If you want a TCU president who will be a voice for all students, advocate for campus mental health at the highest levels, stand against sexual assault on campus, consistently support the new Indigenous Center and call for equitable academic policies, then Jaden Pena is the candidate for you.
Globalization, defined by Merriam-Webster as “the development of an increasingly integrated global economy,” is inextricably tied to the global inequality that has shaped the lives of billions across the globe. Economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez suggest globalization has led to an increasing gap between the rich and poor. The 2022 World Inequality Report highlights this gap, finding that the globe’s richest 10% have 75% of global income while the poorest 50% of individuals share just 2% of income. The issue of global inequality is exacerbated by a number of factors like gender and race. For example, research shows that women make up just 27% of individuals in the top 10% of the income distribution and less than 17% at the 1% income level. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, racial discrimination is also prevalent in the discussion of global inequality, with white workers earning approximately 22% more than Black workers. Other data strengthens this finding, highlighting that a median Black family owns $24,100 in wealth compared to the average $189,100 held by a median white family. Globalization has certainly played a role in increasing this high level of global inequality.
Tensions between the United States and Russia over the invasion of Ukraine have made their way to the outer space domain. The packet of sanctions announced on Feb. 24 included measures directly targeting the Russian space program. Addressing this, President Biden remarked that “[the sanctions] will degrade their aerospace industry, including their space program.”
This year, the Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship class run by the Institute of Global Leadership at Tufts has been guided by the theme “Problems without Passports.” As an environmental studies and international relations major, the relevance and urgency of this framework is evident. Environmental scholars increasingly cite the interconnectedness of the global ecosystem, which calls for understanding an ‘instance’ of environmental degradation on a wider spatial and temporal scale. Just as the effects of climate change are dispersed over time and space to be felt unevenly by those who have had little hand in causing it, pollution and toxicity created in one place will not be neatly contained out of sight and out of body.
Social media has revolutionized terrorism, acting as a tool to streamline communication in underground networks and make the recruitment of individuals more accessible. This has resulted in the increased dissemination of extremist content online, facilitating radicalization. Terrorist or extremist groups can readily communicate their opinions and misinformation in an immediate and widely accessible format, sharing information with a large, global audience, while also tailoring their messages to specific audiences at local levels. As stated by expert Dr. Maura Conway, “Today's Internet does not simply allow for the dissemination and consumption of ‘extremist material’ in a one-way broadcast from producer to consumer, but also high levels of online social interaction around this material.”
I woke up on May 23, 2021, ready to graduate. After donning a suit, cap and gown, I walked downstairs to find my housemates in their pajamas.
Some of the world’s most pressing problems such as climate change, mass-migration and food insecurity transcend state borders. These issues are beyond the capacity of any single country to solve themselves, necessitating international cooperation. Former Secretary-General of the United Nations Kofi Annan labeled these challenges as “problems without passports.”
Two years ago, Johns Hopkins University announced that they had quietly phased out legacy preferences in admissions decisions, beginning in 2014. Their logic was simple: Legacy preferences, admission advantages given to families of alumni, were limiting their ability to admit talented students from diverse backgrounds. Since then, news outlets have denounced legacy admissions, activists have mounted aggressive campaigns and states have passed legislation discouraging or prohibiting their use. Despite these efforts, many universities, including Tufts, have been loath to end such policies. Their principal reasoning for upholding the status quo stems from their conviction that legacy admissions result in increased donations from alumni.
The start of a new year offers space for reflection on the past year and airing of hopes for the coming year. In September, Harvard announced that it would stop investing in fossil fuels and wind down its existing investments in them. At the same time, BU announced that it would divest from fossil fuels. The COP26 summit of October and November further emphasized the urgency of the climate crisis. In December, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu signed an ordinance requiring the City of Boston to divest from fossil fuel industries by the end of 2025. Also in December, Tufts’ Chief Investment Officer Craig W. Smith presented the Fossil Fuel Divestment and Tufts Endowment Webinar as part of the Path to Carbon Neutrality Webinar Series, organized by the Tufts Office of Sustainability.
One of the most enigmatic and troublesome failures of our modern socioeconomic system lies within our impractical food network. Food waste has been dubbed “the world’s dumbest environmental problem,” and for good reason. While 40% of the food supply in America goes to waste, over 38 million people in the United States experience food insecurity. Globally, 1.3 billion tons of food go to waste every year, which accounts for about a third of total food produced. When we talk about hunger in our country and in our world, it’s clear that these problems don’t arise from a deficiency in food production systems. So what is the cause of these harrowing statistics?
Hi, everyone! My name is Alex Janoff, and I am the Editor in Chief of The Tufts Daily for this upcoming spring semester. As the Tufts community returns to campus over the course of the next week or so, I — personally — have started to make that oh-so difficult but necessary mental switch from the winter break lifestyle to thinking about classes, readings, exams and assignments. As I prepare for this upcoming semester, I would like to use this space to both introduce myself and also share some thoughts I have for this spring semester regarding the Daily’s production.
Dear students, faculty, staff and all others that make up the Tufts community,
Enhanced knowledge. An impressive resume. A high paying job. All these things come up time and time again when talking about what someone gets out of a college degree. But what about mentors? Taking advice from someone with more knowledge and experience than you may seem terrifying for many college students. But for some, finding teachers who serve as mentors are the single most valuable aspect of an undergraduate degree. According to aGallup study, students who had professors that inspired and motivated them to achieve their goals were more likely to thrive.
Content warning: This article mentions sexual assault.
The past year has welcomed remarkable changes to Tufts. From the unfurling of its anti-racism initiative to its test-optional diverse applicant pool, the academic landscape is shifting more rapidly than students, and probably faculty, can remember. On April 14, another milestone was reached when the Tufts University School of Medicine eliminated legacy status from consideration in its 2021 application. While anti-racism commitments and surging applicant diversity have been noted at scores of institutions across the United States, the decision to drop legacy considerations from admissions distinguishes TUSM from the vast majority of medical schools.
I moved back to Somerville to make it my home about a year after graduating from Tufts in the COVID-19 Class of 2020. I came back for the colorful three-story houses, the little libraries, the community gardens, the small businesses and the public art. More than all that, though, I came back for the progressive values and community care that I sensed in the Somerville air during my four years at Tufts.
On May 14, 2021, members of Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine painted the Tufts cannon as part of a vigil honoring the lives of Palestinians who died in the two-week-long conflict referred to by Gazan militant groups as the “Sword of Jerusalem Battle,” and by the Israeli Defense Forces as “Operation Guardian of the Walls.” That same evening, the cannon was vandalized with crude language and images.
Dear reader, I really didn’t want to think about student housing at Tufts ever again. I really didn’t. When I graduated two years ago, I left behind not only my lottery and off-campus housing woes, but also a little leftist organization calledTufts Housing League. We aimed to raise consciousness among fellow students that, among other things, Tufts was a driving engine of local gentrification and that landlords are no good and should be fought by tenants as a unified and militant class. Our rallying cry was simply “build a dorm” — to end the displacement of area residents by Tufts students with nowhere else to go, and to undercut the off-campus slumlords who kept raising rent while letting their buildings fall apart.
Although debates on policing and community safety did not start with the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, which were the result of George Floyd’s murder and a history of police killings of Black men, they sparked a renewed and sharp focus on these two topics. Here at Tufts, this interest resulted in, among other things, the campus safety and policing working group and a focus on Tufts as an anti-racist institution.
I was partying in Paris the moment I found out that Tufts had overenrolled the Class of 2025. Speakers were blasting reggaeton as I heard the distinct ringtone I had set for Tufts emails. I took my phone out of my pocket and read the headline. "Tufts Class of 2025 Housing Assignments." I skimmed the email looking for my roommate assignment and my residence hall but quickly found out it wasn’t in the email. The email simply stated that 100 or so students had been randomly selected to live in the Hyatt Place Medford, about a 35-minute walk from Tufts’ Campus Center. I celebrated at the time, as the email said that those unlucky 100 students had already been notified early in the morning and I had not been one of them. Nonetheless, the next day, peers I had met online were already asking me what hall I was in. I never received the housing email. Endless calls and unanswered emails to Residential Life left me desperate for an answer.
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