Mere weeks before the 2024 election, several major newspapers, including The Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, have announced that they will not be endorsing a presidential candidate this cycle. This flies in the face of tradition for both of these widely read publications and was met with consternation and resignations from their own organizations.
On Sept. 16, after 10 months of public accusations, larger-than-life hip-hop rapper and executive Sean “Diddy” Combs was arrested at a New York City hotel. The next day, his indictment was unsealed. The 14-page document charges Combs with racketeering, sex trafficking and transporting individuals for use in prostitution. Although his trial is not set to occur until May 5, 2025, the sheer number of men and women who have come forward against Combs makes his conviction seem very likely.
Over the past few years, whenever someone outside the Tufts bubble asks me what I am majoring in, I usually glibly respond “economics.” This is only a half, or maybe a quarter, of the truth. I am not an economics major, but I have taken enough courses in the discipline to know that my interests lie elsewhere. Responding in this way allows me to avoid the raised eyebrows and back-and-forth discussion that occurs when I say that I am a philosophy and international relations double major. These experiences have made me reflect upon the value of a college education.
One out of every seven schools in Ukraine has been destroyed by Russians since the start of the full-scale invasion in 2022, leaving over 5 million Ukrainian children deprived of a traditional education. Statistics for higher educational institutions are even more depressing with one out of five universities and colleges in the country having suffered physical blows to their infrastructure as a result of the bombings. Despite these attacks, the Ukrainian educational system continues to develop, with schools adding opportunities to their institutions.
Last week I wrote about the Rohingya, an ethnic group in Myanmar who have undergone intense persecution from both the military and local Buddhist nationalist groups, concluding my article with what could be done to help lessen the burden on these civilians. To fully understand the situation, though, we need to consider the premodern history of Muslim groups in Myanmar, acknowledging that British colonialism is the primary cause of the tensions that are present today.
This year has seen images of slaughter in Gaza amass, and, yet, the public’s interest thereof has seemingly only waned. And not for a lack of published material. It seems that in spite of the deaths of over 41,000 Palestinian people; in spite of the mounting Lebanese civilian casualties; in spite of the numerous crimes against humanity that the Israeli state has committed, photographic documentation has done little to inculpate the American government and citizens at large. Depictions of senseless slaughter, to which our eyes should otherwise gravitate toward and of which should warrant political action, have been cast to the social wayside as byproducts of a region that, in American eyes, only knows death and strife.
In recent years, a global movement towards vegan diets has risen to prominence, driven by the idea that going vegan can help save the planet. Researchers have identified that vegans produce an environmental footprint that is at least one-third lower than those who eat meat. They are also responsible for 93% less methane, a greenhouse gas responsible for 25% of global warming.
Upward mobility has long been held up as a defining factor of generational success, especially in the U.S., where the notion of rising above one’s parents in socioeconomic status is central to the “American Dream.” Traditionally, this concept meant climbing the social stratum — gaining wealth, status or both, often through education or hard work. In practice, upward mobility is sometimes reduced to a simple metric: whether the next generation earns a higher income than the previous one.
In 1991, Louisiana voters were faced with two unfavorable options for governor: Democrat Edwin Edwards and David Duke, a white supremacist and former KKK grand wizard. Edwards had a history of gambling, corruption and scandalous affairs. In 1985, Edwards even admitted to taking $1.9 million to sell state hospital and nursing home permits. Nevertheless, faced with the choice between Edwards and a white supremacist, Lousianians chose Edwards as the lesser evil.
Delivering an opinion requires a certain awareness of how that opinion will land with its audience. This is to say, when someone delivers an opinion in a public forum, it is accompanied by a rhetorical goal. We are an opinionated student body, and the Daily provides a wonderful forum ...
It was February of my sophomore year when I woke up to a blaring noise. The Harleston Hall fire alarms were going off at 2 a.m. My roommate and I sluggishly put on our coats and begrudgingly left our abode. As we walked outside into the freezing winter air, we noticed a significant lack of urgency. No one who was walking outside with us believed that there was an actual fire. Some people even remained behind in their dorms, putting pillows over their heads to suppress the noise while they waited for the inevitable false alarm announcement. Suffice to say, if there was an actual fire, we’d be in serious trouble.
Ballot Questions 6, 7 and 8, which will be put to the voters of Medford on Tuesday, Nov. 5, would fund the building of a new fire headquarters, level-fund and invest in the Medford Public School System and hire additional staff in the Department of Public Works for street repairs. Medford has been systematically ...
Over the summer, I listened to an intriguing podcast titled “Are We Talking About Therapy Too Much?” In it, host Jerusalem Desmas talks with Dr. Lucy Foulkes, a researcher at the University of Oxford, who is concerned that movements around mental health awareness are not unilaterally beneficial. After listening to Foulkes’ argument, I began thinking more critically about the ways mental health is discussed in our generation and specifically at Tufts.
As an avid TikTok scroller and Instagram Reels watcher, I get sucked into hours of mindless entertainment everyday, with short yet meaningless videos fueling my daily dose of “brain rot.”
On July 21, 1919, a young Black woman named Carrie Johnson shot and killed a white detective. She was tried for murder in the first degree, but the charges were eventually dropped because the incident happened in the midst of one of the mobs of “Red Summer,” a series of extremely violent white supremacist mobs that struck 26 U.S. cities. As her attorney argued, Johnson’s use of a gun was not a random act of violence — it was an act of self-defense, and, some may argue, of feminist resistance.
On Oct. 4, I woke up to the news of yet another gut-wrenching story from back home in Turkey: A 19-year-old, Semih Çelik, savagely killed Ayşenur Halil and İkbal Uzuner, by decapitating one of them before committing suicide by jumping off of the Theodosian Walls in Fatih. He had been admitted numerous times to psychiatric facilities in the last year and was known to be disturbing towards Uzuner, but as usual, little precaution had been taken. My social media was swarmed with photos of the event from passers-by and long paragraphs of outrage from my friends and family.
On Election Day, Massachusetts residents will be voting on five state ballot questions. These questions cover a wide variety of topics, including standardized testing, restaurant wages and psychedelic drugs. The Daily’s Editorial Board has taken a position on each of the five questions.
On Tuesday, Nov. 5, Medford voters have a historic opportunity to invest in our public schools and city government by voting yes on ballot Questions 6, 7 and 8. These questions include a debt exclusion to build a new Fire Headquarters and two overrides that will invest in our schools and fund the Department of Public Works to carry out street repairs.
Nick Giurleo’s op-ed opposing the override and debt exclusion misrepresents the facts. Voting “yes” on ballot Questions 6, 7 and 8 is essential for Medford’s future — protecting our schools, public safety and city infrastructure.
Steve Jobs said that among the most impactful classes he ever took in college was a class on calligraphy. It may be easy to turn one’s nose at this statement, writing it off as foolish or performative, or conclude that Big Calligraphy lobbied Jobs to share it. It is especially easy to do so if one subscribes to the idea that all education must provide a specific set of skills that one can lift straight from the classroom to a job site — or at least a graduate school application.
Op-ed submissions are an integral part of our connection with you, our readers. As such, we would like to clarify our guidelines for submitting op-eds and what you can expect from the process.
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