Content Warning: This article discusses violence, torture and genocide.
Content warning: This column discusses suicide, gun violence and domestic violence.
After days of counting and nail biting, President Joe Biden was declared the winner of the 2020 presidential election last November. Two months later, on Jan. 6, supporters of former President Donald Trump stormed the Capitol building in an attempt to stop the certification of the election results, following a “Stop the Steal” rally held by Trump nearby.
Today, the state of Virginia will vote to decide who its next governor will be. With the 2022 midterm elections rapidly approaching, the two leading candidates in next week’s election head into the polls in a close race.
A few days ago, I awoke to a crisp Medford fall morning and heard a rumble from the corner of my dorm room; there’s nothing quite like the annual activation of the heating system to bombard you with thoughts of the upcoming winter. As a native Floridian with only one New England winter under my belt, the anticipation of the coming season is daunting. Even with a closet shoved full of sweaters, jackets, hats, scarves and boots, I know that the changing seasons will inevitably bring a lack of sunshine, more time spent indoors and bone-chilling walks up and down the hill. Although we didn’t have to spend this Halloween with snowfall, as we did last semester, impending below-freezing days loom in our near future.
On Oct. 2, an oil spill off the coast of southern California was reported. According to Coast Guard officials, the spill came from a leak in a pipeline owned by Amplify Energy Corp, a Texas oil and natural gas company. The spill is said to have released around 25,000 gallons of oil, more than five times lower than what was previously estimated. Although this is the first major oil spill of 2021, as oil spills have decreased over the last few decades, we are still sitting at an average of about two per year in the U.S. While many people are concerned about the cost of making a national switch to renewable energy, it is time that we consider what oil drilling is costing us right now.
The Assad dictatorship in Syria — led for 50 years by Hafez al-Assad and his son Bashar — has been brutal, long-lasting and authoritarian. Even movements such as the 2011 Arab Spring revolts, which dethroned dictators in Libya, Egypt and Tunisia, did little to dislodge Assad's iron grip on its civilians. The revolts prompted a still-ongoing civil war in Syria, in which millions of Syrians were forced to seek refuge, were externally displaced or perished from the violence. Tragically, the Assad regime has been the main perpetrator of human rights abuses throughout the war, abandoning its obligation to protect Syrian citizens. In her book, “Ambiguities of Domination,” Lisa Wedeen illustrates how this phenomenon reflects the politics of “as if."Per Wedeen, the Assad regime does not care about Syrian citizens, but it acts as if it cares in order to appear legitimate.Conversely, many Syrians do not necessarily support the Assad regime, but act as if they do to escape persecution.
What if I told you that there’s a middle-ground solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?
This illness policy is fundamentally flawed, and leaves students without sure alternatives or recourse to continue their education in isolation. The Tufts short-term illness form does not excuse students’ absences, missed coursework or exams they may be too sick to take, and without a convenient way to request medical excuse notes, students are now reliant on professors to understand and judge their situations despite largely lacking health care training.
When coming to Tufts, I never envisioned life as a student-athlete. I spent my first year here on the treadmill masked in the Steve Tisch Sports and Fitness Center, and I never imagined myself sporting team-labeled apparel. Yet, earlier this semester, after seeing an advertisement for walk-on women’s rowing tryouts, I decided to step completely out of my comfort zone and show up in pursuit of a position as a coxswain.
Five hours. Two hours, 48 minutes. Thirteen hours, 7 minutes.
Last week, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists published its largest global investigation to date: the Pandora Papers. More than 600 journalists from 117 countries have spent the past several months reading through almost 12 million documents including images, files, emails and spreadsheets collected from 14 sources which reveal the hidden assets, tax evasion and money laundering of some of the world’s richest people. Among the myriad groups and high-profile figures implicated, the United Kingdom’s property market and the tax policies of several U.S. states proved to be global hotspots for wealthy individuals to hide their assets.
When thefirst mezuzah was ripped from a Harleston Hall resident’s door frame, I had multiple conversations with my editor, considering an article in response to the heinous act of cowardice. However, due to Tufts’ swift response to the action, and my unfortunate status as a busy second-year biomedical engineer, I eventually decided that, although it may have been valuable, an article would have simply stated the obvious.
I moved back to Somerville to make it my home about a year after graduating from Tufts in the COVID-19 Class of 2020. I came back for the colorful three-story houses, the little libraries, the community gardens, the small businesses and the public art. More than all that, though, I came back for the progressive values and community care that I sensed in the Somerville air during my four years at Tufts.
The recent testimony of Facebook’s degradation of democracy and harm to millions of young women’s self-esteem has proven again that Washington must act.
On May 14, 2021, members of Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine painted the Tufts cannon as part of a vigil honoring the lives of Palestinians who died in the two-week-long conflict referred to by Gazan militant groups as the “Sword of Jerusalem Battle,” and by the Israeli Defense Forces as “Operation Guardian of the Walls.” That same evening, the cannon was vandalized with crude language and images.
Before being elected into office, President Joe Biden promised to bring urgent change to America’s broken immigration and asylum system. In short, our current president pledged to the public that within his first 100 days, he could undo the cruel and senseless policymaking of the prior four years. Very high on his laundry list of commitments was the termination of the Migrant “Protection” Protocols, better known as the “Remain in Mexico” policy, which bars many asylum seekers from entering the United States while waiting for their cases to be processed. The implementation of Remain in Mexico in 2019 resulted in nothing short of a crisis — a constant state of affairs the Trump administration seemed more than happy to create — as asylum seekers packed into unsafe, unsanitary and inhumane tent cities at the border. At the same time, the cogs of law and bureaucracy determined the fates of these migrants.
InJune, 22-year-old Gabby Petito and her fiance Brian Laundrie embarked on a cross-country road trip. For the majority of the trip, Petito maintained regular contact with her friends and family, but her communication abruptly stopped at the end of August. Laundrie returned home from the road trip alone on Sept. 1, offering no mention of the whereabouts or conditions of his fiance. Ten days later, Petito was reported missing by her parents.
Twentieth-century technological advances led to the modernization of Pan-Arabic music. Musicians utilized improved microphones to cultivate the sensation of “atifiyaa,” an artist-centric feeling of sentimentality and sensuality characteristic of modernist Egyptian music. Further technological changes led to the popularity of the cassette tape, which helped deviant underground music reach millions of Pan-Arabic listeners. Underground cassette tape recordings were utilized by Dana International, a transgender Mizrahi Jewish pop singer whose music generated controversy because of her sexual lyrics and provocative dancing. Modernist changes in musical style allow artists to push traditionally rigid boundaries of gender in Middle Eastern culture.
Sixteen years in power. Only monarchs, autocrats and dictators last this long in office. The exception is Angela Merkel: the German chancellor who has had exceptional success in navigating the many crises she has faced.
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