Graffiti artist Abby Andrews, known as ABBY TC5, spoke Friday about graffiti culture and the inspiration behind her work in a public talk at the Aidekman Arts Center Alumnae Lounge.
The Tufts Community Union Senate last night hosted its weekly meeting in the Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room.
The Tufts Community Union Senate last night hosted its weekly meeting in the Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room.
As Halloween draws closer, Tufts and the city of Boston are in full swing with preparations. Whether its volunteering with the Leonard Carmichael Society (LCS), getting spooked at an a cappella show, enjoying a cupcake decorating class or exploring Boston on a pub crawl anything goes this week. On campusOn Saturday, the Global Health Network and the Pre-Med Society will host Spook-Appella a concert and performance benefitting the Sharewood Project.[The project] is a free health clinic run weekly by undergraduates and the medical students at Tufts Medical School to provide medical services of all sorts, like general checkups, sophomore Aparna Dasaraju, fundraiser coordinator for the Sharewood Project, said. [It covers] Malden, Mass., which has a large number of people who dont have access to healthcare.The event will feature a cappella groups S-Factor, Anchord and Essence, as well as the dance group Spirit of Color, all performing in the spirit of Halloween. The event will also feature a debut performance from Enchanted, a brand new all-Disney a cappella group on campus.Like the new a cappella group, it is Sharewoods first time participating, according to junior Carrie Zimmerman, public health coordinator of the Sharewood Project.Its our first year doing Spook-Appella, and we think its going to be a great way to raise money for the clinic and to make campus more aware of Sharewood, Zimmerman said. The $5 that someone spends on a ticket will go a long way in improving the infrastructure of the clinic, as well as buying new medical equipment for the clinic.Anywhere from four to six Tufts students attend the clinic each week to volunteer, but the Sharewood Project has between 150 and 200 trained undergraduate volunteers and serves an e-list of at least 400 students.Dasaraju pointed out that attending the event will help those involved in Sharewood to continue gaining experience in the medical field.Students get exposure with working with patients themselves. We take vitals, help patients feel comfortable and keep the process going, she said.The coordinators hope that the evening of Halloween-themed performances will bring fun for all in support of a common cause.We hope that people will learn more about the Sharewood Project and get involved with our committees or the Sharewood Project, Dasaruju said. Costumes are encouraged.The event will be held in the Alumnae Lounge with catering from Daves Fresh Pasta and other local restaurants. Tickets can be purchased at the Mayer Campus Center and on Tufts Tickets.For students who would like to incorporate community service into this upcoming holiday, LCS will be hosting one of their annual events on Saturday, too: Halloween on the Hill. The event is centered on celebrating Halloween with children from Medford and Somerville schools with games, costumes, trick-or-treating and other activities.In the past its been about 100 to 150 kids, junior Shoshana Oppenheim, co-coordinator of the event, said. We hand out permission slips to the Medford/Somerville elementary schools, they get distributed through newsletters and they can register online.Undergraduates will pair up to lead small groups of children around campus for Halloween festivities, such as trick-or-treating in resident halls.Its really enjoyable leading the kids around to different arts and crafts activities and thinking how exciting it would have been to do this as a kid and get to go around a college campus, Oppenheim said.She explained that the event aims to connect students with the local community.One thing thats really important to Tufts is not having students be in the Tufts bubble, Oppenheim said. We want the students to get out in the community, but this is our chance to bring the community to Tufts and give back as Tufts students, being members of the Somerville and Medford community.12
More than 175 students this week have participated in the Leonard Carmichael Societys annual blood drive for the American Red Cross.
Associate Professor at the Harvard Business School Nava Ashraf delivered a presentation titled Do Gooders and Doctors: Evidence on Selection and Performance of Health Workers in Zambia yesterday afternoon in Braker Hall.
Bree Aldridge, assistant professor of molecular biology and microbiology and adjunct assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) Directors New Innovator Award this September.
The disciplines of classics and computer science might seem mutually exclusive. Many people dont typically see how one informs the other. For Gregory Crane, however, making the two work in harmony has been a lifelong passion.Crane, adjunct professor of classics and former chair of the department, is also an adjunct professor in the Department of Computer Science at Tufts and holds a doctorate in Philology from Harvard University. He directed a grant from the Digital Library Initiative from 1998 to 2006, and has also published a number of books about Thucydides, including The Blinded Eye: Thucydides and the New Written Word in 1996 and soon after The Ancient Simplicity: Thucydides and the Limits of Political Realism in 1998.Crane is currently in Leipzig, Germany, where he is doing research as part of his Alexander von Humboldt Professorship.He began working at Tufts in 1992, where he started as an assistant professor of classics, and has worked as a tenured professor here since 1998. Crane described himself as a firm proponent of enriching humanities education through the use of computer science and research.Undergraduates are able to collaborate in a much more substantive way than was possible when I was an undergraduate, he said. [Research is] not just an assignment ... in this space, where everything is potentially public, the meaning of the contribution can be quite different.Of the courses he has taught, Crane said that his favorite was a class on the maintenance of Greek and Latin works by Arabic translators.An immense amount of Greek science and philosophy was translated into Arabic roughly between 800 and 1000 CE, he explained. It was a huge statement of cosmopolitan interest in the Arabic world at the time. Euclid and Aristotle reentered Western tradition through the Arabic translations of Greek or Latin.An enduring venture of his, the Perseus Digital Library Project has been dedicated to the digitization of linguistic and physical artifacts since 1985. Crane is the projects current editor-in-chief. In general, the project researches anything associated with the applications of technology in the enhancement of the study of the humanities.[Perseus is] an open-ended experiment in what you can do if you integrate digital technology with sources like Greek and Latin, he said.According to Crane, due to the nature of conversation about the classics and the eventual decline of print media, digitization not only of ancient texts, but also of printed literary criticism whether a few decades or a few centuries old is vital for their survival.The conversations about these texts go on over generations. ... Youve got a book in your hand that was written a hundred and twenty years ago about a text thats over two thousand years old, he said. Youre thinking in terms of a conversation that goes on for generations and centuries, and the world of print is clearly on its way out. ... I couldnt imagine not thinking about how to deal with a digital space and what that would mean for us.The idea of Perseus originated back in 1982 while Crane was studying at Harvard and was fully underway by 1985, when Crane helped compile a mass of digital textual information on the Greek world one of the first full text digital databases ever.His interests in computers, he explained, began for practical reasons.I needed to type my [classics] dissertation with something other than a typewriter, he said.Crane noted how living in the digital age now is a far cry from the time during which the Perseus project was formed.Hard disks ... looked like washing machines, he said.Crane explained that a 670-megabyte hard drive used by the database cost $34,000 with a service contract of $4,000 per year. Even then, he believed in the eventual superiority of the digital format.[Artifacts can be] more valuable in a digital world than they are in print, Crane said. You can have these crazily high-resolution, digitized versions, where you can see the manuscript better than you can if you were sitting in a library with bad light.Perseus has over 160 million words in languages from Greek and Latin, to Germanic, to Arabic, to more recent 19th century American sources archived in the project. Thanks to grants from his Humboldt professorship, Crane plans to increase that number through a new project called Open Greek and Latin Project, which, in part, aims to take the number of Greek words readily available from 15 million to 150 million.Crane is also currently working on adapting a Greek and Latin-learning course whose framework is generalizable to other languages. One of its major components, he said, will be international collaboration through Skype or other online means.[There are] people collaborating on analyzing a text ... one student in Tehran, a student at Tufts, a student in Zagreb, he explained.12
Four Tufts alumni in the entertainment field were honored during the ninth annual P.T. Barnum Awards for Excellence in Entertainment event, held on June 27 at the Creative Arts Agency in Los Angeles.
The Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Development this year implemented several changes to the child development major in order to provide students with real-world experiences and engagement in the field.
Chemical Engineering Lab Coordinator Emily Edwards and Research Assistant in the Electrical Engineering Department Abbey Licht are working to promote more effective ways of recycling Styrofoam at Tufts.
A helicopter yesterday afternoon circled over the Medford/Somerville, Boston and Grafton campuses in order to capture video footage and still photographs of the fall foliage surrounding Tufts.
The Office of the Dean of Arts and Sciences is currently analyzing a report, issued over the summer by the Arts and Sciences Online Learning and Education Working Group, to address topics related to integrating online technologies into academics. Most notable is the possibility of introducing massive open online courses (MOOCs) to the universitys curricula.
The Class of 2014 has taken on its new role as the senior class, settling into leadership positions and thinking about questions related to post-Tufts life. Following a tradition that works to unite the class, the Senior Class Council sponsored the first Senior Night of the year on Thursday, Sept. 26 at Tequila Rain in Boston. Although the events, formerly known as Senior Pub Nights, have received criticism in past years, the event has persisted in popularity.Logistically, Senior Night events require planning in part from the Senior Class Council in conjunction with the Office for Campus Life (OCL) to execute contracts and organize transportation.Its really pretty simple, Senior Class Vice President Nick Cutsumpas said. The key is making sure you do this all ahead of time and scout out the venue.When it came to deciding on the venue, considerations were made based on both size and location, according to Senior Class President Patrick Kazley.Tequila Rain is near Fenway so we had to make sure there was no Boston game, Kazley said. Since there wasnt, that made it a very attractive option. It had a very easy drive in and out, so that [we] could drop the students off the buses right near the front door. All of that fed into our decision.Chris Bruno, the general manager of Tequila Rain as well as both Gypsy Bar and Liquor Store on Boylston Street, all venues of past Senior Night events, is exceptionally accommodating, Cutsumpas said. Although the Senior Class Council must plan many of the logistics of the event, Cutsumpas credited Bruno with a significant degree of the planning.From a logistics standpoint, when youre working with someone like Chris Bruno, who has done things like this before, he takes care of a lot of it, Cutsumpas said.As part of the contract, Tequila Rain ensures that the bar is open to only Tufts students for the night, which Kazley said achieves the type of atmosphere a Senior Night should have.It serves the purpose of the event, which is to bring us together and not have other people there, Kazley said.As a venue, Tequila Rain offers an optimal environment for the unification of the senior class that the event aims to achieve, according to Kazley.The primary difference between a successful venue and a not-as-successful venue is that we like an open venue where you dont get partitioned off into different groups, he said. Thats why Tequila Rain is great. ... You can walk from one side to the other and probably run into everybody who is there in one fell swoop.Sarah Solomon, a senior who attended Septembers Senior Night event, believed the venue was a great fit for the Class of 2014.[Tequila Rain] felt like a true Boston club, she said. It had a dance floor, and what else do you really need?In addition to signing a contract with the venue, the Senior Class Council must also have a contract with a bus company to ensure transportation to and from the event. Ten buses drove a continuous loop from the Tufts campus to the venue and back, according to Kazley.In past years, Senior Night transportation has had difficulty in relation to time spent waiting in lines, a problem that finds its roots in later arrivals. This year, however, Kazley said that the Senior Class Council tried something different to streamline the process.Historically one of the biggest roadblocks to having a really successful Senior Night is having a long line outside of the venue, Kazley said. This time, we sold the tickets via bus times. If you bought the 9 p.m. bus ticket, the next Senior Night would be free. What that did was incentivize people to come earlier.The Senior Class Council, however, still hopes to make the night more efficient.We were happy with it overall, Kazley said. There are small adjustments we will make in terms of trying to get even more students to come earlier. We could potentially have a night without any lines.Another potential difficulty that the event could have had, Kazley noted, was with the legal drinking age. Because the senior class is composed of students who are not necessarily 21 yet, the inclusivity of the event is restricted by nature of it taking place at a bar or club. According to Kazley, however, negativity surrounding this challenge may distract from the larger objective of Senior Night.Even though [Senior Night] is at a bar, its not a drinking event: Its a social event, Kazley said.Cutsumpas said that, accordingly, the official event name has also been changed from Senior Pub Night to simply Senior Night.Legal age restrictions, however, are not among the only limiting factors of Senior Night. Kazley pointed out that regardless of the ages of the senior class members, attendance is still limited due to size restrictions of many venues.We wish the whole senior body could participate, but the hard truth is that even if everybody was able to participate, we could not fit the whole class in a single venue anywhere in Boston, he said.12
The Islamic Council of New England hosted its 28th annual conference in the Cabot Intercultural Center yesterday. The event featured presentations by several public speakers who addressed pertinent issues facing the Muslim communities within contemporary American society.Maha Mian, president of the Muslim Students Association of Tufts (MSAT), said that while the conference had in the past been held at many nearby institutions such as Harvard Univeristy and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, this was the first year that the conference was located at Tufts. Mian added that the conference was an ideal forum to host discussion and debate on topics of Islam, and she was pleased that the event was successful following several months of preparation. Weve never held anything to this extent before, Mian, a senior, said. Were really glad that we were able to pull it together.The conference was divided into several thematic panels. The final keynote panel of the day was titled Assimilation, Isolation or Integration? and analyzed ways that American Muslims can become more accepted and included throughout the nation.Hussein Dayib, the panel moderator, emphasized the importance of retaining religious and cultural identity even while striving to achieve this goal of acceptance.We have to find a way we can relate to the American culture so that Islam is seen as part of it, Dayib said. Theres a difference between integration and assimilation. Losing your identity is not what we are here for as Muslims. Kiarash Jahed, a physician at the University of Louisville Hospital, began the panel by addressing the Muslim peoples long history of dealing with isolation and Islamophobia. Jahed expressed that the Islamic experience ought to be perceived as a normal American lifestyle. He outlined ways in which this could be achieved, such as by encouraging Islamic Americans to turn out to vote, improving relationships with the Muslim convert community, being patriotic while not nationalistic and producing indigenous learning institutions around the country.We have to be contributors to culture, not just consumers of goods, Jahed said. The Quran says, that which benefits people stays in the earth. We have a lot which we do for ourselves, but we should also be asking what are we doing for America, for the broader society.Susan Akram, professor of law at Boston University, spoke next about the consequences of American laws that have singled out Muslims in a discriminatory fashion.Im speaking from the perspective of a lawyer whos been representing Islamic immigrants for 30 years, she said. The bottom line is that we do not have very optimistic news.Citing reports by organizations such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Akram addressed a wide range of anti-Islamic activities throughout America. These include unwarranted discrimination based on appearance as well as infiltration and surveillance of mosques and Muslim community centers. She said that many Muslims have continued to be prosecuted as terrorists when they pose no actual threat, a trend that has harmed and antagonized Americas Islamic communities.Terorrism is not a Muslim phenomenon, Akram said. [Understanding this] is meaningful if we are going to have successful Muslim integration in the United States.Imam Talal Eid, the Muslim chaplain at Brandeis University, spoke about the general standing of the Islamic community within the United States. He said that American Muslims are among the most highly-educated and most prosperous in the world and serve their country with a sense of honor and duty.Eid expressed his concern that contemporary Muslims oftentimes disregard the importance of religious faith and are being forced to assimilate within American society in ways that are contrarary to Islamic values.Many young Muslims are running away from their religion, and I dont want to see that, he said. We dont want to give up our religion, but we need to learn how to integrate in this society without hurting [ourselves] or hurting [our] religion.12
The Center for Humanities at Tufts yesterday afternoon hosted the third installment of the European Writers on the Move series, a program showcasing European authors and thinkers.
Tufts reported 48 sexual assaults to the U.S. Department of Justice in accordance with a grant program for New England universities run by the department, according to a Boston Globe article published in 2010. The university had been receiving $1.3 million in grant funding since 1999 to put toward efforts to improve resources for victims.Last year, a university-wide Sexual Violence Working Group formed to replace Tufts Sexual Assault Policy with the current Sexual Misconduct Policy.But when former Sexual Violence Resource Coordinator Elaine Theodore left her position at Tufts a few years ago, no one was hired to replace her. During the 2012-2013 year, there were 63 reported cases of sexual assault in a broad number of categories, according to the data from the Office of Equal Opportunity.In light of these ongoing issues, a sexual assault taskforce has been formed in an attempt to streamline the way that Tufts deals with sexual assault on campus. President Anthony Monaco acts as chair of the taskforce, along with Mary Jeka, senior vice president for university relations and general counsel. Students are involved in the groups operations as well.The Task Force on Sexual Misconduct Prevention is designed to ensure that Tufts is doing all it can to effectively combat all forms of sexual misconduct, Jeka told the Daily in an email. This includes addressing sexual exploitation, sexual harassment, sex or gender discrimination, stalking and relationship violence as well as sexual assault.Part of what prompted the taskforces formation is that the problems with sexual misconduct and the policies surrounding it have frustrated and angered many Tufts students. Various groups have been developed in order to address these issues, among them Prevention, Awareness and Community at Tufts, Action for Sexual Assault Prevention and the Consent Culture Network, which is an educational offshoot of ASAP. While these groups have hosted many workshops about sexual misconduct, students are still unsatisfied with the sexual misconduct culture and policies at Tufts.On April 29, ASAP sent a letter to the Tufts administration, calling its attention to three key ways in which they failed to address sexual assault security policy for students, which included a lack of access to policies, processes and resources, as well as a lack of support infrastructure and a lack of education about sexual assault. The letter began with the shortcomings of the Tufts sexual assault policy, and then outlined the improvements that could be made to the policies.A response from Monaco expressed that there are insufficient resources at Tufts to accommodate those who lack education about sexual assault and those who are survivors searching for academic and emotional support. His response called for the new sexual assault taskforce.Such misconduct has no place at Tufts, Monaco told the Daily in an email. My goal in convening and chairing the Sexual Misconduct Prevention Taskforce is to ensure that we address this important issue effectively ... to support our community needs.Jeka noted that creating a group of people ready to tackle such sensitive problems can be difficult, but the taskforce is well on its way.The taskforce is well-equipped to ensure that Tufts is continuously monitoring our efforts in all these areas, staying ahead of best practices, and making improvements [where necessary], she said. Our members include graduate and undergraduate students, faculty and administrators from the Boston, Medford and Somerville and Grafton campuses with a variety of professional expertise and knowledge of individual schools and campus cultures.Junior Kumar Ramanathan, who was one of the core writers of the letter and is now a member of the taskforce, said that the new sexual assault taskforce has begun the first few of its meetings this semester. The first was to discuss preliminary logistics, he said.Director of the Office of Equal Opportunity Jill Zellmer explained that the group decided to break into working groups to split the workload and divide up the responsibilities. The subgroups, Ramanathan said, include awareness and prevention, resources and adjudication policy.Zellmer said that another focus that the prevention working group factored in was education.Prevention and education [will] instill greater awareness, education and support programs and train and educate staff and administrators and students, she said.The resources working group will focus on establishing a more extensive support infrastructure for victims and their friends and supporters, while the policy group will work on revising and publicizing policy as necessary, according to Zellmer.Although the first meeting did not lead to any policy changes, Ramanathan viewed it as a critical step forward, especially in that it gathered enough student representatives from the Group of Six who were interested in contributing.No one had committed to ... changes at that point. It was just a planning meeting, but it seemed to go very well for us, Ramanathan said.At the second meeting, the subgroups presented their information to Monaco and other administrators on the committee. The fundamental request was for a streamlined program on sexual assault.12
Students and alumni on the Hill on Saturday had the opportunity to attend the universitys first Homecoming Carnival, held on the rugby field from 11:30 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Susan Zuckerman Williams, a media attorney at Loeb & Loeb LLP, gave a presentation titled, What really happens at Sundance? yesterday afternoon at 95 Talbot Avenue.
The Tufts University School of Medicine this year kicked off the Service Scholars Pathway Program, which aims to teach medical students how to provide appropriate care to underserved communities.
