In most Tufts student elections, voting rates do not eclipse the 40 percent barrier. Given the poor quality of the platforms endorsed by the candidates running for TCU president tomorrow, we won't be surprised if the number is even lower.
As much as many of us poke fun at the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate and the popularity contests that tend to characterize its elections, our student legislature actually accomplishes more than we may realize.
On Tuesday night, Sigma Phi Epsilon sponsored a campus-wide discussion and forum on diversity and cliques at Tufts. In front of a packed Cabot Auditorium, readers presented anonymously-submitted stories about incidents of bias and segregation at Tufts.
Fortunately, each of the 14 pens used to sign yesterday's Massachusetts health care bill will be more consequential than the one that Governor Mitt Romney used to block eight items from the original version. The Massachusetts legislature will almost undoubtedly hurdle the roadblock that Romney has placed on the path to universal health care.
Health care is a perennial problem that needs an innovative solution. While one may disagree with Mitt Romney's attempt to increase insurance coverage, the latest push for reform is a step in the right direction.
Here's a statement made Sunday by a prominent senator in regard to the Valerie Plame leak: "We ought to get to the bottom of it so it can be evaluated, again, by the American people." Nothing particularly controversial there. For the nearly three years since Plame's job with the CIA was revealed in the Washington Post's pages by Robert Novak, Democrats have been repeating variations of that line.
One of a newspaper's most important functions is to criticize authority when authority needs criticizing. Without the ability to publish controversial material, student papers slide down a slippery slope that leads to outright propaganda.
For those Tufts students old enough to remember the 2004-05 school year (sorry, freshmen), the first thing that comes to mind is probably not a contentious referendum on bringing wind power to Tufts.
Zacarias Moussaoui is eligible for the death penalty for lying to the FBI, a federal jury ruled yesterday. Now begins what will surely be an emotional and contentious debate over the degree to which Moussaoui's actions allowed the events of Sept. 11 to happen.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled yesterday that same-sex couples who are nonresidents cannot get married in Massachusetts unless gay marriage is permitted in their home states.
When students choose to matriculate at Tufts, they sign up to join an academic community, not to sign away their freedoms.
Debates over the "rights of man" and other such philosophical discussions have always been a part of the quintessential French existence, from the inception of modern France in 1789 to this very day.
Opportunity doesn't have a specific location. It's that changeable place where chance lines up circumstances and means. You can't call 411 and ask for the address of Opportunity (and certainly not the phone number).
As two Democratic Senators return from a week-long trip in China, they remain disturbingly un-averse to draconian trade legislation. Despite having met with many high-level officials concerning a revaluation of China's currency, the renminbi, Senators Charles Schumer and Lindsey Graham have not yet decided if they will force a vote this Friday.
Twelve intellectuals, calling themselves the "Group of Twelve," have drafted and signed a strongly-worded document, "The Manifesto of Twelve," calling for ideological resistance to Islamic fundamentalism. Published in the Jyllands-Posten, the Danish newspaper that first published the controversial Mohammad cartoons, the document criticizes paranoia about "Islamophobia" and encourages worldwide promotion of secular values and freedom.
A rose by any other name is still a rose, and the same goes for economic protectionism. The current trend in world political economics has been a move towards more mercantilist policy, justified by thinly veiled excuses of national security or domestic interest.
"Gonorrhea": a word many of us probably haven't heard since ninth grade, and chances are haven't given a second thought since. But that vague disease, up there with chlamydia and syphilis in the pantheon of mythical ailments that everyone knows about but no one ever seems to have, is suddenly a harsh reality to at least a few Tufts students.
"Our responsibility to the children comes first." Those words, spoken recently by Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney with regard to same-sex adoptions, might be the most dubious yet in his long career in politics. For if Romney's true concern is for the parentless children, why is he seeking to allow one of Massachusetts' largest adoption agencies, Boston Archdiocese's Catholic Charities, to bar same-sex couples from its adoption services?
One of the most important aspects of globalization is the ability to access and deliver information instantaneously around the world.
Op-ed submissions are an integral part of our connection with you, our readers. As such, we would like to clarify our guidelines for submitting op-eds and what you can expect from the process.
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