A Tufts Technology Services (TTS) initiative will allow all members of the Tufts community to access the file-sharing and storage site Box.com with their Tufts username and password for free.
Facing budget restrictions from the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate, Tufts Concert Board canceled its annual spring Jumbo Jam concert, which traditionally features lesser-known artists than Spring Fling and Cage Rage, to prevent cuts to Spring Fling funding. Programming Board, the umbrella organization for Concert Board, did not have enough money to allocate to Concert Board events, Office for Campus Life Assistant Director David McGraw said. "Our budget is fixed on just Cage Rage, Battle of the Bands and Spring Fling," Concert Board co-chair Julia Stein said. "This year they cut funding for [all of Programming Board], and rather than cutting into Spring Fling, we decided to cut Jumbo Jam to focus on making Spring Fling as great as it possibly could be." To make up for the budget shortfalls, McGraw and Concert Board said they were hoping to recuperate funds from tickets to Cage Rage. "We were hoping this year to get enough revenue off of Cage Rage to go ahead and have a Jumbo Jam either way," McGraw said. "However that event didn't generate revenue beyond what we anticipated." McGraw said Jumbo Jam was the most obvious event to cancel due to its lower popularity in the past. "Senate came back and said 'You're requesting too much money, we have to figure out places to cut back,'" he added. "So looking at events to pull money from, sadly to say Jumbo Jam has not been as successful." Concert Board co-chair Mark Bernardo said he agreed that Jumbo Jam has not been one of the more popular events in the past. "Traditionally, Jumbo Jam is more of an indie-acoustic show, and not as many people are into that so it's hard in terms of publicity," he said. This is not the first time Jumbo Jam has been cut for budgetary reasons, with similar circumstances leading to its cancellation in spring 2011. It seemed like the best event to cut, according to McGraw. "A great example was last year when [Jumbo Jam] was in Cohen [Auditorium]," McGraw said. "The rough cost of the event was just under $20,000, but we had about 50 students show up." Concert Board's budget is mostly allocated toward acquiring musical acts for events. It usually spends roughly $30,000 on bands for Cage Rage, $15,000 for Jumbo Jam and $100,000 for talent at Spring Fling, according to McGraw. After a surplus last year allowed for a $150,000 Spring Fling budget, Stein felt that preserving a high budget for this year's event would be best. "Having that extra buffer is important for getting the artist," she said. Concert Board had initially planned on announcing this year's Spring Fling line-up at Jumbo Jam but is now reconsidering how to notify students. "It'll be some time in late March or early April, possibly at Battle of the Bands," Bernardo said.
Professor of Computer Science Diane Souvaine entered this semester in a new position as the Vice Provost for Research after being appointed in November. Her appointment followed a two-month internal search to replace outgoing Vice Provost Peggy Newell, who left Tufts to become Harvard University's first deputy provost in early November. Souvaine's appointment puts her at the head of what Provost and Senior Vice President David Harris called a crucial office for Tufts. "At a research university, it's a critically important role," Harris, who headed the search committee that chose Souvaine, said. "The Office of the Vice Provost for Research is responsible for all the infrastructure around research as well as promoting research." Souvaine's duties, which span all three of the university's campuses, include overseeing funding for research and ensuring that university researchers comply with federal laws, she explained. "It's a position that broadly tries to enable the fabulous researchers that we have here at the university to pursue the kinds of research that they'd like to pursue, whether it's disciplinary, interdisciplinary, cross-disciplinary, or translational," she said. Souvaine began teaching at Tufts in 1998 after serving as a faculty member at Rutgers University for 12 years. She became chair of the Department of Computer Science at Tufts in 2002. She is currently serving a six-year term on the National Science Board (NSB), a body that governs the National Science Foundation and advises the President and Congress on science policy issues. President George W. Bush appointed her to the board in 2008 for her work in computational geometry, and she now sits on the NSB's Executive Committee. After deciding to search within the university for a new Vice Provost for Research, Harris convened a committee of faculty and administrators to assess several candidates. He emphasized that the committee looked from within the university for a strong leader with extensive research experience. "I want someone in that position who is connected to larger conversations outside of Tufts who can help us find ways to get information about opportunities early and think about how we mobilize," Harris said. "I want someone who's forward thinking, who isn't just happy with what we're doing now, but says we can be better, we can do better, and I have an idea and a vision of how to get there." Souvaine said she aims to encourage and facilitate collaboration among the university's researchers. "I think the first goal is to try to remove any impediments that are preventing people from doing the terrific work that they want to do," she said. Souvaine will continue to play a key role in the ten-year strategic planning process, which launched last fall as a university-wide effort to map out the future of Tufts, Harris said. "Moving forward as the vice provost for research, she's a part of my senior team and so is involved in a lot of conversations we're having here about how to prioritize and how to move forward," Harris said. Souvaine chaired the strategic plan's working group on Modes of Research before her appointment as vice provost. "It's fascinating and fantastic to have this opportunity to look strategically at where the university's going and where it can go," she said. Souvaine said she has spent the first weeks of her tenure visiting and talking with researchers on the Medford/Somerville, Boston and Grafton campuses. "I'm learning more and more about the exciting projects that are going on here, whether they're ones on a single campus or across campuses," she said. "So really it's a learning time for me. Once I know more, I'll have more opportunity to look at potential new projects that people could be doing and ways in which the Office of the Vice Provost for Research can help enhance the ability for people to go and achieve these new goals."
Nobody is sure what the Tufts Christian Fellowship's next move is - not even the group itself. Questions about the religious tenets and requirements for leadership of Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF), a Tufts chapter of the national group InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, have kept the group in a state of limbo since the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Judiciary derecognized the group last semester. The Judiciary ruled that clauses in the group's governing documents requiring its leaders to strive to abide by a strict set of beliefs - called its Basis of Faith - excluded anyone whose beliefs fell outside these tenets from consideration for a leadership position and violated the nondiscrimination clause in the TCU Constitution. The debate in October then moved to the Committee on Student Life, whose resulting ruling created a new policy that shifted the responsibility of judging TCF's requirements for its leaders onto the Chaplaincy, a university department consisting of the chaplains for the four represented religious sects and currently headed by interim University Chaplain Patricia Budd Kepler. As a result of the CSL's ruling, the Chaplaincy now has the ability to issue permission for "justified departure" from the university's nondiscrimination policy on a religious basis - if the Chaplain, that is, decides such an exemption has a basis in religious doctrine. It remains to be seen whether TCF will take the opportunity granted by the CSL to apply for exemption from the university's nondiscrimination policy. If it does, the group will be required to provide more clarity in the coming weeks on how it interprets its own religious doctrine. In doing so the group would also become the guinea pigs of the CSL's policy, which asserts, in part, that "it is reasonable to expect that leaders within individual [student religious groups] be exemplars of that particular religion." TCF leaders say they have yet to decide if the group will apply for "justified exemption." Applying through the chaplaincy, for one, they will likely be faced with specific questions about leadership criteria that that the group says they simply don't feel comfortable answering. "We don't have a codified policy about leadership," TCF Vision and Planning Team member Jessica Laporte, a junior, said. "It is a discernment process, and that's an important part of what we desire to maintain as a group, that it's individualized, that it's not a one-size-fits-all policy." If TCF does decide to go forward with the process of requesting religious exemption from the Chaplaincy, they may find an ally in Tufts' Interim Chaplain, Reverend Patricia Kepler. Under the CSL's new policy, she would head a team tasked with ensuring that any student religious group's deviation from the Tufts anti-discrimination policy is accurately based on the doctrine of that group's religion. "I think that it's common sense that the leaders of a religious group be in adherence of that faith tradition, if that's what the group wants," Kepler said from her office in Goddard Chapel last week. Kepler, whose term as interim chaplain began in early 2012 after longtime chaplain David O'Leary left the Hill to lead a local Catholic parish, added that it is critical for any religious group to be upfront about what values it believes in. She praised TCF for its decision to hold firm against the Judiciary request that it remove the constitutional clause that potential leaders "support and advocate for the letter and spirit" of the group's Basis of Faith. "The reason they didn't [remove the Basis of Faith], as far as I understand it, is because they have integrity. They said 'we cannot honestly do that, this is who we are, this is what we believe'," she said. The Basis of Faith - initially authored by InterVarsity - includes a belief in the "entire trustworthiness and authority of the Bible," and "justification by God's grace to all who repent and put their faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation," among others. Kepler said that she does not plan to press any student religious group seeking an exemption to specify its religious doctrine to the utmost detail. The Chaplaincy would not bring up issues of sexual ethical behavior, for example, unless students initiated specific concerns about that. The Chaplaincy, she said, would consider leadership requirements for faith-based positions at "face value." "I am not in a position, and I don't think our other Chaplains are in a position, to require people to defend, expand on or interpret their faith tradition to somebody within the Chaplaincy," she said. "For instance, if the Protestant group says 'our leaders need to be Christian', I'm not going to come back at them and say, 'What do you mean by Christian?' That could mean a lot of different things." The Judiciary, on the other hand, has more specific expectations for any religious group that might decide to apply for TCU recognition for a justified exemption. The Judiciary would expect TCF or any other group to be entirely transparent about what each component of its leadership guidelines entails. This includes any requirement of a certain behavior component, such as sexual chastity, according to Judiciary chair Adam Sax, a senior. "This whole policy is about transparency," Sax said. "For me, saying that we believe in chastity - I want to know what that means. That's going to have to be spelled out." Circling the bureaucratic legalese that has characterized the recent debate over TCF's leadership selection has been the issue of sexuality. TCF was reprimanded over a decade ago for allegedly denying a TCF member in 2001 a leadership position because she was openly gay. TCF in that case lost - and then regained through a CSL ruling - its TCU recognition. While the debate this time has almost never explicitly referenced how TCF's Basis of Faith and leadership requirements restrict on the basis of sexuality, it remains a sticking point for those who accuse TCF of discrimination. Senior Brandon Archambault, who has been active in the TCF controversy as a former TCF member, the complainant in a Judiciary case involving TCF, an advocate for the group's defunding and a current leader in the Coalition Against Religious Exclusion, said the CSL policy has backed TCF into a corner on that issue. If TCF leadership were to spell out exactly what its rules for sexual chastity were, he said, the group would be forced to admit to that its religious doctrine with regards to chastity holds a double standard that bars non-heterosexual relationships. "Heterosexual sex is okay [for TCF] within certain limitations, like marriage," Archambault said. "It's not in and of itself wrong, it's only contextually wrong. Homosexual acts are in of themselves wrong all the time, no exceptions." Five TCF leaders - Laporte, senior Elaine Kim, senior Emmanuel Runes, senior EzichiEdnahNwafor and junior Ji-Sun Ham - declined to comment on whether the Vision and Planning Team has a consensus on how the Basis of Faith applies to sexual behavior or orientation. TCF leaders in 2011 confirmed to the Daily that, based on their value system, they saw any homosexual act as "unchaste." "You can date," former TCF Vision and Planning Team member Wai Cheng (LA '11), told the Daily in a Dec.7, 2011 article, "but, according to our beliefs, [only] in a heterosexual relationship." "If there's a student who is actively engaged in a homosexual relationship, that's also not sexually chaste," former TCF leader and current Intervarsity Christian Fellowship Team Leader Alexandra Nesbesda (LA '06) added in the article. According to the student leaders handbook produced by IVCF, it is unacceptable for a Christian to engage in a homosexual encounter. On page 87 of the section "Understanding Your Campus Culture, the handbook reads: "Is it okay to have a homosexual encounter? ... A Christian says 'no,' because immorality as defined in the Bible offends God and brings harm to the individuals involved." In analyzing TCF's constitutional leadership requirements, an important distinction lies in the difference between sexual orientation and action, Archambault said. If TCF or InterVarsity discriminated based solely on sexual orientation, Laporte said, she would not have chosen to be a leader in TCF. Laporte wrote last semester in an op-ed in the Daily that she is attracted to both men and women, but would not act on her attraction unless she was married to a man. "I am not a leader inTCFbecause 'I chose to be straight' but because I have chosen to deny myself in all things and take up my cross daily in order to follow Christ," Laporte wrote in the the Dec. 10 op-ed. "My sexuality is only one part of my identity that is being transformed by God's will." Moving forward, leaders in TCF said that they are unsure if they want to go down the murky road that the CSL's route for a justified departure from Tufts' anti-discrimination policy presents. The group will have to make a decision soon if it intends to reapply for recognition by the Judiciary in time to apply for Senate funding from the TCU Treasury, a process that happens annually each March. TCF's leaders are concerned with the potential negative perception the process could create, and remain doubtful that they can explain TCF's leadership criteria in a way that satisfies the CSL, the Judiciary, and the student body at large. "Part of this issue has been perception," Nwafor said. "How do we explain in almost two different languages the concepts of our belief to this campus, and how are we being understood when we do try to explain that? ... I think this policy tried to help us be better understood, but I think it's leading to even more misconception of our goals and our desires on this campus."
Boston Red Sox team nutritionist Tara Mardigan spoke to the Tufts community in Cohen Auditorium last night about dietary changes that can improve health and athletic performance. Tufts Dining Services, Balance Your Life, Tufts Athletics and Health Service sponsored the presentation, entitled "Eat Energize Win: Jumbo Performance Nutrition to Build Muscle and Boost Brainpower." Director of Dining and Business Services Patti Klos introduced Mardigan and thanked Tufts Nutrition Marketing Specialist Julie Lampie for proposing the idea to ask Mardigan to speak. Mardigan, who graduated with a dual degree from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy and the Tufts School of Medicine in 2002, began her talk by providing a basic overview of what constitutes good eating habits by providing 10 tips put forth by the Harvard School of Public Health. They included eating foods rich in fiber and choosing carbohydrates rich in whole grain. She asked the audience to consider where they would locate their eating habits on a scale of one to 10, with 10 being a perfectly balanced diet. "The first place to start is, 'What's your baseline?'" she said. "How do you eat? Is food working for you or are you working for it?" The presentation then focused in on the athlete diet and the connection between what is consumed and how an athlete performs. "I believe that nutrition can be one of the greatest tools you have," she said. "You're going to have more energy, you're going to have improved training abilities, you're going to improve body composition. You'll have better recovery, reduce inflammation and have less downtime." Mardigan broke down what constitutes carbohydrates, proteins and fats and suggested ways to pair them with exercises. Some healthy snack options she recommended included fresh fruit, nuts or seeds, Greek yogurt, string cheese, edamame, vegetables and hummus and dark chocolate. "Don't tell me you don't like it if you haven't tried it," she said. Mardigan also explained the three different body types - ectomorph, endomorph and mesomorph - noting that athletes' diets are partly determined by the type of body they are born with, along with the kind of sport they are performing. She discussed hydration and the chemical processes that food controls in the body. Glycogen-loaded muscles are important to preventing injury and can be achieved through the proper post-workout food choice, she said. "You can eat brilliantly, but if you're not hydrated it's still going to affect your performance," she said. Mardigan addressed the vitamin deficiencies that can arise in vegetarian and vegan athletes and the dangers of eating disorders and negative body image. She warned against the false claims on unregulated supplements' advertising and urged those struggling with their diets to personally meet with a dietician. Achieving a healthy diet is difficult and people should try to keep an 80-20 perspective, she said. The goal should be to eat well 80 percent of the time but recognize that it is normal to slip up the other 20 percent of the time. "We are cut out to eat stuff that is not good for us, she said. "We like sugar, fat and salt." Mardigan advised students to take advantage of the healthy options offered in the dining hall while keeping a positive mindset. "Think WIN, which stands for 'What's Important Now,'" she said. "You need to believe you can eat better. That does require you to make changes and sacrifices. There's got to be a little bit of a give and take if you want to achieve those goals." Following the presentation, a reception hosted by Dining Services provided healthy options for all attendees. Among the spread was a chocolate fondue accompanied by fresh fruit.
Students living on the first floor of Carmichael Hall found rodent droppings in four rooms upon returning from winter vacation last month after mice migrated from the greenhouse area of Carmichael Dining Center. Mice had been discovered, and subsequently dealt with, in Carmichael Dining Center over winter break, Residential Facilities Coordinator Jennifer Bevins said. Laura Friedman, a resident of Carmichael Hall, said she noticed small pellets of mice feces in her dorm room on Jan. 15. "The closer I looked around my room, I realized it was all over," Friedman, a sophomore, said. "It was on my desk, in my bed, on my bed, in my makeup. It was all in my closet. There was a lot under my bed It was all over everything on my roommate's side." Friedman contacted Tufts University Police Department (TUPD), who subsequently reached out to the Department of Facilities Services. "Two people from Facilities came and cleaned the room a little bit," she said. "It was more of a cosmetic fix - I could still find it all over the room. It was more that they cleaned the surfaces and vacuumed the carpet. And I appreciated what they did, it was really nice of them, but it wasn't livable." According to Director of the Office of Residential Life and Learning (ORLL) Yolanda King, other students called the ORLL to report that they had found droppings in their rooms as well. "We contacted Facilities and also informed the staff in Carmichael to have students fill out work orders online," King said. "The cleaning staff made arrangements with the students to clean the rooms in addition to the treatment by the exterminator. Affected students were also offered temporary housing in Wren Hall." At least two of the students have chosen to move to another hall for the remainder of the semester, according to King. Friedman, who waited some time before deciding to move out, ultimately accepted a room that was available in Richardson House. She explained that in order to make her room livable again, everything would have had to be cleared out anyways. "I think they kind of thought that because the exterminator had come and Facilities had come once that they had dealt with it, but it wasn't okay to stay there just because I kept finding more and more and it was all over," she said. "They just need to restart that room." Students were expected to fill out an online work order request or contact Work Control, as they are for any rodent, bug or pest problem, according to Bevins. The exterminator, who is on duty four days a week, was sent to treat the problem. The exterminator went to the affected rooms and has been checking back on a regular basis, King said. She said that the mice might have gotten access to the rooms through a hole. Bevins added that the exterminator has yet to see a mouse in the affected rooms and that, although pests are common, Facilities does its best to respond to and manage the problem. "Have we had various pests in various rooms? Sure," Bevins said. "Have there been times when a student has requested a cleaning? Yes. But every situation and circumstance is different. So whether the same thing happened as it did in Carmichael, I have to say no, there are similar situations but it's not something that comes up every day."
Candidates in the spring Tufts Community Union (TCU) elections tomorrow gathered before a small crowd at Hotung Cafe last night to discuss their platforms and state their cases to voters.
From opposite sides of the world, two student groups working through the development organization Building Understanding Through International Learning and Development (BUILD) in India and Nicaragua have dedicated parts of their college careers chase the goals of sustainable development and local involvement in projects from toilets to . While the two Institute for Global Leadership (IGL)?sponsored BUILD teams share a mission statement, they diverge in their goals and structure. BUILD India
TuftsText, a new textbook price comparison website for Tufts students, was officially released last month by sophomores Anthony Cannistra and James Roseman. The decision to start up TuftsText was prompted when GetchaBooks shut down, according to Roseman.
America's Promise Alliance, a nationwide partnership that works to improve the lives of adolescents, in December announced its collaboration with the Department of Child Development to launch a new research facility called the Center for Promise, dedicated to bettering the lives of the country's young people.
As dialogue surrounding the Tufts Christian Fellowship (TCF) and its controversial leadership requirements intensified last semester, the Coalition Against Religious Exclusion (CARE) entered the forefront of the debate.
Tufts Community Union (TCU) President Wyatt Cadley delivered his State of the TCU adress at an early afternoon session yesterday, opening the speech by addressing
Logistical glitches that caused overcrowding in some areas and led to the event ending 20 minutes early didn't stop last night's Winter Bash from being a success, according to event organizers.
