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In resolution, Senate suggests an alternative to university's new alcohol policy
November 15The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate has broken its silence on the university's new alcohol policy.
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Vaccine lacks broad popularity
November 12There was a time some months ago when the threat of swine flu was easy to ignore, when the dreaded H1N1 virus had yet to hit the Tufts campus and there remained a possibility that the entire epidemic was all just overblown media hype. That time has come and gone. Flu masks populate the Health Service office and H1N1 e-mail updates appear in some students' inboxes even more frequently than Facebook.com notifications.
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At Goddard gala, teachers and students mingle for a cause
November 12The Tufts Timmy Foundation hosted a gala at Goddard Chapel last night, offering students the chance to interact with professors outside of the classroom while raising money for a Guatemalan non-profit.
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Community college enrollment on the rise
November 11Boston is a city in which the economy and culture is built, in part, on the many institutes of higher education that populate the area. The ones that immediately spring to mind are the big-name universities: Harvard, MIT, Boston University, Boston College and, of course, Tufts.
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Certain academic departments note large gender discrepancies among students
November 11Junior Rebekah Holtz feels the strain as a female physics major in a field of study dominated by men. Holtz is one of just seven women, compared to 16 men, currently majoring in physics in the College of Liberal Arts at Tufts. Holtz said the gender disparity has never made her "uncomfortable" but that it does change her attitude towards her studies. "Being in a class with mostly males puts more pressure on me to do well," Holtz said. "Whenever I take a test, I feel that my performance is reflective of women in general. I worry that if I do poorly in a physics class, it reinforces the notion that women may not be as strong in science as men." Holtz is enrolled in two physics classes this semester, one of which she said contains four females out of 45 students total. This marked gender gap isn't exclusive to physics and other natural sciences, nor does it solely skew in the direction of a male majority. A search of Tufts White Pages found particularly notable discrepancies in art history (five males out of 57 declared majors), computer science (eight females out of 50 declared majors in the College of Liberal Arts) and child development (15 males out of 107 declared majors). The women's studies department currently has no male majors. Women make up close to 30 percent of the School of Engineering's student body, a low proportion despite being nearly double the national average male-to-female engineering student ratio, according to the school's website. "The child development major draws mostly women, and this is unfortunate all around," George Scarlett, Child Development Deputy Department Chair, said. "We have fantastic majors, but the major itself would be enriched by the presence of men." Scarlett said the significant lack of gender parity within the field of study "isn't because the major and department are better suited to women. It has more to do with misunderstanding than it has to do with people making rational choices about what to major in." "The primary misunderstanding has to do with the question, ‘What can you do with a child development major? The correct answer is, ‘Anything you want,'" he said. Scarlett cited alumni in health-related professions, public policy, the law, education, psychology and research as examples. "Without this understanding that majoring in child development can lead almost anywhere, I think men on campus see it as headed for education careers only and not for careers that men typically gravitate toward … [It] may be that we still live in a culture where the interests of children are associated with women's work," he said. Sociology Professor Susan Ostrander, too, cites a sex-segregated work force as a cause for the gender gap in some majors. Ostrander teaches Sociology 30: Sex and Gender in Society, in which the topic of gender roles in the labor force is a component of the curriculum. "Some jobs [are] reserved for men and others for women," Ostrander said. "It's not surprising that students often end up in majors that match the kind of paid work they will have later. Only a few women and men defy the odds and major in fields where they are a minority," like women in the natural sciences and men in child development, Ostrander said. For Ostrander, a "solution" to the gap could be found in the establishment of "gender equality in paid work," she said. Pay equity in the work force would allow students to choose majors based not on the particular traditional gender association (and correlated earning potential) of a profession, but based on their interest for the subject regardless of societal norms. Women, who Ostrander said are more likely than men are to work in professions like teaching, social work, nursing and child development, are currently paid 78 cents for each dollar earned by men, according to a presidential proclamation released in April. "The jobs that women are most likely to do are paid less," Ostrander said. Still, students majoring in fields of studies traditionally (and statistically) associated with the opposite gender overwhelmingly said they felt comfortable and were not aware of any modicum of classroom sexism. "I think it's almost a cycle because the lack of women could make other women feel out of place. But I don't feel uncomfortable because I'm used to it and I don't think it's a big deal," senior physics major Erin van Erp said. "I sometimes wish my classes were more gender-balanced, but I accept that there's something about physics that just appeals to more men than women. I would probably be confused if I had a class that wasn't mostly guys, but no one has ever questioned whether I belong in this major." "All that really matters is whether or not [a potential male child development major] is really interested in the study of child development," junior child development major Spencer Ross said. "If child development is really something that he wanted to pursue, then it shouldn't matter that the classes are made up of mostly women." According to sophomore physics major Michelle Cohen, "There's nothing wrong with being outnumbered in your field. It would be stupid to turn down a major because it's all guys."
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Drunk students crash sleep-out
November 11Drunken students and clean energy activism didn't mix well yesterday.
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Keeping Watch
November 10As alcohol-related incidents continue to weigh on the minds of students and the administration, the Red Watch Band, a nationwide organization designed to train students in how to respond to binge drinking, has come to Tufts.
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Romy Oltuski | Word Up
November 10Sometimes I miss the pre-school days when yellow-green-purple outfits were considered fashionable. It's not that the clashing colors were acceptable back then because we were too naïve to form opinions about one another's belongings. It was that the colors made us cool. The more colors, the cooler; the most colors, the coolest (with our superlatives still fresh in our minds). And there was one possession that — if you were among its lucky owners — made you part of an elite class, the cool-hunters of cool, the envy of show-and-tell, color-possessors of the universe: the Crayola Big Box.
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Programs look at various aspects of Asian heritage
November 10More than a week into the annual Asian American Month, a mix of discussions, sporting events and celebrations has descended on campus with the goal of spreading awareness about Asian-American culture and issues confronting people of Asian descent.
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Police Briefs
November 10Lazy boy The Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) responded to a report at 1 a.m. on Nov. 8 of a student passed out on a chair on the porch of the Delta Upsilon fraternity house at 114 Professors Row. The student was transported to Somerville Hospital. Dude, democratic peace theory has never seemed so real … TUPD officers were dispatched at 2:54 a.m. on Nov. 8 to Blakeley Hall, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy's dormitory building, after a smoke alarm was activated.
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Risky investments lead to $1.8 billion loss for Harvard
November 10Harvard University lost $1.8 billion from its operating budget, largely from high-risk investments, it stated in a financial report released Oct. 16.
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Tufts students and the 21st birthday
November 10Like one's 16th and 18th birthdays, the 21st represents a turning point, conferring new legal status on those celebrating it. And in some ways, it also represents the last of the landmark birthdays — save 25, when one can rent a car, and 65, when one begins receiving social security.
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Tufts is most expensive college in Massachusetts, report says
November 10For Jumbos who have waited eagerly to see Tufts finally climb to the top of the college rankings, the day has finally come — but this is probably not exactly what they had in mind.
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Demand for mental health, counseling services increasing on college campuses
November 10While the mental and emotional health of students has long been a concern on college campuses, the past few years have seen a rise in the availability of resources for students with such issues. With the implementation of counseling and mental health programs around the country, there has been increased awareness of mental health issues as a reality in many people's lives.
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Professor Emeritus learned design by doing
November 9Checking out textiles of hunting tribes in Borneo, giving talks about design in Taiwan and owning "quite a collection" of Native American pottery and baskets, John Kreifeldt makes the retired life of a toothbrush engineer sound pretty enticing.
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Pub nights survive; two spring events planned
November 9Senior Pub Nights are back — for the most part.
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Esquire mag not bound to two dimensions
November 9The battle between digital and print media has deteriorated into a nasty trench war between two divergent camps. Many publications turn to the Web for publicity and ad revenue while print loyalists do anything but; editorial mastheads shed staff members by the minute while online fans buy fewer and fewer print copies, praising the Web's ease and affordability. But need these two camps be so strictly divided?
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LCS rolls the dice, reels it in for charity
November 8Over 400 Tufts students rolled the dice in support of a local charity during the Leonard Carmichael Society's (LCS) Vegas Semi-Formal at the Back Bay Hilton on Friday night.
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From winter break to the break room
November 8For those who get bored of winter break by January 1, there is at least one way to get off the couch. Internships over winter vacation, known as "winternships," are an increasingly popular way to gain valuable work experience and build connections that can translate into lengthier employment.
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College is as college does
November 8Remember that time when you were positive that you could navigate yourself to Logan Airport without a GPS? Or when you knew just how to make a vodka watermelon? Or when you were so sure there was an orange Power Ranger? Or when you were pulled over on the shoulder of I-95 North with a partially dismembered watermelon and a full bottle of Kappy's in your trunk and your friend in the front seat demanding five dollars because he Wikipedia-ed it and the orange Power Ranger was actually from "Power Rangers: S.P.D." (which obviously does not count)? Well that happened to me this week, but with swine flu.
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