Opinion

Editorial Cartoon: Nov. 10, 2015

A pipe dream

This past week, President Barack Obama’s administration announced it would reject the proposal to construct the Keystone XL pipeline, ending a long-running debate. Ahead of the world’s most important climate talks in years, it is an agenda-setting move.The pipeline would have further connected ...

Obama's Keystone XL decision is about more than just the environment

President Obama finally vetoed the Keystone XL pipeline project on Friday after keeping it on the table for the past seven years, bringing an end to nearly a decade of activist and political drama. The move demonstrated a turn in Obama’s growing pro-environmentalist leanings as he prepares to enter ...

Editorial Cartoon: Nov. 9, 2015

Editorial Cartoon

It happens early

Today marks the 62nd day of the "Red Zone." The Red Zone is a term coined by the media to describe "a period of vulnerability for sexual assaults, beginning when first-years first walk onto campus until Thanksgiving break," according to a Sept. 10, 2014 BusinessInsider article.When ...

Give Graham a shot

For a Republican primary debate, last week wasn’t much of a show. Suffice to say it was far from the most interesting debate. Perhaps it represents the broader staleness of the Republican primaries, despite many claims that the race has never been so unpredictable and exciting. Either way, some rightly ...

Editorial Cartoon 11/04/15

Protection for transgender community in public spaces

College students have played a unique role in catalyzing social change in our country. In the 1960s, thousands of students participated in Freedom Rides, boarding buses across the country to travel to Southern states and register to vote African-American adults who faced institutionalized disenfranchisement. ...

Let's talk about consent

If you’re a first-year, you’ve probably already heard a lot about sexual consent. If you’re a senior, maybe less so. That’s because in the last three years, the ways in which consent is taught and viewed on university and college campuses has changed -- a lot. Much of this change is due to the ...

Obama administration's Testing Action Plan not sufficient corrective to excessive testing

On Oct. 24, the White House released its Testing Action Plan, a document that discusses "Principles for Fewer and Smarter Assessments." As national discourse about the amount of time and funding spent on standardized testing in K-12 education gains more and more of the media spotlight, this ...

For the love of the game?

A couple months ago, I was sitting at Mike’s in Davis Square, and there was a baseball game playing on the TV set. It was the middle of the day, and a few customers (plus the cashier) were watching it. It took me a couple of minutes to realize these adults were yelling at a game played by children ...

Worsening contract laws threaten to trap generation of students in debt

As of the end of last year, the burden of excessive student loan debt was affecting 40 million American students, whose debt totaled $1 trillion. Student debt is also the only type of consumer debt that has actually risen since the Great Recession, increasing by 84 percent between 2008 and 2014, ...

Rubiowning it

Marco Rubio is going to be the Republican nominee to be the next president of the United States of America. Good to get that off my chest. I’ve been ready to say that for a few weeks now, but Wednesday’s debate solidified the Florida senator, currently a solid third in polls, as the man to beat.Getting ...

Administration must plan for new dorms in light of growing political pressure

The new, massive Science and Engineering Complex (SEC) being erected near Bromfield-Pearson and Anderson Halls, which is slated for completion in 2017, as well as the recently completed 574 Boston Ave. building and the complex at 200 Boston Ave. that was completed in 2012, all display the university's ...

Editorial Cartoon

Halloween: not the season for cultural appropriation

Alright folks, Halloween is right around the corner, and we all know what that means: it’s time to spend hours in your closet, at a thrift shop or -- if you’re feeling especially inspired -- at an actual costume store. Even then, we all are familiar with the struggle of finding the perfect Halloween ...

The Tufts Attitudes About Sexual Conduct survey lacks intellectual integrity

On Wednesday, Sept. 30, the results of the 2015 Tufts Attitudes About Sexual Conduct survey (TASCS) were released to the broader Tufts community, and the results are quite concerning. Let’s assume that the Tufts definition of non-consensual intercourse is equivalent to the legal definition of ...

Fueling the future

There seems to be a predetermined structure to life, and we’re just too stubborn to admit it. Even though we exhort "following your dreams" and "living life to the fullest," it seems we are set on doing otherwise. There’s a reason we say "follow" your dreams. It's ...

In spite of anonymity, accountability must be maintained in Yik Yak exchanges

When Tyler Droll and Brooks Buffington created Yik Yak,they did so with the intention of voicing the opinions of the disenfranchised and the unrepresented.Yik Yak's anonymity, theoretically, allows for a more unfettered kind of free speech in which fear of being ostracized need not be considered ...