Tufts’ total cost of attendance has broken the $90,000 barrier for the 2024–2025 academic year, reflecting the rising costs of higher education across the country. For incoming undergraduate students at Tufts, the new price of attendance is approximately $92,167 — a figure that includes ...
Fiona Hill, a former advisor to three U.S. Presidents and the current Chancellor of Durham University, will deliver the commencement address to the class of 2024. University President Sunil Kumar announced Hill as the speaker on March 27.
Saffiyah Coker, a senior studying economics and international relations, was selected as the winner of the Wendell Phillips award and will deliver an address at this year’s Baccalaureate Ceremony. The award, established in 1896, is named for the attorney, women’s and Native Americans’ rights activist and abolitionist. The award is given to a senior who demonstrates marked ability as a public speaker and a sense of public responsibility.
The spring 2024 Tufts Community Union Elections are here. Polls are open from Wednesday at 12 p.m. until Friday at 12 p.m. All students will receive a link in their Tufts email address directing them to an electronic ballot. Sophomores and juniors will decide their incoming class representatives in competitive elections. The Indigenous Peoples’ Community Senator seat remains vacant for a third semester, while no candidates are running to fill the newly vacated Latinx Community Senator seat.
At the end of January, Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne announced the resumption of the City of Somerville’s search for their next chief of police after three finalists for the position were ultimately rejected by the mayor’s office last November. The search will be led by the city’s Racial and Social Justice Department, its Human Resources Department and public-sector executive recruitment firm GovHR, which serves as the requisite external consultant to identify and certify potential candidates. This search has been ongoing since March 2020, when former Chief David Fallon announced his retirement. Interim Police Chief Charlie Femino has led the department since Fallon’s retirement took effect in December 2020.
CultureHouse, a nonprofit placemaking organization based in Somerville, transformed a vacant storefront into a vibrant community center in Union Square. Since its opening in January 2024, the pop-up, located at 64 Union Square, has offered a space to foster community and build intercultural and intergenerational relationships.
The Tufts Federalist Society hosted a panel titled “Intellectual Diversity on Law School Campuses” on March 28. The panel participants included Emily Miller, a third-year JD candidate at Harvard Law School; Ben Pontz, a third-year JD candidate at Harvard Law School and president of the Harvard Federalist Society; and Kristi Jobson, Assistant Dean for Admissions and Chief Admissions Officer for Harvard Law School. Dayna Cunningham, Dean of the Tisch College of Civic Life, moderated the panel.
At its most recent weekly Sunday meeting, the Tufts Community Union Senate announced the university’s plans to address food insecurity in light of students’ frustration with no longer being able to use two meal swipes at retail dining locations. The Senate also approved a previously denied funding request from the Tufts TURBO dance group and approved two requests for supplementary club funding.
In recent weeks, students purchasing food from Hodgdon Food-on-the-Run will have noticed the dining location’s line layout appears to have undergone a subtle redesign and that customers now receive a paper receipt upon checking out.Often, a watchful employee stands near the door.
An unauthorized email purportedly announcing the death of University President Sunil Kumar was sent to Tufts community members on the morning of April 1, ending with the words “April Fools” and a call for heightened security measures.
The Department of Romance Studies is unveiling a new interdisciplinary major — aptly named Romance Studies — for the upcoming fall semester that will allow students to study two romance languages simultaneously. In addition, the French department has also tweaked requirements for the French minor to accommodate students with higher proficiency, with credit toward the six required courses beginning at French 4.
Tufts University accepted 10% of applicants to the undergraduate Class of 2028, the admissions office announced shortly after spring break. This year’s acceptance rate rose just half a percent above the record low acceptance rate set last year, just 9.5%.
For the first time, applicants to the Tufts Class of 2028 were given the option to be considered for the Tufts Civic Semester in their Tufts undergraduate applications. The Civic Semester, coordinated by Tisch College and student travel program organization Where There Be Dragons, gives newly admitted students the opportunity to engage in internships with civic organizations and to immerse themselves in local communities abroad, through excursions and living with host families.
On any given weekend morning, small crowds of students can be found waiting outside the Joyce Cummings Center entrance. Why? The building is closed to non-computer science students before 12 p.m. For this demographic, the following behavior is typical: fruitlessly pulling at the door handles, peering into the windows or awkward loitering until someone with the right keycard comes along.
TEDxTufts announced the speaker lineup for this year’s conference and a special exhibit that will be featured on the day of the conference. The conference, on April 13, is being presented as: “TEDxTufts Turns Ten: Refraction.” The speaker lineup for this year’s conference includes Bernadette Dineen, Cristobal Cea, David “Dee-1” Augustine, David Delvalle, Dr. Miguel Basáñez, Dr. Natalie Rubio, Nikhil Vootkur, Peter Kaldes, Sophia Day and Supreme Hassan.
For the sixth consecutive year, Tufts is hosting Global Tufts Month. Throughout the month of March, a series of collaboratively organized events will be put on following the theme “Humanitarian Aid: Working Together in Times of Conflict.”
Established in 1963, the Somerville Municipal Employees Association has since grown to represent more than 260 municipal workers, with bargaining units that cover everything from the Department of Public Works to the library department to school nurses. For more than 20 months, however, these vital city workers, prohibited by Massachusetts law from going on strike, have been working without a contract.
The Tufts Federalist Society hosted a panel about the criminal indictments against former United States President Donald Trump on March 1 in the Joyce Cummings Center. The panel consisted of Jeffery Cohen, associate professor of the practice at Boston College Law School; Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank; and the moderator, Tufts’ own Eitan Hersh, an associate professor of political science and civic studies.
By March 1, sophomores in the School of Arts and Sciences were required to declare a primary major. This is a hard deadline for all second-year students, with class registration placed on hold upon failure to declare. While many have already decided on a major, others approached the deadline undeclared.
On Monday, Tufts announced a pilot program involving new changes to the registration process for undergraduate students. Engineering students will now register two days in advance for School of Engineering and select Arts and Sciences courses required for their degree progress — mostly those under the math, chemistry, biology and physics and astronomy departments — but will register for other classes simultaneously with Arts and Sciences students in their class year at randomly assigned times.
