The second annual "Free Thinkers" lecture series, presented by the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute, began Thursday with MIT Professor and Nobel Prize-winner Peter A. Diamond. His lecture, entitled “Unemployment and Debt,” focused on the unemployment rate and the amount of debt the United ...
Carol Rose, the current executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts, will lead a discussion entitled 'Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll: A Constitutional Update" as part of the Constitution Day event hosted by Department of Political Science this Friday. Citizens' liberties, their endangerment and the ways in which ordinary citizens can protect them will all be a part of the conversation. The Daily sat down with Rose to discuss her background and perspectives on these issues.
For Tufts sophomores Kofi Asante, Denis Bravenec, Richard Kim and Jared Moskowitz, social life at Tufts was lacking one crucial element -- communication. Though other students were going out to parties, the four were witnessing firsthand a need to improve the quality and quantity of social information ...
Tufts' vibrant music and arts scene is exemplified by the large assortment of student-run groups ranging from a cappella to tap dancing. A consequence of having so many, however, is the challenge of communication and collaboration among them.
From lab materials to circuit boards to phone cases, the Jumbo’s Maker Studio’s three-dimensional printer is fostering creativity among Tufts students and professors. The Tufts Center for Engineering Education and Outreach (CEEO) opened its first Jumbo’s Maker Studio in June after receiving a 2012 grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance for $34,000 and additional funding from Lego.
Several colleges across the country, including Tufts, have been the subject of federal government investigations and media attention due to their approach to handling cases of sexual misconduct. Below is a timeline that outlines how a provision of the federal law Title IX, which bans gender discrimination ...
This year, Tufts' advising will go professional, at least in part. Along with the traditional system of professors serving as pre-major advisors and academic deans, Tufts has hired four new College Transition Advisors (CTAs). This move follows a recent national trend of colleges entrusting advising ...
Not all Tufts students may be familiar with the details of the T10 Strategic Plan, but in the next few years they will witness the changes that come as a result of it. The Strategic Plan, announced in November 2013, is an outline of steps to be taken by the university in the upcoming 10 years to enhance ...
Before they even arrive on campus, each member of the incoming freshman class has something in common — a book. For the class of 2018, that book is “The Other Wes Moore: One Name, Two Fates,” written by Wes Moore.Incoming students each received “The Other Wes Moore” this summer as part of ...
A version of artist Leslie Fry's five-foot-long bronze "Colossal AcornHead" sculpture has made its way back to Tufts, replacing "Autruche II," or Banjo the Ostrich, which was removed last spring.Originally installed along the pathway to Tisch Library in May 2012, the statue was ...
Senior Jessica Laporte is dedicated to causes both on and off campus. In addition to holding leadership positions in the Interdenominational Christian Fellowship (ICF) and Tufts Mountain Club (TMC), Laporte is working to develop international clean water solutions. In less than a month, Laporte will ...
Though Joshua Youner was initially interested in Tufts' international relations program, as a senior, he now focuses on economics, exploring business practices both inside and outside the classroom. An economics major and entrepreneurial leadership studies minor, Youner has also served as vice president ...
Yessenia Rivas - a choreographer for Spirit of Color (SoC), Torn Ticket II and Sarabande, as well as an actress and dancer - is a star both on and off the stage. In addition to the many performances she has been involved in, Rivas has also worked behind the scenes, as both the vice president of Sarabande ...
At Tufts, Nicola Chang found her niche in music. A lifelong percussionist and music enthusiast, Chang has played with a variety of groups during her time on campus, but has spent much of her time in Banging Everything At Tufts (BEATs)."I've been drumming for three years with them," Chang ...
Not every student can say that he can run a four minute and 20 second mile, has performed at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music festival in Austin and will be receiving a degree in Electrical Engineering after four years at Tufts. Yet senior Brian McLaughlin somehow found a way to do it all. As an ...
Students may recognize Jon Bird as the chair of Tufts University Programming Board, the best male model winner at the LUX fashion show, the guy who frequently wears the Jumbo mascot suit and, of course, the person who smiles at everyone he passes. Active in the Tufts community and chock full of enthusiasm, ...
Over the next five years, the Green Line will extend into Somerville, ending on College Avenue. Two of the planned stops -- at Washington Street and in Union Square -- are scheduled to open in 2017. City planners are discussing the changes, analyzing the ways in which the plans advantages and disadvantages ...
Last fall, University President Anthony Monaco named sexual assault as one the most important issues on campus, and created a university-wide sexual assault task force to address and prevent sexual misconduct at Tufts. Currently, the university is in the process of hiring a Sexual Misconduct Prevention Specialist, who will work to develop sexual assault prevention programming. In conjunction with these recent initiatives, Tufts students are hosting a variety of programming this April as part of campaign for Sexual Assault Awareness Month. On Wednesday night, students came together to share their experiences with sexual violence at "It Happens Here" (IHH), an event that provides a forum for survivors of sexual assault to share their stories.IHH was founded at Middlebury College in the fall of 2011 by Middlebury students Luke Carroll Brown, a current senior, and Margo Cramer, a recent graduate, and has since spread to a variety of colleges."I knew [sexual assault] was happening," Cramer said. "My friends had experienced it, and I had experienced it. And there was just no conversation about it -- at least at Middlebury. We had a feminist group on campus that didn't address it directly ... There was just general silence around the issue."Cramer said that she and Brown took several weeks to decide what format would work best for a campaign about sexual violence awareness and opted to focus on initiating dialogue on campus through storytelling."We started collecting stories," she said. "Sharing stories in a thoughtful manner seemed like one really important step in getting people to see this issue as an important one ... What we really wanted to do was attract a variety of submissions so that we could represent a bastion of experiences."In its third year at Middlebury, IHH has since taken off as both an online and spoken campaign. According to a Dec. 4, 2013 article published in The Middlebury Campus, the IHH campaign is currently working to establish programming at six other colleges across the country. This year, IHH was successfully launched at Tufts with the help of several sororities and the Action for Sexual Assault Prevention group."Tufts has, over the last few years, struggled with its footing in the movement of sexual assault awareness and prevention," Katrina Dzyak, a sophomore and one of the planners of IHH, said. "There is a lot lacking on the administration side ... [and] it has become [the] role [of] students, of course, to create spaces that are safe and to create programs that the university has not offered or is in the process of creating, but [that haven't] come to fruition."Annie Goodman, a junior who helped organize IHH, formed a small team of students and started planning for the event in February."I think this issue has really picked up a lot of national attention in the last year," Goodman said. "That visibility has really started accelerating. This moment right now is a really good opportunity to push forward ... We're at a point where ... people are more familiar with the language surrounding the issue."IHH called for story submissions of any length -- from 15 seconds to 15 minutes -- and form, in order to amplify the survivor's voice about a problem that is one of the largest in American universities, according to the IHH website."Some of [the stories] are merely reflections, some of them are a sentiments of reactionary emotions, but they are all very, very important," Dzyak said. "A few of them critique how we've gone about publicizing the movement, and how the 'activist community' on campus has operated and maybe excluded people. But those are very important conversations to have."Goodman also noted that there was significant variety in the submissions to IHH, which were all anonymous."I have been pleasantly surprised by the number of male submissions," she said. "I think it's really important for the movement as a whole to recognize that sexual violence is not just something that happens ... [to] a woman being attacked by a stranger at night. It takes on so many forms that can have equally damaging repercussions for the survivor"Cramer explained that the flexible structure of the event allowed for stories to be read either by their actual author or another speaker. However, it was never specified if the stories were the reader's own. "One of the really cool things about the event format, and something that Tufts has done a really great job with developing further, is giving people more power to decide how their story is shared," she said.IHH also featured a keynote speaker, Wagatwe Wanjuki, a Tufts alumna who started a blog called "Raped at Tufts University," which works to generate awareness of sexual assault by publishing first-hand accounts of survivors' stories. Since graduating, Wanjuki has become a nationally recognized sexual assault activist, with her work featured in Ebony Magazine and Feministing.com.12
Tufts University ranked ninth among top medium-sized schools that produce Peace Corps volunteers, up from 15th in 2013. Twenty-four of Tufts undergraduate alumni are currently serving abroad with the program.Many students and officials have attributed the high number of Tufts volunteers to the focus ...
After a year of playing together, sophomore blues trio "Not So Gentleman" performed for its first audience in the Crane Room in a Tufts AppleJam concert last Saturday. It was a night they had been anticipating for quite some time.Music has been a part of two of the band members' lives since childhood. Both Henry Butler, the band's drummer, and Avram Ellner, the band's guitarist, have played their instruments since the fourth grade. "I just took lessons, I didn't really play by myself much," Butler said. "Then in high school, I played in jazz band."But the sophomores said they kept their music to themselves until college, when they found other people who not only enjoyed playing, but also enjoyed the experience of playing together."I came from a very technical playing [background] because my guitar teacher was in a band in the '80s ... like an '80s pop metal band," Ellner said.At Tufts, they found each other through a mutual friend, band bassist Max Leonhardt. The trio soon began jamming together, even though Leonhardt had not played previously played the bass."I knew Avram [played guitar] ... and I knew Henry played drums because he was trying to find someone to play drums with, and I was like, 'Oh, I know this dude who shreds and I know this dude who play the drums,' and then, those two met up, and I was like, 'This is stupid, I want to play with my friends,'" Leonhardt said. "So one night the three of us just went into Boston and bought a bass."Leonhardt started taking lessons through Tufts, improved bit by bit, and quickly started playing the blues with Butler and Ellner. Since then, the trio has learned to better their musical talents together."We slowly weaned Avram off the metal and into the blues," Leonhardt said. "I came into it very ... metal. Then one day [Henry] actually gave me like 500 blues songs - it was like Gary Clark, Jr. and Jimi Hendrix' Blues album, like The Black Keys, stuff like that - and I was hooked, and I knew a little bit about the blues and then we started jamming some blues stuff."The simple construction that forms the basis of the blues, six notes, made learning to play with his two more experienced bandmates that much easier, Leonhardt added."You just play those six notes in different patterns ... and that was easy for me, so I just picked that up," he said.Although they play the blues, the bandmates' different music tastes and experiences as musicians, give them a sound of their own."I've been telling people [that we're] blues, rock, funk with a sprinkle of shred," Ellner said. "The good thing is we all came into it with different musical backgrounds and you can definitely hear everything combine, sort of mish mosh together into this very unique sound."Sam Worthington, a sophomore and president of AppleJam, the student collective which organized the show in which the band debuted, agreed with Ellner's description of Not So Gentlemen. He also hailed the band's first show, which headlined Shark Saddle and included Like Wolves, Dirty Lou and Thaddeus Strauss, as a success."[Not So Gentleman was] interesting. They're definitely a jam band with some rock-like influences ... they definitely have some jam elements ... Also a lot of shredding - [they are] pretty virtuous," he said. "We were pretty much at capacity of the Crane Room for the entire show but people were cycling in and out. We had probably around 200 students attend."Part of Not So Gentlemen's unique sound originates in their song selection: they make their own music."We don't formally write a song, we'll just be jamming and we'll listen to it, because usually we record every session, so we'll listen back and find something cool," Butler said. "We were messing around with this one riff, and then I said to Max, 'Well, what do you think the bass line should be?' and he was like, 'Oh I don't know,' and then sings this thing, and I was like, 'Sing it again, sing it again,'" Ellner added. "I figured it out on guitar and gave it to him on bass and that was the bass line. Sometimes it's just messing around and you stumble across something that you just pick up and see where you can take it."The bandmates have become so tuned into their own music that it's begun to permeate their friendship - even when they're not rehearsing."The other day we were hanging out, we had a guitar, and we just started jamming on the guitar and singing to it and making beats to it," Leonhardt said. "It's just become a large part of our life, music and making music together."12
