Features

Features

Senior capstone project plays with gender as Jumbo Drag Collective takes the stage

By Isabelle Kaminsky | March 17

Drag performance has finally come to Tufts! After taking Associate Professor Kareem Khubchandani’s Critical Drag course in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program last semester, seniors Julian Hammond and Lee Romaker — or Aster R*sk and Ari Ola — have continued the class’s work and collaborated for a capstone project: the Jumbo Drag Collective.

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Columns

Let’s Talk Art: Photography and filmmaking with Farah Al Qasimi

By Carmen Smoak | March 17

On March 10, Tufts’ School of the Museum of Fine Arts hosted photographer and filmmaker Farah Al Qasimi in its Artist Talks series. A storyteller at heart, Al Qasimi uses her art as a language to communicate social and environmental issues in her home country, the United Arab Emirates. This language, both visual and auditory, allows the viewer to adeptly switch between different ways of seeing and knowing a singular story.

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Columns

What I Wish I Knew: Moms are meant to be missed

By Abby Stern | March 17

At this point in my adult life, I don’t live with my parents. I haven’t spent more than a month and a half consecutively at their house since before college. So I expected to miss them when I went abroad. In fact, I expected to miss them a little more than usual based on the physical distance between us, but not by much. What I didn’t realize is that what makes me miss my parents is not the physical distance — it’s the constant lack of familiarity in my current surroundings.

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Features

Growing up with technology: Skip the iPads and bring on the robots

By Summer Maxwell | March 16

Growing up, Tufts sophomore Gabriela Perez remembers watching television at home. The shows and movies she watched influenced her perception of different people across the globe as well as a variety of societal concepts.

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Features

What the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum heist means for museums around the world today

By Sam Dieringer | March 15

Eighty-one minutes. On the night of March 18, 1990, 81 minutes was how long it took two thieves dressed as police officers to steal 13 of the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum’s most prized artworks. The thieves ran away with up to $500 million worth of art, including multiple works by Rembrandt van Rijn, Degas, as well as a painting by the renowned Johannes Vermeer. Above all else, the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum theft is, to this day, the single largest property theft in the world, with repercussions that have reverberated for decades.

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Columns

Personal Praguenosis: Wake up, the Earth is flat

By Sacha Waters | March 15

As an American abroad, you hear a lot of stereotypes: Americans are loud, narcissistic, obsessed with guns and can’t even point out another country on a map. There’s a whole host of often unflattering adjectives that come with the territory of “American.” 

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Columns

Caffeinated Commentary: 1369 Coffee House

By Natalie Bricker | March 14

I was very excited about this week’s coffee shop because many people recommended it to me! I ventured over to 1369 Coffee House, which has been rated “Best Coffeehouse in Cambridge” by Scout Magazine three times according to their website. The original shop is located at 1369 Cambridge St., hence the name. I went to their Central Square location, the second shop they’ve opened. For Tufts students, it’s a quick ride on the T (three stops from Davis Square to Central) and then a four minute walk from the Central Square T stop.

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Columns

Kolumn: When without feet

By Koloris Wu | March 13

The martlet is a mythical bird found primarily in English, French and German heraldry. Depending on the country, there is some dispute as to which bird species martlets belong to.

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Features

The winter 2023 edition of The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs covers sustainability, energy policy

By Owen Bonk | March 10

Founded in 1975, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs has published cutting-edge scholarship on contemporary issues in foreign diplomacy for almost 50 years. Past contributors and interviewees are a distinguished bunch: prime ministers, ambassadors and former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright can be counted among their ranks. Esteemed by the Fletcher community but somewhat unknown among undergraduates, the Forum could be considered the university’s hidden gem.

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Columns

What I Wish I Knew: There is never enough time and never enough money

By Abby Stern | March 10

If you’re preparing to study abroad, don’t do what I did and make a list of pretty much every single country in Western Europe and say, “these are all the places I want to visit.” That’s unrealistic, and unless the person reading this is Rockefeller himself, it’s not affordable either.

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Features

Tufts’ connection to slavery, Part 2: The Royall Slave Quarters and the Tufts family

By Guillem Colom | March 9

Located less than a half-mile from the Joyce Cummings Center, the Royall House and Slave Quarters was an integral part of the Ten Hills Farm that functioned as a slave plantation and encompassed current land now a part of the Tufts campus. The Slave Quarters serve as a painful reminder of the impacts of slavery on systemic social and economic conditions that disproportionately harm communities of color.

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Columns

Let’s Talk Art: Photography with Tommy Kha

By Carmen Smoak | March 9

Howdy! My name is Carmen, and I know very little about art. Last semester I was lucky enough to take a course at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and attend the Artist Talk Series that they host every semester. The art world can feel like a black box, but listening to artists describe their thought process and the meaning behind their work makes art more universally approachable. For this column, I invite you to join me as I learn about art through the SMFA artist talks.

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Features

Student content creators share their lives at Tufts through YouTube

By Bharat Singh | March 8

Editor’s note: Emma Boersma is a contributing writer at the Daily. Sabina Saktaganova is a videojournalist at the Daily. Boersma and Saktaganova were not involved in the writing or editing of this article.

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Features

Dreams come true in Davis Square: Shirley Eat More Sunshine

By Emma Boersma | March 7

Shirley Eat More Sunshine, located at 22A College Ave., is a new addition to the slew of eateries around Davis Square, selling sandwiches, baked goods and drinks.

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Columns

Caffeinated Commentary: Nine Bar Espresso

By Natalie Bricker | March 7

I’ve been intrigued by Nine Bar Espresso for a while now because there is always a line on the street, even though it’s just a walk-up window; so, I figured the coffee must be extraordinary. According to the employee I asked, there used to be an indoor eating area open to customers, but it’s been closed off since COVID-19. This is unfortunate because based on what I could see through the window, the inside seating area is super cozy and aesthetic, with cute stools! The employee assured me that the indoor seating was opening “very soon.” 

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Features

Tufts students turned professors reflect on their undergraduate memories, campus changes, traditions 

By Kendall Roberts | March 6

Tufts professors come from a variety of different educational backgrounds and areas of interest that lead them to universities all around the world. For some faculty members, this meant returning to lecture at the same place where their passions for research, academia and learning all began.

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Features

Tufts seniors grapple with tech turbulence

By David Van Riper | March 3

The tech sector exploded with growth during 2020 and 2021. Big tech added thousands of employees after the switch to remote work. However, as the market has started to return to pre-COVID-19 levels, layoffs and rescinded offers are plaguing the industry, and the job search process is getting tougher for aspiring tech workers at Tufts.

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Features

Meandering through the Middlesex Fells

By Carmen Smoak | March 2

Standing in the basement of Lane Hall, Jack Ridge, Tufts professor and chair of the Department of Earth and Climate Sciences, points to a print map that illustrates the geology of the Middlesex Fells Reservation, commonly referred to as the Fells. He has spent years mapping the geology of the nature reservation, which lies roughly two miles north of Tufts’ Medford/Somerville campus. Through a labor of love, he has created numerous self-guided geology tours of trails within the Fells so that Tufts community members can learn about what lies beneath their feet as they explore within the woods.

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Features

ChatGPT unmasked at the intersection of computer science and philosophy

By Sam Berman | March 1

In November 2022, OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a new chatbot powered by artificial intelligence. Users can input questions and ChatGPT will provide specific answers based on both advanced internet data collected through September 2021 and the content of the user’s conversation with it.

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Features

The Boston Marathon is 26.2 miles, but the journey to get there is longer

By Summer Maxwell | February 28

Donald Megerle has never run a marathon. But that does not stop Coach Don, as his runners affectionately call him, from training 50 athletes from the Tufts Marathon Team to complete the race every year.

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