Missed connections: The separation between graduate and undergraduate life at Tufts
By Chelsie Wei | March 8Walking in the streets of Tufts’ Medford campus, you may hear undergraduate students chattering about the latest IR midterm, frat party stories and housing lotteries. But have you run into any graduate students in your daily socials, club meetings and pickup sports? About 49% of the student population at Tufts consists of graduate students, with about 30% studying on Medford campus through the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, School of Engineering and the Fletcher School. However, the undergraduate population at Tufts rarely interacts with this significant portion of the campus community outside of class, whether it be in club meetings, at sporting events or at social gatherings. My peers and I often wondered what graduate students might be doing after their classes if not participating in the activities most undergrads associate with the traditional Tufts experience. There, instead, seems to exist an unrecognized problem brewing in the undercurrents among graduate student life — their lack of an on-campus presence in major academic organizations and culture clubs.
