Boston College (BC) announced a plan last month to install GPS tracking systems in its campus shuttle buses. The devices, which will be similar to Tufts' JoeyTracker, will allow students to monitor the buses' locations via a Web site beginning next semester.
This is the second article in a two-part series profiling Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman. The first installment, which was printed in yesterday's paper, looked at Reitman's early career. Today's article will examine the issues and challenges he has faced on the Hill.
Two Tufts professors delivered their last lectures to the university yesterday evening, or so they were told.
This is the first article in a two-part series profiling Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman. Today's article will focus on Reitman's background in education and current position as dean. The next article, which will appear in tomorrow's paper, will address challenges and issues Reitman has faced at Tufts.
Students at Tufts for Investment Responsibility last night sponsored a panel entitled, "It's the Endowment, Stupid." Three panelists answered questions about how the endowment works, endowment transperancy and other related topics. Harvard lecturer Josh Humphreys, left, the director of the Center for Social Philanthropy; Tufts trustee Dana Callow (A '74); and Neva Goodwin, co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts, participated in the event.
The Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy has unveiled a new program in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) this semester, allowing students from the region to earn a master's degree equivalent in nature to one obtained at the school's Boston campus.
As a resident assistant in a freshman residence hall last year, I had to make and put up name tags on each door before freshmen moved in. As move-in day approached and more upperclassmen arrived to help with orientation, I noticed that a few doors had something else posted next to the name tags that I had painstakingly created. On my floor these included welcome and invitation messages for international students, African-Americans, and Hispanics. The messages included encouragements for students to stop by the Africana Center or other locations for the respective groups and contact information for a potential mentor of a similar background. At the time, I was curious but not really bothered by these messages. My thought was that it's really not my place to pass judgment on overtures from and within communities that I don't belong to and can't identify with. Tufts people, including those mentioned above, have this need to belong — naturally. But the need here is more than just membership in a group of friends or even in a larger group with which they can identify. Tufts people love belonging to a minority group or, at the very least, a group that at one point has been discriminated against. I'm going to call this a thirst for victimhood. Me? I tried pretty hard to find a maligned group that I could be a part of, but I'm a straight white male from Connecticut, I don't identify with any religious sect, nor do I have particularly outrageous political views (although I have conservative friends who might disagree). I also wonder if there are some Republicans on this campus who are really moderates in disguise — political affiliation or beliefs can be an outlet for the thirst for victimhood too. The interesting thing isn't wanting to belong to a group of similar peers; psychologically and sociologically, it makes sense for a minority individual to seek out other minority group members within a larger group with whom they can identify. My concern is the self-segregation of these cliques, where groups typically don't mix and "outsiders" aren't welcome. We can have diversity, but it's meaningless without social interaction. I'm not talking about affirmative action or anything to do with admissions — it's the orientation process and the Dean of Students' Office's explicit focus on encouraging cliques that concerns me. The Group of Six is comprised of the Africana Center, Asian American Center, International Center, Latino Center, Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Center, and Women's Center. The centers are under the auspices of Dean Reitman's office and also receive funding directly from his office. In their defense, the Group of Six houses mainly hosts events that are at least nominally open to all members of the Tufts community regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. Sometimes this is true in practice, too — I've availed myself of the delicious food at several barbecues at the Africana and LGBT centers. But that isn't really the point, is it? Why is the Dean of Student Affairs pushing self-segregation within the student body? I applaud efforts from the Group of Six to make Tufts a welcoming environment for students from groups that have faced historical and often current discrimination, and I'm not trying to make an attack on these groups individually or the students involved. My problem, instead, is the compartmentalization and yes, segregation, albeit voluntary. What's the benefit of diversity if everyone is separated?
Tufts Recycles! last week started a month-long composting program in the Mayer Campus Center aimed at educating students and disposing of the building's food waste in an environmentally friendly manner.
Page Thompson, CEO of Omnicom Media Group, spoke yesterday evening in a packed room in Eaton Hall about his career and gave advice to attendees. Thompson played a video of advertising for McDonald's that his agency had designed. Imaginet, a Tufts student marketing communications group created last semester, sponsored the event.
Seth Merrin (LA '82), the co-founder, president and CEO of the groundbreaking financial company Liquidnet, Inc., shared his secrets to success on Tuesday in the spring installment of the Lyon and Bendheim Alumni Lecture Series.
Chef, author and television personality Anthony Bourdain entertained a packed Cabot Auditorium last night.
The Office of Undergraduate Admissions reported a 4 percent drop in applications this year but accepted 26 percent of applicants to the Class of 2013 -- down less than 1 percent from last year, the Daily learned yesterday, the date by which all applicants were notified of a decision.
For many individuals, taking a multivitamin is a daily ritual as common as brushing one's teeth. Americans spend $23 billion a year on multivitamins. Recent articles in newspapers such as The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and The Boston Globe, however, have left some Americans questioning how useful this habit really is.
After years of fighting to achieve equal employment opportunities, women are finally beginning to close the employment gap. The reasons, however, may be surprising.
Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senators Chas Morrison and Brandon Rattiner have begun laying the foundations for their potential campaigns for the TCU presidency for the 2009-2010 academic year, though the two senators cannot yet officially announce their candidacies.
Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy graduate and Navy Adm. James Stavridis (F '83, '84) was tapped last month by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to serve as commander of NATO.
Tufts' first-ever Class Week is taking place this week with events designed to provoke discussion on socioeconomically charged issues that affect student life both on and off campus.
The Office of Residential Life and Learning's (ResLife) claim that it was able to fully meet student demand at the lottery earlier this month was met with contention after several students reported they were waitlisted for housing.
This is the first article in a two-part series addressing LGBT issues and the work that senior Sofia Nelson has done to eliminate biases. The first installment will focus on Nelson's work at Tufts. The second article, which will be printed in Thursday's paper, will focus on her work at the state and community levels. Growing up in a small agricultural town in a conservative, religious part of Michigan, being a member of the queer community was not easy for senior Sofia Nelson. While living in this area, which was frequented by violence directed against gays, she developed a strong desire to fight for reform in the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) community. Now an established member of Tufts community, Nelson has worked relentlessly to achieve these goals. "I appreciate my hometown, but I was very excited to come to Tufts and have the opportunity to be who I am — I didn't feel safe to be back at home," she said. Tufts' commitment to the gay movement, small classes and friendly professors appealed to her. But while she loves Tufts and the opportunities it has afforded her, she recognizes that the university is not perfect. "When I think Tufts is doing something wrong, I usually have not kept quiet … but I would not spend so much time trying to change Tufts if I did not really care about Tufts, she said. "Like any place, it can do better." Nelson has worked at Tufts LGBT Center since her freshman year. She has become involved with coordinating various programming events as well as creating and implementing policies. In 2004, the Tufts administration added gender identity and expression to its non-discrimination clause. Since arriving at Tufts, Nelson has worked to ensure that this policy is integrated seamlessly into the community. "I wasn't part of [the creation of the policy] because I was still in high school, but since then there have been efforts to make sure we stick with that non-discrimination policy," she said. "Just writing it down is not enough; we need to implement it. Everyone from human resources to professors needs to understand what that means and how their actions need to be augmented in accordance with that." Nelson is particularly interested in transgender issues. At Tufts, she has worked on the labeling of single stall bathrooms on campus. As a result of her efforts, the two single-stall bathrooms in the reading room of Tisch Library, which just a few years ago were labeled male and female, are now labeled gender-neutral or unisex. "I've worked on making sure that all single-stall bathrooms are gender neutral, to allow gender nonconforming students a space to feel safe when using the restroom," she said. Nelson also focuses some of her efforts on increasing awareness of and support for the transgender community. "I have worked to make sure programming around campus involving queer issues brings in more transgender speakers focusing on the transgender community," she said. "I think having conversations with the administration about broader transgender issues is important in order to educate people. Lots of people haven't heard the term or don't know what it means. There is a lot of education that needs to be done around these issues to make sure that people aren't acting in a way that hurts other people without even knowing it. This is the first step to creating change." In her efforts to bring change to the Hill, Nelson has been involved in LGBT awareness events like Coming Out Day and Day of Silence and has helped bring in speakers like Staceyann Chin, a poet and artist who speaks about the intersection of gender, class, race, sexuality, and nationality. One LGBT project sticks out to Nelson as her one of her proudest accomplishments at Tufts: the Open Letter Coalition. "Basically, a bunch of students were hurt by various events on campus — incidents involving the Primary Source, the university's response to those incidents, the lack of diversity training for students and faculty, the lack of faculty of color, the low retention rates of students of color," she said. "So we wrote a letter/ad that appeared in the Daily and got many signatures directed to the administration about changes we felt were necessary in relation to issues of diversity at Tufts." The open letter was a collaborative process; students from all types of groups on campus, from the Muslim Students Association to the Africana Center to the Asian American Center to the LGBT Center participated. According to Nelson, at least ten students contributed pieces of writing to the open letter, and it was coalesced into one document. "I think that that collaboration is really important — students from all these groups coming together to talk about issues of class, race, sexual orientation, ethnicity … to have these kinds of conversations," she said. Nelson feels that the open letter has been successful at creating a dialogue between the administration and students and in helping the administration understand student concerns and students understand the constraints the university is under. "We've had conversations with many administrative officials about student concerns, and the administration has been very cooperative. Groups of students [and I] have met with a trustee, the provost and others to talk about what we can do to make things better for minority groups on campus," she said. Nelson is proud that she is using her education to create positive change in the community. "I feel like I'm putting my academic understanding of intersexual impression into practice in collaborative work environments with other students to create the change we felt was necessary, to begin the process to create that change."
The organizer for a Tufts conference on medical research ethics has recused himself from planning the event after his committee rescinded an informal invitation to a congressional staffer over a potential conflict of interest.
