Health care reform — the buzz phrase that has been on everyone's lips and on the front page of all major newspapers since early in the summer. However, despite the headlines and the promises of politicians, we are dangerously close to failing, once again, to produce coherent, lasting health care reform.
When word came from Norway of President Obama being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, Press Secretary Robert Gibbs was sound asleep. Gibbs phoned Obama before the sun rose and thus began the single most bizarre day in recent American political history. President Obama later appeared in the Rose Garden to bashfully qualify his acceptance of the award as "a call to action." Obama said he was both "surprised and deeply humbled," suggesting he felt odd "to be in the company of many of the transformative leaders who have received this prize." The speech was concise, and Obama was back at work inside the White House before most in Washington had begun their lunch hour.
Much controversy has arisen over the bestowal of the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize last week to President Obama, who had been nominated before even being elected president.
Young adulthood in America has many defining characteristics and events. Voting? Of course. A growing sense of independence? That's included as well. Urinating on the walls of a club? Maybe not so much. But when one looks back to the events from the first Senior Pub Night on Sept. 24, the realization that Tufts seniors may not have grasped that concept arises. The various less-than-socially-acceptable actions displayed by those who attended Senior Pub Night have created doubts as to the future of the event. Two seniors unaffiliated with the Senior Class Council have created the group Senior Club Life and plan to go ahead with a Halloween club night at Ned Devine's. This new event, of course, inspires the question: Will this one be any different or is history doomed to repeat itself?
On Tufts' campus, nearly every student knows that, in the case of physical injury or illness, Health Service is the place to go. Students know where it is located and what it offers. The same cannot be said of the Counseling and Mental Health Service (CMHS). Of those students who know about the service, few could tell you where it is or what it offers. A similarly small number of students could list the symptoms that indicate someone should seek help at the CMHS. This ignorance is more dangerous than it seems. Suicide is the third leading cause of death among 15-to 24-year-olds — it's one that Tufts experienced firsthand a few years ago — and the community cannot afford to stay in the dark about psychological issues or the resources available to address them.
Online commenting has revolutionized the media. Instead of relying on viewpoints or letters to the editor — eating up editorial time and column inches in the print edition — campus media can encourage reader interaction 24/7.
In recent years, under the leadership of Director of Fraternity and Sorority Affairs Patrick Romero-Aldaz, Tufts' Greek community looked to clean up its image and renew its focus on the values on which campus Greek societies were built: community, leadership and philanthropy. Romero-Aldaz's aim was to make this campus' fraternities and sororities more than simply social organizations.
Yesterday, the Sustainable Endowments Institute released the College Sustainability Report Card, an evaluation of campus and endowment activities at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada.
Walking around the streets of Santa Marta, my rural host village in El Salvador, it was hard to miss the big groups of kids playing around the street. Packs of five-to-13-year-olds walk around, mess with each other's clothes, play with empty bottles and not-quite-inflated soccer balls, laugh and shout like they're having the time of their lives. It is not until you have spent more time getting to know their names, where they live and who their parents are that it eventually occurs to you: Those two are sisters and cousins with that one, whose aunt is the godmother of the one with long hair whose one brother is the compañero (similar to a husband but without the marriage ceremony) of the curly-haired one's half-sister because they both eat lunch at the same grandmother's house down the street, who lives with his aunt because his mother doesn't live here anymore. Slowly, more facts come out about who is related to whom until you figure out an enormous web of family relations. Your cousin isn't just your relative … he's also your best friend. After all, you have been hanging out with each other every day since, well, forever.
Following the examples of 10 other states, North Carolina's State Board of Community Colleges voted last week to allow undocumented immigrants to attend all 58 of the state's community colleges. Such prospective students must prove that they graduated from a U.S. high school, and they must pay the $7,700 out-of-state tuition. They will also receive no financial aid. North Carolina Gov. Beverly Perdue opposed the decision, saying she found it hard to understand why the state should educate these people "when they can't work legally in the state after they're educated."
My name is Becky A. I am a senior majoring in architectural studies.
Every Tufts student has some form of health insurance. It's a requirement for enrollment in a Massachusetts university. Though there are plenty of exceptions, the typical Tufts student knows that her parents take care of her health care — and that when she is very ill she can go to the hospital, sign some papers, direct the bill to her "permanent address," receive treatment and hopefully go home happy. Beyond that, how health care works and even what it costs probably remains a mystery to her.
As members of the Tufts community mourn the dreadful passing of a beloved alum, we have the opportunity to reflect on and grow from his remarkable achievements and his outstanding embodiment of the active-citizenship values this university hopes to promote.
Every so often, the seriousness of a bias incident reaches seemingly unprecedented levels. This is to discourage future behavior that could further upset the balance of Tufts' social environment, in which people from all walks of life can come together freely and openly to share experiences, knowledge and ideas. After all, Tufts' social environment is certainly one of its selling points and is only made possible by the student body's compliance.
The efforts of Tufts Community Union President Brandon Rattiner and the student members of the newly formed Alcohol Task Force to open dialogue with university administrators on the new alcohol policy have already been unnecessarily complicated by yet another instance of excessive alcohol consumption by underage students.
The public editor seeks to be the liaison between campus media and their readers. As Public Editor, I hope to advance a campus conversation on Tufts media, bringing forward important issues we often take for granted and putting issues in new contexts that challenge the way we get our news.
Every time you leave the bathroom, you hit the lever and watch the water swish away another gallon and a half of wastewater. Your relationship with trash is probably similar: put it in the bin, haul it to the street (or let OneSource do it for you if you live at Tufts), and rest peacefully knowing that some truck has taken it somewhere far away. Indeed, our purchasing patterns show that consumers respond to marketing through bulked-up packaging. We buy excessively knowing that if we dislike something, we can just throw it out and, within a few days, have it carted off to some landfill. Waste isn't something that Americans are accustomed to thinking about, and when we do, we know it will be down a pipe or in a truck on the way to someplace else very shortly.
The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Time Magazine, The New Yorker, US News and World Report, CNN, NBC News, ABC News, CBS News and countless other national news sources have all taken on an issue of grave importance that they feel they must cover — despite the fact that it only affects a small group of a few thousand young adults in the Boston area.
Last semester, I took a course on international negotiations in which my class learned what was described as the preeminent strategy taught to all negotiators. The book from which this theory stemmed, "Getting to Yes," by Roger Fisher and William Ury of the Harvard Negotiation Project, challenges conventional negotiation strategy by putting forth a new, principled form of negotiation. The authors' call to reexamine traditional approaches to negotiation has direct and critical relevance to the current debate about the university's alcohol policy.
On Tuesday, those members of our government who are truly passionate about reforming the country's health care system suffered yet another major setback in their attempts to pass the bill proposed in early August. Moderate Democrats and Republicans came together in vetoing an amendment to the bill called "The Community Choice Plan," which provided for a so-called public option. This plan would have allowed people to buy health care funded by the government rather than from private companies. The plan also would have instituted a standardized "coverage label" for all health insurance plans, a label that would clearly spell out plans' terms and costs.
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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