Opinion

Relay for Life

Every community is affected by cancer, including our own here at Tufts. More than 1.6 million people in the United States will be diagnosed with the disease this year. But the progress is real. The rate of cancer death in the U.S. has dropped a remarkable 20 percent since the early 1990s, preventing over a million cancer deaths in that short time. The American Cancer Society has contributed to the broad effort that has led to this drop, and its why were proud to be part of Relay for Life at Tufts University.

Walt Laws-MacDonald | Show Me The Money!

In one of the most-watched television events of the year, Louisville beat Michigan on Monday night to become the NCAA mens basketball champion, bringing the four-week, 67-game March Madness tournament to an end.

Jonathan Green | Drug Justice

Stop the out-of-pocket politics: A call for more equitable TCU elections

Every vote counts. Seriously. You may not know it, but all students have the opportunity to vote today on a variety of referenda, which, if adopted, will reform the operations of the Tuft Community Union (TCU) Senate in ways that benefit all students on campus. Though the ballot measures discuss an array of issues (you can read all about them at ecom.tufts.edu/referenda), one of the most pressing and important of these petitions seeks to eliminate personal financial contributions to TCU presidential campaigns. Though this issue may seem miniscule in comparison to others at Tufts, its existence impacts the composition of our student government by limiting who can and cannot afford to run for office. By voting in favor of this referendum today, we can collectively make a statement about how we desire a more representative, more connected TCU government that embodies the spirit of economic equitability and equal opportunity that we strive to espouse as a university.

Walker Bristol | Notes from the Underclass

Lend Your Leg for a day: show you care about landmine victims

Tufts should embrace burgeoning startup community

Handicapped accessibility: the civil rights movement of the future

Walker Bristol | Notes from the Underclass

NQR is back

Tufts right now: an open letter to the 18.7 percent

Strategies, tactics and occasional dilemmas

 On Thursday afternoon several students from Tufts Divest went into a prospective students' info session and asked the admissions officer several questions about Tufts' investments in the fossil fuels industry.  Parents and students in the info session reacted negatively to the interruption, frustrated that their already limited time was being cut short.  A few parents from the audience expressed their discontent aggressively, verbally attacking the students from Tufts Divest. The action was recorded and subsequently leaked through Facebook provoking a brief, albeit controversial reaction among Tufts students.  Many members of the student body expressed disapproval of the action, believing the activists did not represent Tufts accurately and instead left prospective students with an undeservedly negative image of the university.  

Craig Frucht | Axes to Grind

A 16?year?old girl goes out partying in Steubenville, Ohio, where photographs document her becoming intoxicated to the point that she can't walk, stand or talk. While she is in that state, two boys use their fingers to penetrate her, and one of them tries to force her to perform oral sex - only she isn't conscious enough to comply.

Resolution step forward in fixing flawed advising

It's time to talk

I am currently abroad, and a friend of mine on campus hinted that I might find the commentary and conversations on the Tufts Confessions Facebook page both horrifying and grossly fascinating. He was right. I realized that a fair amount of Tufts students clearly do not understand - either because they refuse to be educated or because they have not been educated - rape culture and/or sexual assault. They do not understand anything about victim blaming, they do not understand anything about the dehumanization of rapists and victims alike and they do not understand the words "trigger warning," "consent" and "trauma," among others, that shape our society's and our campus' approach to other human beings.

Jonathan Green | Drug Justice

From Woodstock to New York City's stint as a focal point for the cannabis?fueled antiwar activism of the New Left, the aroma of burned reefer has long oft?floated in the breeze of the Empire State. Last week, though, legislators in Albany again failed to pass a meaningful cannabis decriminalization measure in their new budget, thereby continuing to indefinitely sustain the criminality of cannabis and its racially charged law enforcement.

Transparent planning of Africana studies threatened by complacency

Given that the a program in Critical Studies in disparities and Diasporas (C2D) was created for the most part as a direct result of concerted effort on the part of a passionate group of undergraduate students and their allies, it constitutes a threat to all that these students have achieved that the administrators and faculty have not made a clear effort to involve them in its implementation. Whether student representatives to the working group on the umbrella program are realistic in their demands, or whether their opinions are popular, should by no means dictate whether they are listened to. Even the students are now unclear on their role on the working group they themselves helped to create or whether the working group even still exists.Students all but made this program happen, and to exclude these students from the processes by which it will be defined is directly contradictory to the historical spirit of the push for an Africana studies major and representation of the study of diversity in the Tufts curriculum. Since the 1970s, this has been a student-led movement. Last year, it was students that occupied Ballou Hall and, for better or for worse, forced a decision out of the relevant administrators. That Dean of Arts and Sciences Berger-Sweeney will now not even comment on the process of moving or not moving forward with the program shows a certain level of contempt for the students who have become emotionally and academically invested in seeing their project through.Even if the Dean has valid motives for passing responsibility for the pro gram and the working group down to those with on-the-ground knowledge, these faculty members and administrators must recognize what it means that they have since December not made it clear to their student counterparts what their relationship will be, let alone met with them or possibly even met at all. A working group should not take this much work these students jobs are not finished, and they have done their part to make it clear that they will see their project through through if given the chance. The university has a chance here, in creating a brand-new program without the bindings of precedent or institutional memory, to truly take into account the desires of the people who had a hand in creating it while it designs the curriculum and thinks about hiring key faculty.The series of miscommunications and a general lack of clarity spell a threat that this opportunity may be lost, especially the more vocal student proponents get fed up or graduate off the Hill to move on to more fruitful activism.

iSIS better extremely late than never

The Integrated Student Information System (iSIS), will replace the thirty- year-old Student Information System (SIS) program currently in use by the end of the year. After decades of dealing with SISs less-than-intuitive and clunky workings, the creators of iSIS are optimistic about the possibilities of what should ostensibly be a vast improvement on SIS the new sites designers seem confident that iSIS will continue to work out glitches and to grow as the campus determines what works and what doesnt. The idea that iSIS could evolve to meet specific concerns and stresses of a rapidly changing world of tech holds promisethe track record of its older sister, SIS, does not, however, inspire the same fuzzy feelings.

Walt LawsMacDonald | Show Me The Money!

Walker Bristol, my fellow oped columnist hes the crazy lefty that will be on this page tomorrow and apparent Twitter archnemesis, called me out on a line from last weeks column that I honestly hadnt given much thought to. CEOs put on trial. Wait what Wall Street execs exactly have been put on trial except Bear Stearns?

OPED | An oped battle: we all want to be heard

As the author of the antiStudents for Justice in Palestine (SJP) oped that appeared in the Daily last week, I first want to apologize for judging SJP as an outsider in an effort to engage with them. I had never been to a SJP event (even though I tried, but was discouraged), so I was unfair to judge them so critically without knowing much about them. I have come to learn that most SJP members are very welleducated on the issue and that they have thoughtout reasons for their actions.