Opinion
Opinion
The truth about Facebook 'privacy'
April 20Are you worried about your privacy on Facebook? Currently, 85 percent of college students have a Facebook account. Many employers check potential employees' Facebook profiles to get an idea of what kind of people they are. Compromising pictures and comments left by friends can ruin job opportunities and consequently change your life. Many graduates in the job market have learned the hard way that it might be a good idea to put concerns of personal privacy above the social-networking aspect of Facebook.
Opinion
Club sports program needs financial overseer
April 20Following a lack of administrative communication that resulted in a failure to properly allocate funds to club sports, the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate on April 10 passed a resolution calling for the university to appoint an administrator who would oversee the finances of the Athletics Department. The miscommunication — which occurred over the past two years and involved confusion between the Senate and athletics administrators regarding which funds went to Tier I and Tier II club sports — resulted in $10,000 of the club sports budget remaining overlooked and unused.
Opinion
Why swap clothes?
April 20On April 22, which happens to be Earth Day, the Tufts Eco-Reps will be hosting the second (hopefully annual) clothing swap. You're excited, I know. A chance to get rid of those old clothes taking up drawer space and maybe pick up a few "new" items. But a clothing swap has more value than a fun, free way to spruce up your wardrobe. The benefits fit into two categories: before and after.
Opinion
Monsanto does not meet Tufts' standards of environmental sustainability
April 19One of Tufts' most alluring qualities for me (as I'm sure it was for many of you) as a high school senior was its reputation as a globally conscious institution whose highest goals were to be a "model for society at large," to further human equality, to fight for the undeniable rights of all human beings, to maintain peace and to increase environmental sustainability. But two weeks ago when Jumboleaks published a list purported to be the university's outdated investment holdings, I was thoroughly disillusioned with the contradiction of these high standards and disturbed to find what companies we were allegedly connected with. With drastically increasing populations, society needs agricultural companies that can provide the products needed for increased food production without damaging the environment or the health of peoples. Monsanto, who was listed on Jumboleaks.org as one of Tufts' investments, is not this kind of company. In fact, the Monsanto Company embodies the exact opposite of the principles that our Tufts community so ardently values; Monsanto is a corporation that will do anything, often at the cost of polluting the environment, endangering health and violating rights, in order to increase personal gain and company profit.
Opinion
A small name may bring big reward
April 19The Daily last month revealed that Charles Vest, president of the National Academy of Engineering and president emeritus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), will deliver this year's commencement address. Vest does not boast rock−star fame; he made his name mainly in academia. But we should not shun him out of hand.
Opinion
Prashanth Parameswaran | The Asianist
April 19As thousands of representatives convene in Phnom Penh today for a donor conference, Cambodia is mulling a draft NGO law that forces associations and non−governmental organizations to undergo an onerous registration process. While the government says the bill aims to stem crime and promote transparency within these institutions, it doesn't take a lawyer of Atticus Finch's acumen to grasp this as another veiled attempt by Prime Minister Hun Sen to curb dissent and destroy the fabric of civil society in the country.
Opinion
Elisha Sum | InQueery
April 18To branch off of my discussion of semiology and the unstable signifier "woman," this column will address transfeminism. Historically, various strands of feminism, from radical separatist lesbian feminism to Marxist to cyberfeminism, have all shaped today's version. Throughout the critiques and tweaks, the question of what is a woman comes up and results in the exclusion of trans women and leads to transphobic rhetoric leveled against them. The late radical feminist Mary Daly described trans people as "Frankensteinian" in "Gyn/Ecology" (1978), professor Janice Raymond asserts that trans women partake in a patriarchal intrigue to subvert feminism in "The Transsexual Empire" (1979), and Germaine Greer, a prominent voice of second−wave feminist discourse, characterized trans women as a "ghastly parody" in a 2009 Guardian piece. Need I continue?
Editorial
Tufts should offer gender-neutral housing
April 18Students Acting for Gender Equality (SAGE) earlier this semester submitted a proposal to the administration for the creation of gender-neutral housing at Tufts. The proposal, titled "Recommendations for Gender Neutral Housing at Tufts" outlined an "option in which two or more students may share a multiple-occupancy bedroom, in mutual agreement, regardless of the students' sex or gender."
Opinion
The essential nature of laughter
April 13The Light on the Hill seems a bit dimmer as of late. I see a lot of people on campus who appear to be struggling day to day just to get by. It may just be finals approaching, it could be the awareness of the weather irregularities and the general state of things or it could be the economic situation straining our personal finances. I get a sense that a lot of people are feeling the blues, ennui or, perhaps, nothing at all.
Opinion
Once again, ECOM flouts its responsibilities
April 13Following an inadequately advertised pre-election process, 17 students last week walked onto the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate uncontested. The Senate did not even manage to fill the 21 seats that were available to rising sophomore, junior and senior students, meaning that Tufts Elections Commission (ECOM) will have to organize another election in the fall to fill the empty spots.
Opinion
Celebrating at 63: Revisiting the birth of Israel
April 13More than 80 years ago, Albert Einstein famously declared, "Zionism springs from an even deeper motive than Jewish suffering. It is rooted in a Jewish spiritual tradition whose maintenance and development are, for Jews, the basis of their continued existence as a community." With Einstein's sentiments in mind, the Tufts community prepares once again to congregate in the Mayer Campus Center tomorrow to celebrate our annual I−Fest tradition as Israel turns 63 years old. Nonetheless, several questions have been raised regarding the legitimacy of celebrating the State of Israel's independence and its basic right to exist.
Opinion
Setting the right precedent for journalism
April 12Labor activist Jonathan Tasini yesterday filed a class-action lawsuit against The Huffington Post, the popular online news and opinion website, as well as HuffPost owner AOL and HuffPost co-founders Arianna Huffington and Kenneth Lerer on behalf of thousands of uncompensated bloggers. Tasini, a former HuffPost blogger himself, filed the $105 million suit on the claim that Arianna Huffington unjustly profited from the work of the site's regular bloggers and other contributors, which add up to over 9,000 writers. Beyond the legal bases of the suit, Tasini's case places upfront and center the question of author rights, a question that needs an answer as we move ever closer to the age of digital-only journalism.
Opinion
Prashanth Parameswaran | The Asianist
April 12Late last month, the World Trade Organization (WTO) reversed its past finding and ruled in China's favor on countervailing duty and anti−dumping measures in U.S.−China trade. The decision rankled the United States and validated the view among some Chinese that international rules can work in their favor. But it also points to the need for Washington to be more strategic about taking China to the WTO on trade disputes in the future and to think critically about the best approach to use.
Opinion
The dark side of Israeli Independence Day
April 12"If I were an Arab leader, I would never sign an agreement with Israel. It is normal; we have taken their country … There has been Anti−Semitism, the Nazis, Hitler, Auschwitz, but was that their fault? They see but one thing: We have come and we have stolen their country. Why would they accept that?" — David Ben−Gurion, founding prime minister of Israel.
Opinion
Proposed financial aid cuts would hurt the Tufts community and the country
April 11Late Friday night, the U.S. House leadership fought to cut financial aid for some nine million college students, including almost 700 of our peers at Tufts. As a small group of legislators and aides met on the fourth floor of the Capitol to negotiate a final budget proposal for this year, the fate of financial aid hung in the balance.
Opinion
Safety alerts more noise than substance
April 11In the past two weeks, the Tufts community has received two reports from Tufts University Police Department regarding vague, and in one case unsubstantiated, reports of wrongdoing. The first, on April 1, occurred when a student reported that a male peer may have poisoned a female student's contact lens solution with peanut oil in an attempt to trigger an allergic reaction; neither the male nor the intended victim were known to the police. TUPD later concluded that there was no credible threat. The second, on April 10, reported that the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) police had detained a suspect at the Davis Square T station for allegedly stealing an iPhone or iPod from an unidentified victim.
Opinion
Elisha Sum | InQueery
April 11Ferdinand de Saussure developed the field of semiology, which the Oxford English Dictionary defines as "the branch of science concerned with the study of [...] signs and symbols." The field looks at how signs work and how we use them. A sign is the sum of the signifier, which is the form of the sign, and the signified, which is the concept of the meaning or the actual thing itself (i.e. "cat" versus the actual animal). To clarify, here's an example: The word "open," in the context of it being hung on a shop door, is a signifier signifying that the store is operating business at this time. It is deceivingly simple and has theoretical potency.
Editorial
Ethan Sturm | Rules of the Game
April 10I have now spent three days digesting the news of Manny Ramirez's retirement, and my feelings on the subject remain conflicted.
Opinion
Ashish Malhotra | Follow the Leader
April 10A long with many others, I often wonder how the United States of America voted former President George W. Bush into office on two separate occasions. The man's blatant incompetence was displayed on a daily basis, his often incomprehensible jargon giving us an endless supply of memorable "Bushisms."
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