Among the 6,000 plus undergraduate student body at Tufts, there are sibling Jumbos who have found their own niches within the university’s many offerings. Going from sharing the same home to living on the same campus, they have navigated life through their sibling bonds. Here’s a look into a few of their relationships.
As interpersonal relationships play a good role in the survival and well-being of social animals like humans, ways to establish, maintain or repair connections between subjects have been perpetual hotspots for public opinion to either discuss or reflect upon. Moreover, it has been an aspect that is inevitably analyzed in academia whenever the issue relates to social psychology, anthropology and sociology discourses. Of course, I am not a relationship scientist, but simply writing from my lived experiences.
On Jan. 2, during a football game between the Buffalo Bills and Cincinnati Bengals, Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered cardiac arrest on the field after taking a hit to the chest. The game immediately stopped and medical personnel rushed onto the field, desperately tending to Hamlin. Hamlin laid motionless for 19 minutes before being taken by ambulance to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Both teams, the fans and the NFL watched in horror. Players were visibly upset, huddling together in prayer. The national broadcast cut away and remained off air. The game that night was ultimately canceled, and the entire sports world banded together in solidarity, anxiously awaiting word about Hamlin.
If you’re a Tufts student, chances are you’ve been to Tamper. It’s a short minute walk from campus, depending on where you are, and you can get there from lower campus without climbing any hills (a big plus). I feel a personal connection to this spot because it was the first coffee shop I stopped by when I first toured Tufts. And it feels very “Tufts” with a lot of students working there and comprising much of its customer base.
“Just give it a few weeks, and you’ll settle into a routine.” That’s what I heard my entire first week in London. “It’ll get so much easier once you get your schedule down. Just wait until things get a little less crazy.”
The work of Tufts’ groundbreaking Black theater company Envision will grace the stage of Curtis Hall on Feb. 9–11. The troupe, the first of its kind in years, will showcase the play “How We Got On” by Idris Goodwin. The brainchild of sophomore Chance Walker, Envision stands as a revolutionary space for Tufts’ current generation of Black actors and artists.
This year, BlackOut — Tufts’ signature all-male step team — will be traveling to face off against a host of other universities from across the country in two of the most elite stepping competitions. The first is Upstaged, organized by the National Collegiate Performing Arts in the Lincoln Center of New York City, where BlackOut will be defending the All-American title they won the last time Upstaged occurred in 2020. This highly ranked team will then continue on to compete in the World of Dance finals this August in Anaheim, Calif.
Although I decided to study film in Prague for a semester, I’ve always been nervous abroad — a byproduct of my woefully American fashion sense and drawl. Despite possessing an English mother, I’ve found my accent does me no favors in Europe; my brother and I joke that as soon as we dare to speak within London, the surrounding passersby’s estimation of our IQ drops by 30 points. At times, it’s difficult to not feel judged.
The Tufts community is home to a wide range of different cultural and ethnic clubs on campus, including the Tufts Persian Student Association. For junior and PSA co-president Sabrina Rangwani, the club has been an important part of her adjustment to Tufts. Growing up with a large Iranian community in Houston while attending an international school, life at Tufts was Rangwani’s first time being surrounded by large groups of Americans.
If you’re a Tufts student, you may not know about Simon’s Coffee Shop (located at 1736 Massachusetts Ave. in Cambridge). It’s a bit of a hike from campus (about a 40 minute walk or a 20 minute T ride), but it’s worth venturing to because the cozy vibes are off the charts.
The founding of Tufts has been a tale told far and wide. When a friend of Charles Tufts, one of the founders of Tufts, asked him what he intended to do with land including Walnut Hill, the iconic centerpiece of campus, Charles proclaimed that “I will put a light on it.”
Tufts’ Access Betters the Lives of Everyone, or ABLE, is a student-run club “focused on connecting students with disabilities in a mutually supportive community,” according to its website. Since the club first began in 2020, its mission and goals have continued to evolve.
Sobriety on college campuses is a rarely acknowledged notion. Partying and drinking are perceived or practiced as a norm, but for some Tufts students, alcohol does not play a role in their lifestyle.
Established in April 2014, the Tufts Center for Awareness, Resources and Education has been a campus resource for topics like sexual health and consent for almost nine years. In CARE’s near decade serving the Medford/Somerville campus, its initial office of one has transformed into a collective of more than 150 people. Green Dot and Sex Health Reps, CARE’s two sibling programs, have reached ubiquity at Tufts, cropping up everywhere from stickers on people’s laptops to high-profile, thoughtfully curated programming at first-year student orientations.
This week, I stopped by Davis Square’s Diesel to sip some coffee and assess the overall vibes. Confession: this wasn’t my first time at Diesel. In fact, I stop by this coffee shop (located at 257 Elm St. in Somerville) at least twice a week. The coffee is just that incredible. I usually order a latte with oat milk, but sometimes I opt for a chai latte. The coffee is smooth and flavorful, served in a big mug with thick foam.
“The impulse for writing this book came out of this time I spent in Hartford Correctional and the men I met,” Ravi Shankar, an English lecturer at Tufts and a Pushcart prize-winning poet, said. “I had filled probably seven or eight composition books, you know, full of everything.”
With the end of every semester comes final exams, final papers and most importantly, formals. Many student organizations at Tufts host social events known as formals where members pull the fanciest outfit they brought to college out of their closet for a special night with friends or maybe even a date.
On Dec. 3, 2022, the Tufts South Asian Political Action Committee hosted “Resistance,” an affinity fashion show open to all POC student organizations on campus. More than 10 identity-based clubs participated in this new SAPAC event, wherein each club prepared outfits to be modeled by their members on a makeshift runway in the Joyce Cummings Center Ballroom.
Three years ago, as a first-semester freshman, I somehow made friends, found my way around a new city, survived living on my own and experienced new classes, all while watching people I knew on social media seemingly have the time of their lives.
Over the past five semesters, the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching has worked towards fostering more equitable and inclusive teaching practices through their Pedagogical Partnership Program (P3). The program pairs a student and faculty member in a mutually beneficial partnership in which the student attends and observes one session of the faculty member’s course a week. The pair then meets once a week to discuss equity, inclusion, student interaction and other general feedback on the classroom environment as well as the pedagogical practices of the faculty member.
