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The Setonian
News

A reluctant Mr. West

September 28

Let's face it — it ain't easy being famous. But what's worse? Looking like you're famous.     I've experienced the difficulties secondhand, as my good friend Alec Ernest has gone through the anguish, the utter affliction, of resembling Vince (Adrian Grenier) of "Entourage" — not only a celebrity, but a celebrity who plays a celebrity. Youch.     Unsurprisingly, Alec, tired of passively enduring his likeness to Vince, shaved his lustrous dark hair in a bold attempt to sever any association between him and his more glamorous lookalike. On the bright side, it's now easier for him to mask the fact that he only showers once a semester. But Alec isn't the only one who has had to grapple with the adversity that is looking like the bold and beautiful.     There is a man among us who you may have, once or twice, mistaken for the Louis Vuitton don himself, Kanye West. Known as, "the guy who looks like Kanye" or "Clone-ye West," he cruises the quad in his mayonnaise jaguar, bringing music to the lay people: "I gotta testify, come up in the spot looking extra fly / For the day I die, I'mma touch the sky."     Not only do he and Kanye share a peculiar likeness, but they also seem to share a number of character traits: the laid-back yet socially vigilant disposition, the ample amount of confidence and yes, that kinetic aura — the swagger that demands your attention, makes you nod your head and say "Aww, yeaah ... That guy — he's got it." Often watching him sport a smart suit and his bluetooth headset, I've wondered whether or not he knows he's not Kanye. That is, until I met him.     A few days back, I summoned the strength to approach Clone-ye in Carmichael, inquiring about his feelings concerning his resemblance to the prophet Mr. West. Perchance I was lacking in tact, because, while good humored, he seemed a tad bit peeved by the question. Registering his reaction, I ensured him the article would be an attempt to get at the true "guy who looks like Kanye," so that those who don't know him personally could begin to recognize him for all that he does around campus. If successful, this column could be a means to divest him both of the stigma of being a celebrity lookalike and the titles that have come to shadow his true name.     Still, he would have none of it. Ironically, his decision will only serve to perpetuate the mythology surrounding "the guy who looks like Kanye" and ensure that such a title remains.     It is at this juncture that we may turn to the wise words of Kanye West himself, who, in his hit song "All Falls Down" proclaims, "We all self-conscious / I'm just the first to admit it." After taking a moment to filter through the faux-modesty and egregious self-importance of the statement, we see that Kanye has brought up a relevant point: We are all self-conscious in varying degrees, and instead of being ashamed, we should embrace our self-consciousness as a necessary part of being human and move on. With that said, I beseech you who've been dealt the unfair plight of sharing a celebrity's countenance to follow Mr. Ernest's lead and declare yourself separate and all together unassociated with the celebrity you resemble.     "Guy who looks like Kanye," I am ready and willing to give this another try. I'd like to let Tufts in on all those things that you don't have in common with Sir Kanye West — all the things you do better, like not wearing those stupid shuttered glasses and using restraint when considering beating up members of the media (wink, wink). Until then, I hope you find peace.

The Setonian
News

Homecoming '08: Bye, Bye Bobcats

September 28

Despite the swampy conditions on Homecoming Saturday, most Tufts teams put together winning efforts against the visiting Bates Bobcats. The football squad dominated with a 34-7 victory in front of a faithful gathering of soaked but stalwart spectators. The field hockey squad came out on top 4-2 and the women's soccer team won 2-0. The only loss of the weekend came from the men's soccer squad, which fell 2-0.

The Setonian
News

Financial Crisis 101

September 25

Negotiators met at the White House with President George W. Bush yesterday to discuss bailout plans in order to confront the recent economic crisis. Though the meeting was the first step in handling the issue, the talks are still very much in their preliminary phases.

The Setonian
News

Financial Crisis 101: A Dictionary

September 25

For non-economics majors, the intricacies of the economy and the terms thrown around to describe today's financial woes can be tough to grasp. Today, the Daily provides a list of commonly used economic terms and offers a simpler explanation of them.

The Setonian
News

Financial Crisis 101: Housing bubbles, interest rates and bailouts

September 25

This article is the first in a two-part series on the ongoing financial crisis on Wall Street. Today's piece will focus on the underlying causes of the problem; Monday's piece will examine the proposed government bailout plan and the implications of the crisis as a whole.Click here to read part 2.

The Setonian
News

Pep rally relocates due to weather concerns

September 25

An array of student performers will work to stir up campus pride at tonight's Homecoming pep rally, which has been moved to the campus center due to a dreary weather forecast.

The Setonian
News

Student-led effort leads to dorm improvements

September 25

Current residents of West and Metcalf Halls are enjoying new furniture, wireless Internet and fresh coats of paint in their common rooms thanks to an initiative last semester from two Tufts Community Union (TCU) senators.

The Setonian
News

Gephardt urges action on economic crisis

September 25

Former House Majority Leader and presidential candidate Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.) ate lunch with Tufts students in an ExCollege class yesterday. But first, he sat down with the Daily on a day when national lawmakers reached an impasse while debating a bailout for foundering financial companies. Gephardt answered our questions about the economy and the battle between Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

The Setonian
News

Drawing on experience, envoy offers advice on Afghanistan

September 24

Former U.S. Special Envoy James Dobbins drew on his personal experience in helping rebuild Afghanistan, giving the situation there a "mostly positive" review yesterday despite what he called serious bungling by the Bush administration.

The Setonian
News

Speaker advocates for socialist solution in Iraq

September 24

Socialist activist Ayisha Zaki urged Tufts students to join a movement to push for the interests of the working class in the Middle East, blaming corporate interests for social plight in countries like her native Lebanon.

The Setonian
News

Weeks takes thinking outside the box to fourth dimension

September 23

    Mathematician Jeffrey Weeks led an introductory-level tutorial last night on a not-so-elementary concept: four-dimensional shapes.     In the second talk of his three-part Norbert Wiener Lecture Series this week, Weeks discussed the nuances of the fourth dimension and the concept of space-time for an attentive audience in Braker Hall.     Weeks' lecture, "Visualizing Four Dimensions," approached the fourth dimension from the introductory level. Asking that "only people not possessing a Ph.D. in mathematics" respond to his questions, the MacArthur Fellow took on the difficulties of visualizing a four-dimensional world from our perspective as three-dimensional beings.     Weeks said the best way to deal with four dimensions is to drop down a level. He used the model of two-dimensional figures, or "flatlanders," living in a three-dimensional world as a device to help people approach the fourth dimension.     He drew two-dimensional stick figures standing next to a cube. "They use their regular intuition for X and Y coordinates," he said, but for the vertical Z coordinates, they use a "rainbow's worth of color." Weeks filled the cube with colorful slices of squares in a method known as color coding.     While the flatlanders only saw a line, he said, the colorful square slices extended out either way from the flat plane on which they stood to create one face of the cube.     He applied this color-coding method when explaining how to visualize a four-dimensional hypercube. He asked members of the audience to point out the location of the hypercube's vertices, edges and faces and their respective colors.     "This is the joy of the method, to just kind of look," he said.     Weeks said that color coding is the first step in seeing these complex objects naturally.     "Color coding is a crutch to get you started in visualizing the fourth dimension," he said. Once students have had experience with four-dimensional objects, they would ideally no longer need to use the color system.     Weeks introduced new jargon to more accurately describe the four-dimensional realm. "English has words for left and right and up and down," he said. "But when you want to talk about the fourth dimension, you're at a loss for words." Ana and kata, he said, are the terms for describing positive and negative movement in the fourth dimension.     Weeks went on to discuss the applications of the fourth dimension to space-time. He suggested that time is not as linear as we perceive it, but it is a collection of moments stacked together in one continuum.     "Try to free yourself from the confines of a 3-D slice and think in 4-D," Weeks said. "Integrate the past and future into the same mental image."     Weeks ended his lecture with a short question-and-answer session.     The Department of Mathematics brought Weeks, the author of "The Shape of Space," (1985) to Tufts as part of the Wiener Lecture Series, a yearly event held in honor of Norbert Wiener (A '09), who founded the field of cybernetics.     Senior Elizabeth Gibbons, a math major, was struck by the perplexity of Weeks' ideas, despite the accessible manner of his lecture. "This is a great way to really stretch your mind," she said. "It's not something you understand right away. It's just an eye-opener to get a different perspective and think in a different way."     Mary Caddle, a graduate student studying math education, said she enjoyed Weeks' methods of visualization. "I really loved the idea of the color coding," she said.     "This is just crazy," she said. "But I love the idea of … trying to see it, practicing it and coming back around. It becomes more natural to visualize."     Weeks will focus on spherical spaces in his third Wiener lecture, which will be held at noon today in Pearson Hall.

The Setonian
News

Varis speaks during center dedication at Cummings School

September 23

    The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine dedicated its new campus center yesterday to benefactor Agnes Varis during a ceremony that featured a speech from the Tufts trustee on her life philosophy.     Varis expounded on her 14 life commandments, which will be engraved on a plaque and displayed inside the campus center. The commandments include, "All I need to know, I learned from my cats," "You can agree with me, or you can be wrong" and "A woman's work is never dumb."     Varis' most germane piece of advice was her last: "When you die, no one will remember you for how much money you made. They will remember you for what you did with it."     A member of the Cummings School's Board of Overseers and Tufts' Board of Trustees, Varis provided a naming gift of $4 million out of the $6 million necessary to convert what was a nurses' dormitory in the former Grafton State Hospital into the Agnes Varis Campus Center.     The center, which opened earlier this summer after almost a year of construction, fills a void by providing students with a cafeteria, bookstore, offices, meeting areas, lounges, study rooms and a 1,000-square-foot fitness center.     "All the things you think of that are built into an undergrad campus didn't really exist," Cummings Dean Deborah Kochevar said.     The bookstore used to be in the Jean Mayer Administration Building, study lounges were scattered throughout the campus and the cafeteria was run out of a trailer.     Annie Shea, a second-year veterinary student, said that the new campus center is already heavily used. "I've already spent a lot of time studying in their study rooms," she said. "We have a pretty small library that has a couple study rooms, but this really [increases] the study space on campus."                      Varis has also donated the naming gift for the second phase of construction on the campus center. This will include an outdoor patio area and a 173-seat auditorium, which will be called the Agnes Varis Auditorium. The project is slated for completion in the spring of next year.     At the dedication, Varis was joined by fellow speakers Kochevar; University President Lawrence Bacow; David McGrath (V '86), the chair of the Cummings School's Board of Overseers; and Shea, who spoke on behalf of the student body.     A crowd of about 250 attended. The audience included additional members of the Board of Overseers, state Rep. George Peterson, Jr., selectmen from Grafton, alumni, students and faculty.     The event took place on the campus' front lawn. "It was a stunningly beautiful day in Grafton," Kochevar said.     Bacow addressed the crowd first and expressed his gratitude to Varis. Kochevar echoed him in her remarks.  "I was very pleased to also thank Dr. Varis for this truly transformative gift," she told the Daily.     "She has made such a difference on this campus in so many ways," Kochevar said, citing Varis' many donations, but calling the new building her most significant. "None of those comes close to what a campus center is going to mean to us."      Shea, who is in Tufts' Master of Public Health/Doctor of Veterinary Medicine combined degree program, spoke about "how much we really needed the campus center and [about] all the needs that it was fulfilling on campus," she told the Daily.     Following the dedication, Varis sat with a group of about 20 students in one of the study rooms and answered questions.     They had the chance to "sort of pick her brain and listen to her," said Shea, who attended the discussion. According to Shea, Varis has a "colorful personality."     As the founder and president of both Agvar Chemicals, Inc. and Aegis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., Varis is a "real pioneer in terms of both what she does and the fact that she is a woman in a mostly male-dominated world," Shea said.     Varis, a long-time benefactor of the Cummings School, has also given naming gifts for a lecture hall and a hospital ward for cats. She has contributed to student stipends and an endowed professorship, as well.     Varis does not limit her donations to the veterinary school. She contributed to the Granoff Music Center and gave the Agnes Varis University Chair in Science and Society, among other gifts.     The campus center donation is part of Tufts' current capital campaign, Beyond Boundaries, which began in 2006 and aims to raise $1.2 billion by 2011.

The Setonian
News

Senate passes resolution in favor of Greek community

September 23

    The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate declared its support for the university's Greek community in a resolution on Sunday night, acknowledging the contributions of fraternities and sororities while calling attention to the interests that those groups share with the Senate.     The resolution, which passed with zero "no" votes and three abstentions, stated that the Senate "strongly supports the efforts of the [Inter-Greek Council (IGC)] and the Greek community as a whole to strengthen the image of Greek life at Tufts and to develop leaders that can better the Tufts community."     Jake Maccoby, the president of the IGC and a former senator, submitted the resolution last week on behalf of his council. He told the Daily that he put it forward to get an "affirmation" of the Greek community's values from the Senate, as well as to show that Tufts' greater "Greek family" contributes heavily to the student body as a whole.     "What this resolution was about was getting our goals, our plans and what we believe in as a family out there in front of the wider Tufts community," said Maccoby, who is also an editorialist for the Daily. "The Greek community is a subset of the wider Tufts community."     Before passing the resolution, senators clarified that the document would not obligate the body to provide any specific form of aid or commit to a particular project.     Dan Pasternack, a sophomore senator and a co-chair of the Senate's Student Outreach Committee, said that specific undertakings by the Senate are outside the parameters of the resolution. "This proposal was just asking for our general support. It wasn't necessarily that we were unwilling to [commit to certain projects]; it was just that there wasn't anything [specific put forward] at the moment," he said.     TCU Associate Treasurer Lauren Levine said, "Really, the resolution was just saying that we support whatever the IGC does."     "It was really just a memento of our support, not really pledging any physical action," said Levine, a sophomore and a member of the Chi Omega sorority.     Both the resolution and supporters of the document pointed to the fact that about one-eighth of students belong to Greek organizations. Moreover, the resolution pointed out that "many members of the Greek community take on other leadership positions in the Tufts community."     President of the Panhellenic Council Jessica Snow said that the Senate's declaration of support would help strike down stereotypes of Greeks. Snow, a senior who is also the IGC's vice president and public relations director, said she hopes that in the future, Greeks will not be seen as a separate, disengaged part of the student body.     "We've been doing really good things for a long time, and it's sad that [the Tufts] community hasn't had the opportunity to see those things as much as we would like them to," said Snow, a sister in the Alpha Omicron Pi sorority. "We've always been promoting philanthropy, we've always been promoting sisterhood and brotherhood [and] we've always been promoting community. The resolution is about making sure everyone around us knows that these things are important to us."     Levine shared those sentiments. "I supported [the resolution] because I think that the Greek system does have a bad reputation on Tufts' campus that isn't necessarily deserved," she said. "The resolution highlighted the number of leaders within the Greek community and the many philanthropic events held every year."     Nine fraternities and three sororities have chapters at Tufts.

The Setonian
News

Tufts students join thousands more at pro-marijuana rally

September 23

Tufts students were among the thousands of people who came together Saturday on the Boston Common to support the pro-marijuana Freedom Rally, commonly known as HempFest, which was sponsored by the Massachusetts Cannabis Reform Coalition (MassCann).

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