University Information Technology (UIT) this semester installed a new, mobile?friendly interface for Trunk as one of many explorations being done on Sakai, the open?source learning management system (LMS) that powers Trunk.
Linguistics has a theory of something called the Proto?Indo?European language. The commonly accepted abbreviation for this is PIE, as in what I had for dinner. PIE is the common ancestor of all the languages spoken in Europe and a significant number of those spoken in Asia (from Pashto to Hindi). However, the structure and even existence of PIE is simply a bunch of educated guesses by linguists. Whether, where and how PIE was spoken can never be known for sure. These details were lost to history.
He was joined by Swedish diplomat PontusMelander, Russian economist Alexander Pilyasov and Lieutenant Governor of Alaska Mead Treadwell in the final event of a two−daydialogue between government, business and media leaders from the eight Arctic Council countries.
Tufts may or may not actually have the predominantly liberal student body its stereotypes often note, but right?of?center views are hardly invisible on campus and have been prominent for some time - at least on paper. This year, after decades of ebbs and flows in controversy and popularity, The Primary Source, Tufts' self?proclaimed "journal of conservative thought," turns 30.
Tufts Medical Center announced last month that its adult trauma service center has been designated a Level I trauma center, the highest level, by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
The Tufts weekend shuttle service to Harvard, which was announced last semester to compensate for the four?month?long halt in Red Line subway services from Alewife Station to Harvard Square, will continue through the end of the semester due to its popularity, Tufts Administrative Services announced earlier this month.
The Geology Department in the fall will change its name to the Earth and Ocean Sciences Department in an effort to make the focus of the department's work clearer to the student body, reflecting a trend toward similar renaming at other institutions.
The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate at its meeting on March 4 passed a resolution (25?1?0) calling for the creation of a committee with the goal to constrain the cost of attending Tufts.
Tufts Hillel in May will be taking a group of Jewish students to Morocco for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee's (JDC) first?evershort?termservice?learning trip there.
According to a recent study by U.S. News & World Report, at least 776 U.S. colleges provide various degrees of financial assistance to their undergraduate students coming from abroad. With average financial aid packages of over $47,000 each, the top 10 schools were all private and located mostly in the northeastern United States. Although Tufts was not included on that list, the university's financial aid allocation and support policies for its close to 400 undergraduate international students have come a long way and are still progressing.
The Interfraternity Council's (IFC) Greeks Go Green initiative, which launched last semester, will join with the Tufts Sustainability Collective (TSC) to continue to work on improving fraternities' and sororities' environmental impact on campus. The project is being spearheaded by Vice President of Philanthropy for Alpha Tao Omega (ATO) Victoria Powell and Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) Philanthropy Co-Chair Joshua Malkin. Multiple Eco-Representatives from the Tufts Office of Sustainability will work with each fraternity's green representative to promote sustainable behavior, such as recycling, energy saving and composting. "We wanted to get recycling started in the fraternities and get them to improve their overall environmental impact," Powell said. "We have been meeting with Eco-Reps and brainstorming ways for all Greek institutions on campus to improve their impact on the environment overall." "We are looking at increasing recycling, saving energy, weatherizing the houses and composting to improve the environmental impact of Greek life here at Tufts," TSC Co-Director Katherine Segal said. While project leaders are currently working with all of TSC, the Sustainable Action Squad - a branch of the collective - may take the lead with involvement on the project, according to Segal. "Members of TSC will hopefully volunteer to work with green chairs from each fraternity and sorority to make sure each Greek house on campus is working to improve recycling habits, start composting and doing anything else that may aid in making Tufts a greener place," Segal said. In addition to promoting general recycling and other environmental improvements, the project will also allow the Greek community to create a reputation of being greener, according to Malkin. "We are trying also to improve on the Greek communities' reputation because the houses on campus could be doing so much more to be greener on a day-to-day basis," he said. "Our main concern is it is becoming a far more pressing issue for the houses and Tufts campus in general to be greener. We thought that this would be a good way to get everyone involved because the fraternities do have a large impact on the social life here at Tufts," Powell said. "If fraternities can set the example, the rest of Tufts may follow." Another major motivation for launching the project was that in the past fraternities were not recycling and a large amount of waste products were going through the houses, Powell said. "Some of the fraternities have taken some green initiative on their own to improve their carbon footprints," Powell said. "Theta Delta Chi [123] has created a position called the Green Chair, which entails monitoring their impact, for example." The campaign mainly involves coordinating with the Eco-Representatives and working on logistics, Powell added. However, the coordinators of the Greeks Go Green project are deciding how to set up the program most effectively and what the Eco-Reps can do with fraternities next semester to improve their environmental impact on campus, Powell said. There are a significant number of students involved with Greek life, and organizing the projects has not been an easy process, Powell said. "It has been difficult reaching out to and organizing the large number of people involved in Greek life here at Tufts," Powell said. "However, everyone I have been working with has been very helpful and we are certainly making progress." According to Powell and Malkin, the process is quickly evolving, but right now it is in its ground phases as logistics between fraternities and the TSC are worked out. "So far it has been a relationship between the green chairs of fraternities and the Eco-Representatives and the two of them determining what they can do," Powell said. Project coordinators are also considering special events to motivate sororities and fraternities to increase their sustainability, according to Malkin. "We have considered having a recycling contest in which all fraternities and sororities would recycle all possible materials they could and whoever recycled the most within the realm of a larger recycling contest initiative would win a prize," Malkin said. "We will be meeting again this week to hammer out details of what will become this contest and getting a green representative in every house, which then will coordinate with TSC," he added. "In the next few weeks we will start promoting and running the official campaign for the Greeks Go Green project." Segal added that she hopes the initiative will increase sustainability beyond sororities and fraternities. "Next semester we hope that this will be a campus wide initiative and go beyond just Greek life on campus," Segal said.
Jumbo Janitor Alliance (JJA) last night organized and hosted a discussion forum with members of the Tufts janitorial staff, Service Employees International Union (SEIU) representatives and students to discuss workers' rights and what they believe to be a lack of transparency in the Tufts administration's dealings with sub-contracted workers. Tufts' janitorial staff is provided by UGLUnnico instead of being hired directly by the university. The panel included Paula Castillo, a UGLUnnico employee who works in both Bendetson Hall and West Hall, Mike Sylvester, a SEIU higher education organizer in Boston with Local 615, Carlos Aramayo (LA '96), who works as an organizing director for hotel and restaurant unions with Unite Here, and Sergio Duenas, the SEIU Local 615 representative for Tufts janitors. The event was facilitated by Liam Walsh-Mellett, co-chair of JJA. Most of the evening's discussion focused on institutional response to organizing efforts and the compartmentalization of workers as members of the Tufts community. Using Duenas as an interpreter, Castillo shared some of her experiences as a janitorial employee working under three different subcontractors - OneSource, then ABM Industries Incorporated and now UGLUnnico - since the beginning of her time at Tufts. "I don't know why [the sub-contractors for janitorial services] are changing so often," she said. "I want to send a message to the students - [the janitorial staff] do the best we can." Castillo said she wishes the university would hire its janitors directly. The university changed its lMedford/Somerville campus cleaning services provider last September from ABM Industries to UGLUnnico, a shift that elicited a strong student reaction and staff response on the behalf of janitors, resulting in a protest outside of Ballou Hall in October. Protesters brought administrative attention to the responses of workers under UGLUnnico, who claimed that dozens of available positions had been vacated and not subsequently filled. According to Castillo, following the fall 2011 shift from ABM to UGLUnnico, janitorial employees have added more responsibilities to their workloads, while their pay and positions often stay the same or decrease without forewarning. "Right now we don't even have cleaning supplies," he said. "We do the work as we can ... the best we can. There are many things this company doesn't want to resolve." "We sometimes believe that people working for the institutions directly can get more job security, benefits and things like that. Right now, it's mostly about respect and dignity," Duenas said. "Right now, we're trying to get Unnico to treat workers respectfully." "There are some people working 29 hours a week, and they don't have health insurance, vacation or sick days," Castillo said. Duenas continued to outline the process of the switch from ABM to UGL Unnico, with employees filling out a new employment application and going through the hiring process again. "About 60 of those workers didn't pass the hiring process," Duenas said. Employees who were unable to provide necessary documentation or information, for whatever reason, were terminated, according to Duenas. When Aramayo attended Tufts in the mid-1990s, the university did not use outside contractors for its janitorial crew. "Contractors are an easy scapegoat for the university," Alexa Sasanow, co-chair of JJA, said. "If the workers are employed by Tufts, no one else is to blame." Aramayo commented on the anti-union rhetoric often surrounding unionizing efforts at Tufts and its peer institutions in this respect, including claims about social and institutional structures in higher education. The minute we stand up, they go insane," he said. "Any time in any corporation when workers try to stand up and say 'I want to be treated with more dignity,' corporate groups go to extremes to stop it." "It's true in general and especially in private higher education - they say one thing when it comes to workers in other countries, and they say something different when people are organizing on campus," he added. "Tufts doesn't want there to be union for janitors. They don't want to respect the people who clean the floors. I think it's structural. They look at the bottom line - it costs more for a union than not [having a union]." Sasanow, a junior, explained how the students have been engaging with labor policy and action since the early 1990s, beginning with the Student Labor Action Movement, which became JJA in 2007. The community-building aspects of JJA organize soccer games with members of the labor force and bring coffee to UGL Unnico night-shift workers weekly. "It's important that students act as stakeholders - the university can't work without our tuition. Students should be a part of the decision-making process," Sasanow said. She explained a sense of elitism and entitlement she observes on the Medford/Somerville campus with respect to the cleaning staff. "People will puke everywhere and say 'It's the janitor's job to clean it up,'" she said. "It's disrespectful. Subcontracting distances the workers from the university through indirect employment. Because of that, they're not seen as members of the Tufts community." "I'd love for the administration to interact with the people they employ indirectly," Walsh-Mellett, a sophomore, said. "It's important that people who are employed know who their employers are."
The Leonard Carmichael Society (LCS) last night at 51 Winthrop St. hosted its 28th-annual Faculty Waits On You Dinner and Auction, raising roughly $3,000 for the Somerville Homeless Coalition (SHC). LCS Co-President Zachary Michel said that all of the proceeds earned from this year's St. Patrick's Day-themed event - including entrance ticket sales at $10 each for individuals and $8 each for groups of four or eight, raffle ticket sales at $1 each, as well as money earned from the auction - will go to the SHC. "This event is a great way for us to bring attention to their cause," Michel, a sophomore, said. "The money we raise tonight provides a substantial amount to their annual budget, so they're really relying on us to come through." LCS only sold around 70 tickets this year, a smaller crowd than in previous years when the event had been sold out. The timing of the event probably contributed to the lower attendance, according to Michel. "Given when this event happened, right before spring break when there's a lot going on with exams, we were very happy with the amount of people that turned out," he said. The night kicked off with a welcome speech from LCS Co-President ShaynaSchor, a sophomore, as faculty members served hors d'oeuvres, took food orders and delivered meals to students. Executive Director of SHC Mark Alston-Follansbee thanked LCS for aiding his organization. Following dinner, students and faculty bid on a variety of items and services that local businesses and Tufts faculty members donated to the live auction. Prizes ranged from museum and Red Sox tickets to a lunch for four with University President Anthony Monaco at the Gifford House. Assistant Professor of Music Stephan Pennington acted as auctioneer for the evening, and Michel delivered closing remarks to conclude the festivities. Alston-Follansbee said he greatly appreciates the LCS' effort in conducting the event each year. "I think it's another example of how Tufts creates active citizenship where you have faculty that are willing to come out and serve the students," Michel said. "It's support like this that really allows us to do our work. They did a really, really amazing job." Kevin Hoang, the event organizer and former Co-President of LCS, said he believes that the event was a success. "I think the auctioneer had a great time, and I think that it was a great event for both the students and the faculty," Hoang, a senior, said. "This is a unique event in which students and faculty can unite for one common goal, to raise money for the Somerville Homeless Coalition." Tufts' Director of Community Relations Barbara Rubel, one of 10 faculty members who served as waiters for the night, said that she has volunteered at this event since its debut, when the dinner was held in the Dewick-MacPhie Dining Hall. She said she is pleased with how the event has evolved. "As long as I'm here and as long as I can, I'll volunteer at this event," Rubel said. "It's just a lot of fun to be here. I love watching the bidding wars, and the homeless coalition needs our help." Professor of Mathematics and Department Chair Boris Hasselblatt also enjoyed serving at the fundraiser and plans to continue to do so in the future. "For me, it's something that's not very hard to do but clearly makes a difference," he said. "It's also just plain fun." Joshua Malkin, a junior, attended the event for the first time last night and said he will definitely return to the fundraiser next year. "I think it's a fun atmosphere and it's awesome that the teachers volunteered their time," Malkin said. "A lot of cool gifts were up for grabs."
Executive Director for the Center for Health, Environment & Justice (CHEJ) Lois Gibbs and Stephen Lester, Science Director of the CHEJ, yesterday spoke to Tufts students, professors and alumni in Eaton Hall during open block about their experiences with environmental activism and the media. The Communications and Media Studies program (CMS) and the Environmental Studies Program collaborated with the Director of the Digital Collections and Archives (DCA) and University Archivist Anne Sauer to coordinate the lecture on the same day as the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the procurement of the CHEJ's donation of Gibbs' and Lester's papers and technical files to the Tufts DCA, according to Director of Environmental Studies and Professor Colin Orians. Orians introduced Gibbs and Lester for the first collaborative effort with the CMS department, built around the theme of environmental activism and media. Orians explained the importance of and impact the Love Canal neighborhood in Niagara Falls, New York had on increasing environmental awareness of the idea that companies pollute and are not held accountable. "The fact that [companies] can build schools on top of waste dumps is just not fathomable," he said. "It's really the efforts of [Gibbs and Lester] fighting through incredible resistance to get the national awareness that this is not acceptable and we need to do something about it." The movement at Love Canal, which was spearheaded by Gibbs, led to United States legislation, including the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation and Liability Act of 1980, commonly known as Superfund, according to Orians. He noted that there are Superfund sites around the country, including one in Woburn, Mass., that are dedicated to cleaning up places contaminated with hazardous substances. Gibbs talked about how the leaders of the movement communicated with locals and the media to tell the story of families affected by health complications from the toxic waste under their homes, schools and offices. Love Canal activists began their campaign by targeting local media outlets with human-interest stories to publicize and generate awareness of the 56 percent of children born in Love Canal between 1974 and 1978 that had one or more birth defects or of the four normally-developed babies that were born out of the 22 pregnant women of Love Canal between January 1979 and February 1980, according to Gibbs. In each article, the activists referenced former New York Governor Hugh Carey, who was running for re-election, to gain public support. They also handed out flyers in front of Carey's $1,000-per-plate dinner, Gibbs said. "On one side of our flyer we wrote about the 56 percent birth defect thing and on the other side we talked about how we were going to hurt his campaign - how we were going to talk about how he doesn't really care about the citizens of New York or what he's doing to the good families of Love Canal," she said. "We handed [the flyers] out as people were going in and the media just loved it. The media loved it because it was an opportunity to tell a story that was different." Gibbs and her followers' strong efforts led to Carey opening his $1,000-per-plate dinner with his plan for taking care of the Love Canal neighborhood. "It was a matter of really framing our issues to the audience that we were addressing and moving that frame forward strategically to win the Love Canal," she said. Gibbs is excited for the archives to be located at Tufts. She said all of her personal notes as well as formal letters from the movement will be stored in an open collection held on Level G of Tisch Library. She noted that the majority of the work in the collection is from women, who primarily led the movement at Love Canal. Recently, Gibbs and her team went after Intimate Brands, Inc., which made its bottles using polyvinyl chloride (PVC). They created flyers about Victoria's Secret and Bath & Body Works products that used Intimate Brands, Inc. bottles and targeted students to advocate against the company. Intimate Brands, Inc. received over 4,000 emails from students and immediately decided to discontinue the use of PVC products, Gibbs said. "We asked students to get involved in this and they loved it - because it was 'Victoria's Dirty Little Secret,'" she said. "In less than 30 days [Intimate Brands, Inc.] sat down with us in D.C. and said 'we surrender.'" Gibbs said Intimate Brands, Inc. moved so quickly on this idea because young people were involved: people between the ages of 17 and 25. "The power of young people in corporate America is pretty powerful because all of their marketplace preferences of shampoo and body products and linens and whatever [are] developed between 17 and 25," she said. Lester said the CHEJ began focusing on grass-roots campaigns by word of mouth rather than advertising. "Organizing was always the strength of what we did," he said. "We help groups get started with organization and define their goals and how to involve the community and who to talk to."
The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate at its meeting last night rejected a resolution (7-14-2) that would have encouraged campus groups, including the Tufts Chaplaincy and the TCU Judiciary, to "interpret the University's non-discrimination policy in a way that does not bar religious groups ...
The most recent installment of the Experimental College's weekly lecture series, "A Taste of Tufts: A Sampling of Faculty Research," showcased Dr. Lisa Freeman, a professor in the Department of Clinical Sciences at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. At the lecture in the Granoff Center on March 9, Freeman spoke about her research on the optimal nutrition for pets.
The Office of Intercultural and Social Identities Programs (ISIP) was launched on Friday as a space for students to gain awareness and respect for racial, ethnic and identity diversity on campus, explore their own identities and confront social concerns on campus.
The Boston Business Journal (BBJ) on Feb. 23 honored Tufts Medical Center and its Floating Hospital for Children as the "Most Admired Health Care Company/Institution in Boston" during the BBJ's second annual recognition of the city's "Most Admired Companies, CEOs and Brands."
