Opinion

Lessons from Fall Ball

Fall Ball, an annual campus-wide dance party, met with great success on Friday, with fewer alcohol-related incidents and a generally cleaner and classier atmosphere. For many freshmen, their first major introduction to life at Tufts came as a welcome reprieve from the stress of the first week of classes, yet for upperclassmen who have attended Fall Balls of years past, the lead-up to the event proved somewhat disappointing.

Battle against alcohol abuse has just begun

Keep talented students in the United States

Those who follow politics may feel like they spend most of their time waiting for the nation's laws to catch up to the morals on which they were raised.

Carpe diem

Two weeks of camp-like activities — Undergraduate Orientation and Senior Week — bookend what many say are the best four years of your life. Whether this common sentiment actually holds water and is not just something said by old people trying to sound all nostalgic is up for debate, but what isn't is that you should make the most of this unique time.

Letter from the Editor | You read it here first

Hey, you! Yes, you — you proud, card-carrying member of the Jumbo Nation. You brilliant, handsome, mild-mannered young Jumbo, you. The one sweating under the scorching sun, contemplating why you didn't choose to attend a school on the water.

A welcome from the Tufts Community Union president

Welcome to Tufts! I'm so excited for all of the first-years to be starting out on the Hill. I am not the only senior who wishes he could go back and relive the last three years of college again.

We won't be your wingmen

Welcome to Tufts, alma mater of the great Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.).

Honoring 2010: Continue what they started

When I was asked to write an op-ed for this year's Commencement issue of The Tufts Daily, it hit me for the first time that this graduating class will no longer be on campus to provide the leadership, guidance and friendship that the underclassmen have come to take for granted. By choice or circumstance, the Class of 2010 has been in the middle of every major transition, both at Tufts and globally, and has handled these challenges in a manner that I only hope we can emulate. It is my goal next year to continue the work they've started on campus: of increasing opportunities and resources available to improve students' time on the Hill, and of creating a more unified Tufts community.

Time for the Class of 2010 to enter the 'real world'

The real world is a joke. How could it get any realer than this? At Tufts, we have grown as both a community and individuals by developing a core commitment to active citizenship and curiosity. At Tufts, we have been challenged both intellectually and personally by studying some of the world's most pressing problems. At Tufts, we have contributed as both students and the Class of 2010 by leaving a legacy of leadership and activism in activities throughout the school.

New university president has big shoes to fill

University President Lawrence Bacow will leave an impressive legacy when he steps down in 2011. Bacow has since joining Tufts in September 2001 dedicated himself to increasing aid to ensure that Tufts is financially accessible. He has also worked extensively to strengthen the alumni network and to raise the funds needed to ensure that Tufts continues to be an international leader in both education and research. Bacow's level-headed leadership helped Tufts navigate the recent global economic crisis without being drastically impacted by the difficult financial situation. On a more personal level, Bacow and his wife Adele Fleet Bacow's hospitality and openness to the Tufts community are worthy of thanks and celebration.

Thank you, Tufts University Dining Services

While I'm sure at some point during my Tufts career I've seen many of you — be it standing in line at "sundae night" in Dewick-Macphie, examining Carmichael's bountiful produce section for a choice orange, filling your reusable water bottle at one of Hodgdon Good-to-Go's many spouts or calmly sipping a beer at Hotung Café after feasting in The Commons Deli and Grill after a hard day's grind — I sometimes wonder how many of us know what goes on behind the scenes of Tufts University Dining Services (TUDS). Engaged in the continual hard work of providing varying (and might I say comparably damn good) options at the various eateries around campus, not to mention cleaning our dishes after many a meal, the staff members of TUDS provide us with an essential for our busy lives. And they manage to do all of this and more with the grace and determination of what Patti Klos, director of Dining and Business Services — in partnership with the Office of Sustainability — calls a "commitment as an institution to sustainable initiatives."

Elisha Sum | Our Genderation

Tori Amos once sang, "A few witches burning/ gets a little toasty here."

Teddy Minch | Off Mic

I was, for a while, unsure of what to put in this column. I could have expounded on the meaning of life, the merits of self-actualization or perhaps the importance of watching sunsets. I could have focused on something that has irked me throughout my time at Tufts and written a scathing condemnation of it for all the graduating class and its parents to see — yeah, that would've shown them, all right.

Paean to Spring Fling

A few times a year, at school-sanctioned events, much of the student body comes together to get down. All but one of those times, it's in the crowded darkness, and several things happen as a result. Don't get me wrong; the Bashes and Balls are a wild experience and a great way to unwind. The unavoidable way to participate in a giant indoor dance party, though, is as part of a faceless mass. Nighttime Quad Reception, though distinctly a non-orgiastic mass — weird — is largely faceless as well. The dark breeds a safe anonymity, whether one dances or struts the birthday suit. Meeting someone doesn't feel like meeting a real Tufts student, but rather a creature of the night who swam up into your view. The conversation gets lost in the pulsing beats, or innumerable rear-ends. Eventually they fade away at the end of the night, and you'll have to really work to reconnect the next day, having met in the surreal darkness.

Class of 2010 is ready to face what's next

Today's ceremony will not be the first Commencement that most graduating Jumbos will have participated in. Many seniors will remember feeling the anticipation of going to high school while standing awkwardly at their middle school graduation ceremonies. Most will remember their high school graduations, when they felt a mixture of relief and eagerness to finally have the promised land of college on the horizon. But none of these moving-up ceremonies have possessed quite the weight that graduating from college carries.

University's handling of water emergency laudable

This weekend's water main break in Weston couldn't have come at a worse time for many Tufts students. Not only did Saturday's Spring Fling leave worn−out Jumbos feeling thirsty after the concert, but the warm weather of the last few days has made it particularly difficult for students on and off campus to cope with the lack of clean water.

Raising issues of environmental justice

An important social−environmental movement that we don't hear about as much as the mainstream environmental movement is that of environmental justice (EJ). The EJ movement combines environmentalism and social justice into a single theory that calls for equality in the sharing of benefits and burdens of the environment. That is, no group should disproportionately bear the brunt of environmental harm while other groups reap all the benefits. Traditional environmentalism focuses much less on complex internal social issues, rather on ameliorating environmental problems as a whole.

Elisha Sum | Our Genderation

Tori Amos once sang, "Blood in the cherry zone when they pit [hu]man against feminist."

ECOM handled TCU election poorly

With the many criticisms and claims that Tufts Elections Commission (ECOM) has had against this spring's Tufts Community Union (TCU) presidential candidates' campaigns, ECOM has left a somewhat ugly trail of its own. While the Daily has supported some of the outcomes of controversial decisions made by ECOM this campaign season, we are unwilling to condone the processes by which these judgments came about.

Bacow's approach to TEMS commendable

Tufts' recent efforts to reform the drinking culture that appears to define undergraduate social life have been numerous. The university has instituted an online alcohol education course for incoming undergraduates to take before matriculation, replaced the warning that students previously received for a first drinking offense with automatic level−one disciplinary probation and most recently mandated that Spring Fling be a dry event, among other developments. However, one of the more effective and important of these efforts may be one of the least well−known — University President Lawrence Bacow's meetings with students who have required assistance from Tufts Emergency Medical Services (TEMS) for alcohol−related problems.