that asked Tufts to extend the reading period beyond just three days. In hindsight, three days sounds luxurious; fall semesters at Tufts tend to only have a two-day reading period, and this semester is ending with a disconcerting one-day reading period.
There’s a housing crisis at Tufts. This is, of course,nothing new; however, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened this problem, forcing first-year students to live over a mile drive from campus, exacerbating unpredictabilities for sophomores preparing to lose guaranteed housing as juniors and creating uncertainties for those stuck with leases and planning to go abroad. There are three factors we discuss below that contribute to a pressing anxiety among the student body, all interconnected and centered around a basic human necessity: shelter.
The Tufts School of Arts and Sciences recently announced the decision toend the Portuguese minor, placing the ability to learn the Portuguese language at Tufts in jeopardy. Current students who have already begun the minor sequence will be able to finish, and the department will continue to offer Portuguese language classes through the 2022–23 academic year. However, with the elimination of the minor, the Portuguese program as students know it will soon cease to exist, depriving members of the Tufts community of meaningful opportunities to engage with the language.
This illness policy is fundamentally flawed, and leaves students without sure alternatives or recourse to continue their education in isolation. The Tufts short-term illness form does not excuse students’ absences, missed coursework or exams they may be too sick to take, and without a convenient way to request medical excuse notes, students are now reliant on professors to understand and judge their situations despite largely lacking health care training.
Building more housing on campus is an issue of economic justice, as the current shortage leaves few options for low-income students at Tufts and for low-income renters who are being priced out of our surrounding communities. These problems risk getting worse in the years ahead with the Green Line’s imminent arrival to Medford, something that could contribute to further surges in housing prices.
As members of the Class of 2021 enter their final days at Tufts, now is an appropriate time to reflect on what its members have accomplished in their time here. Finishing college in circumstances that no one could have even imagined four years ago, Tufts’ graduating seniors have shown respectable resilience in the face of a challenging year. But beyond just doing the bare minimum, this is a class whose members have looked out for others in addition to themselves. In the year since this pandemic first shook the world, members of our student body — led by graduating seniors — have turned outward rather than inward, continuing our community's commitment to social justice and its tradition of activism. And compared to many of Tufts’ peers, our community has avoided the worst COVID-19 outcomes, owing largely to the behavior of students, including the graduating seniors who have sacrificed traditions enjoyed by previous generations of Tufts graduates.
Two reprehensible incidents of hate occurred on our campus in the past week. In the first, several Asian students were verbally assaulted with hateful anti-Asian rhetoric by the occupants of a passing vehicle while walking on Professors Row. In the second, a large swastika was painted on the Bello Field shed, and was found by members of a Tufts athletic team. The Daily stands in solidarity with the communities impacted by these despicable acts. When confronting this tide of hate, it is imperative that we do not become desensitized to these attacks, and instead that we act with urgency to promptly deliver justice
At Tufts, like many other predominantly white institutions, curricula often center around the Eurocentric perspectives of Westerners — particularly white men — narrowing the worldview to which students are exposed. Not only does this reality undermine Tufts’ liberal arts foundation of exposing students to a wide array of subjects, it also fails to prepare students for civic stewardship in which they directly engage with the effects of patriarchy, colonialism and racism.
When the three-year window of the test-optional policy elapses, the university will have a critical decision to make: Tufts can either bring back its standardized testing requirement, making future generations go through the same process that current Tufts students endured, or it can repeat the process used to admit the Class of 2025, which saw the most diverse applicant pool in the university’s history.
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