The Department of Education released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on Jan. 29, announcing its intention to restructure the student loan system in an attempt to lower the cost of higher education.
All university campuses will remain closed through Tuesday following a blizzard that battered the Northeast late Sunday and Monday.
A resolution encouraging adding voter registration information in syllabi was introduced at the Feb. 8 Tufts Community Union Senate meeting. The resolution is a dual initiative from JumboVote and the Senate that intends to make voter information accessible to all Tufts students, regardless of major or academic focus.
The City of Somerville hosted a community meeting on Feb. 9 about the latest design updates to the ArtFarm public park. The park’s construction is set to begin in 2027 on top of the Poplar Street pump station — a stormwater management structure currently under construction — to provide a community space for Somerville residents in the Brickbottom neighborhood.
Rümeysa Öztürk announced Thursday that she received her Ph.D. from the Eliot-Pearson Department of Child Study and Human Development at Tufts, ending a tumultuous journey that saw her detained by federal agents in her fifth year of doctoral study.
Two Medford residents have filed a federal lawsuit seeking to strike down the city’s newly enacted Values-Aligned Local Investments Ordinance, which requires the city to divest public funds from companies involved in weapons manufacturing, fossil fuels, private prisons and entities accused of human rights violations. The lawsuit sets up a legal and political battle over the limits of municipal authority and the role of local government in international affairs.
The Somerville city budget is expected to be reduced by nearly $5 million this year due to a slowing economy and federal funding cuts.
The Tufts Community Union Senate met on Monday to provide project updates, review the resolution process ahead of numerous resolutions being presented to the Senate and to hear funding appeals from student groups, before ending the meeting early because a quorum of 24 senators was no longer present.
This semester, the Tufts Community Union Senate Judiciary recognized 22 new student clubs and organizations, granting them access to funding, room reservations and tabling at the club fair.
Medford and Somerville were hit with more than 20 inches of snow in late January, marking the largest snowfall in the area since 2022.
Professors of the practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts ratified their first collective bargaining agreement with the university on Tuesday, ending nearly two years of tense negotiations.
The Tufts Community Grants program is currently fundraising for its 2026 grants. The fundraising effort, which ends on Feb. 28, is raising money to award grants to nonprofits in Medford and Somerville that are partnered with Tufts volunteers.
Tufts is piloting a new pre-college program this summer called College Prep 101 for Neurodivergent Students, designed to help neurodivergent high school students prepare for their transition to college. The program, launched by Tufts University College, will run June 22–26 and is open to students in grades 10 through 12 who are able to commute to Tufts’ Medford/Somerville campus.
The Tufts Community Union Senate hosted a Tuition Transparency Town Hall on Tuesday to break down how the university allocates its budget amid rising tuition costs. The event featured several senior university leaders, including Provost and Senior Vice President Caroline Genco, Vice President for Finance and Treasurer ad interim Thomas Malone, Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Bárbara Brizuela and Dean of Engineering Kyongbum Lee. Approximately 60 students attended.
A group of students in the Tufts Graduate School of Engineering completed their first semester as the inaugural class of the Master of Science in Artificial Intelligence. The new program comes as student interest in AI continues to grow, sparking the creation of undergraduate student organizations.
The Tufts Community Union Senate welcomed newly elected senators and discussed an effort to include voting information in syllabi, among other issues, in its Sunday meeting.
Haviv Rettig Gur, a veteran journalist for The Free Press, The Times of Israel and host of the “Ask Haviv Anything” podcast, headlined “The Configuration of the Middle East After the Gaza War” last Wednesday, a conversation hosted by the Tufts Center for Expanding Viewpoints in Higher Education.
A campuswide survey sent by the Tufts Community Union Senate at the end of the fall 2025 semester found that Tufts students generally do not feel supported by the Senate and do not know what it does.
A Boston immigration judge terminated Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk’s removal proceedings, according to a filing made by Öztürk’s lawyers on Monday. Immigration Judge Roopal Patel found that the Department of Homeland Security had failed to bring forward sufficient grounds for Öztürk’s deportation.
Tufts University’s research expenses have grown significantly over the last five years despite cuts in federal funding posing serious challenges to research across academia. According to Tufts’ 2025 Annual Financial Report, research expenses increased by $43.3 million, or 24.5%, over the past five years. This growth was accompanied by an $11.7 million, or 4.2%, increase in sponsorship revenue — including grants, contracts and gifts — from the prior fiscal year.
