Opinion

Column

A Better Consensus: Why ranked-choice voting is awesome

By Jacob Fridman | October 6

We all know how elections go: the most polarizing candidate or the bland incumbent often wins with less than half the overall vote, or the race has so many candidates that just a few hundred votes decide the winner. In 2016, Trump won the Republican primaries with 1,543 delegates, well over half. However, he won only 44.95% of the popular vote. Flash forward to 2020, my own congressional district, Massachusetts’ 4th, had a nine-candidate Democratic primary. First place Jake Auchincloss beat second place Jesse Mermell, 22.4% to 21%, a margin of 2,145 votes in a race with over 157 thousands total. The other candidates had vote totals in the thousands, well over the 1.4% difference. These results are not representative, and in the case of Trump, these ‘plurality’ wins can be disastrous. How do we stop such close wins and candidates who thrive on a minority of the electorate? The answer is ranked-choice voting.

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Viewpoint

Widespread cases of institutional sexual abuse: Universities must do more to protect their students

By Reya Kumar and Carter Wagner | October 5

Content warning: This article discusses sexual abuse and assault.

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Viewpoint

Why we love (and need) football

By Alex Sharp | October 5

Our generation is the most well informed and technologically advanced in human history. We’re also the softest. Maybe it was the over-praising helicopter parents (thanks Generation X), or the participation trophies or the fact that social media can make a person’s actions when they’re 15 cost them a job when they’re 30. 

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Guest

Op-ed: I am once again asking you to build a dorm

By Shane Woolley | October 5

Dear reader, I really didn’t want to think about student housing at Tufts ever again. I really didn’t. When I graduated two years ago, I left behind not only my lottery and off-campus housing woes, but also a little leftist organization calledTufts Housing League. We aimed to raise consciousness among fellow students that, among other things, Tufts was a driving engine of local gentrification and that landlords are no good and should be fought by tenants as a unified and militant class. Our rallying cry was simply “build a dorm” — to end the displacement of area residents by Tufts students with nowhere else to go, and to undercut the off-campus slumlords who kept raising rent while letting their buildings fall apart.

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Viewpoint

The exacerbation of political polarization in Canadian elections

By Faye Shen Li Thijssen | October 4

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called an early election barely two years into his term on Aug. 15. Trudeau triggered this snap election in the hopes of winning a majority in the House of Commons, thus regaining the party majority which was denied him in the 2019 election.Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Director Chrystia Freeland cited the increasingly discordant views of the Prime Minister and the House of Commons as a key difficulty in reaching consensus on COVID-19 policies. 

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Column

The Journey: Imposter syndrome

By Elizabeth Buehl | October 4

Today was my first day back in in-person classes. After grabbing a mid-morning iced coffee at The Sink, I sat down in a big, comfortable blue armchair in the Mayer Campus Center. As I bent back the pages of Edith Wharton’s “The Age of Innocence” (1920), I was transported to 19th-century New York City. Despite my fascination with her commentary on the complex inner workings of the city’s upper echelon, I couldn’t help but notice a tour group out of the corner of my eye. The spirited guide took a big step up onto a bench, and I had a moment of realization: I really am a Tufts student.

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Viewpoint

Coup de théâtre in Beirut

By Makram Bekdache | October 1

Joy, disbelief, indifference or skepticism. These were the reactions of many Lebanese individuals to their home country's recent news. After thirteen months of an inactive caretaker government, Lebanon finally has a new government. Following a year of depressing news headlines and worsening domestic issues, it may be the last chance for my country to set things right. 

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Opinion

In the war on drugs, the U.S. has incarcerated the wrong perpetrators

By Reya Kumar | September 30

In 1971, former President Richard Nixon labeled drug use a national emergency and asked for $155 million to combat it, beginning the war on drugs. This war has been characterized by aggressive police response and highly punitive measures. Meanwhile, in 1996, Purdue Pharma released the prescription opioid OxyContin, a drug that would initiate an ongoing epidemic that has killed over 500,000 people and has torn families and communities apart. 

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Column

The Strike Zone: Music and identity in Israel and Palestine

By Eli Striker | September 30

During the formation of Israel, aspects of two distinct cultural groups — European Ashkenazi Jewish people and Arabic Mizrahi Jewish people — were fused to form a shared national identity within the supposed Jewish homeland. However, Israeli society remains hierarchical; many Ashkenazi Jewish Israeli individuals have long suppressed both Mizrahi Jewish individuals and Palestinians, who claim indigeneity over much of Israel but have long been confined to the margins of Israeli society by the government.

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Viewpoint

America is back — and Trumpier than ever

By Daniel Chung | September 29

On the campaign trail, now-President Biden spoke of bringing America back to the table to lead a “united front” of democracies in confronting 21st-century challenges from climate change to the growing threat of authoritarianism. In a March 2020 op-ed in Foreign Affairs, helaid out a plan to achieve these ends. But recent foreign policy blunders, especially those regarding France-U.S. relations, betray that his words may only have been empty air.

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Column

A Better Consensus: The importance of civic education

By Jacob Fridman | September 29

Everyone has suggestions for how national politics should be run, but with my background in independent journalism, civic education and opinion and interview podcasting, I have the experience of explaining complex topics, starting conversations, and promoting new ideas. This is “A Better Consensus.”

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Viewpoint

To the Hyatt and back: The issue of Hyatt shuttle frequency

By Idil Kolabas | September 28

Fall 2021. A new semester marked by the arrival of a new class year prepared to explore new courses and experience all that Tufts has to offer. This year, however, around 100 first-year students were assigned to livein the Hyatt Place in Medford, nearly two miles away from campus. Even afterWest Hall’s transformation into a first-year dorm, the university was unable to compensate for over-admitting the incoming Class of 2025.

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Column

The Journey: An introduction

By Elizabeth Buehl | September 28

In a world with hurricanes of Herculean force, pandemics that have jolted the globe and politics arguably more divisive than ever before, we as global citizens are forced to tackle life in our own unique way. Along each of our individual journeys we are accompanied by vastly different sets of environmental factors creating a society that lights up each of our senses, with no two people absorbing sights, sounds and smells in exactly the same way. When facing the respective adversities that life sends us, it is quite simple to get lost in the big picture, stuck in the clouds. Yet, what if we were to take just a moment to get lost in the minutia, immersed in the details that create the diversity that colors our landscape’s vibrant hues?

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Viewpoint

Medford and Somerville elections: The importance of local politics for Tufts students

By Faye Shen Li Thijssen | September 24

Last Tuesday, Sept. 14, marked the deadline for Medford and Somerville preliminary election ballots to be received. The preliminary elections asked voters to choose their top candidates for a number of offices, including mayors of both cities, six school committee members in Medford, one councilor in Ward 5 and another in Ward 7 in Somerville. 

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Guest

Op-ed: A study on the 'Arming Study'

By Noah Mills | September 22

Although debates on policing and community safety did not start with the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, which were the result of George Floyd’s murder and a history of police killings of Black men, they sparked a renewed and sharp focus on these two topics. Here at Tufts, this interest resulted in, among other things, the campus safety and policing working group and a focus on Tufts as an anti-racist institution. 

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Viewpoint

The legacy of 9/11 and the American response

By Reya Kumar | September 20

Saturday, Sept. 11, 2021 was marked by remembrances of the horrific attack 20 years ago that transformed countless lives, our nation and the world at large. The remembrances focused largely on the 2,753 lives lost at Ground Zero — people who undoubtedly deserve to be remembered. 

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Guest

Op-ed: So close yet so far

By Santiago Castillo Juarez | September 20

I was partying in Paris the moment I found out that Tufts had overenrolled the Class of 2025. Speakers were blasting reggaeton as I heard the distinct ringtone I had set for Tufts emails. I took my phone out of my pocket and read the headline. "Tufts Class of 2025 Housing Assignments." I skimmed the email looking for my roommate assignment and my residence hall but quickly found out it wasn’t in the email. The email simply stated that 100 or so students had been randomly selected to live in the Hyatt Place Medford, about a 35-minute walk from Tufts’ Campus Center. I celebrated at the time, as the email said that those unlucky 100 students had already been notified early in the morning and I had not been one of them. Nonetheless, the next day, peers I had met online were already asking me what hall I was in. I never received the housing email. Endless calls and unanswered emails to Residential Life left me desperate for an answer. 

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Viewpoint

Hurricane Ida’s devastation exposes greater climate issue at hand

By Emily Nadler | September 16

By the numbers themselves, it goes without saying that Hurricane Ida has brought immense destruction and desperation to the neighborhoods and areas it passed through. Nearly a hundred people have died from Ida’s tornadoes, extreme flooding and heavy winds. Ida hasaffected 22 states, plus Washington, D.C., and torn through 1,500 miles of the United States. 

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Viewpoint

The extremity of the Texas abortion ban: What this means for women in the U.S.

By Sara Kessel | September 16

On Wednesday, Sept. 1, the Supreme Courtallowed Texas to uphold what is now the most repressive abortion law in the United States.The structure of Texas Senate Bill 8 (SB 8)mirrors the “heartbeat bills” of states like Georgia and Ohio, banning abortions past the detection of a fetal heartbeat. However, the law in Texas is the first tobypass federal blocking due to a backdoor provision that calls for enforcement by civil action rather than by the state itself. Instead of designating government officials to enforce the law, SB 8 gives citizens the ability to sue anyone who aids an unlawful abortion and allows them to collect at least $10,000 in the process. 

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Viewpoint

The implications of California's recall election

By Faye Shen Li Thijssen | September 14

Today, California voters face the decision of whether to replace Gavin Newsom as governor of California.The prospect that the Democratic governor may lose his position in the predominantly blue state has sparked nationwide concern.While a poll conducted found that 58% of likely voters say they will vote against the recall and support Newsom, the final turnout for this special election remains to be seen. 

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