By March 1, sophomores in the School of Arts and Sciences were required to declare a primary major. This is a hard deadline for all second-year students, with class registration placed on hold upon failure to declare. While many have already decided on a major, others approached the deadline undeclared.
On Monday, Tufts announced a pilot program involving new changes to the registration process for undergraduate students. Engineering students will now register two days in advance for School of Engineering and select Arts and Sciences courses required for their degree progress — mostly those under the math, chemistry, biology and physics and astronomy departments — but will register for other classes simultaneously with Arts and Sciences students in their class year at randomly assigned times.
Club pickleball, founded this semester by sophomores Luke Steiner and Kekoa Pastron, aims to provide a space for students to be able to both learn the growing sport and play it competitively. Currently, the team has over 100 people on their roster and is only growing.
On the evening of Feb. 29, the Rabb Room in Barnum Hall became a productive dialogue space consisting of Tufts undergraduates, Tufts Prison Initiative graduates, activists and government legislators, all gathered to discuss how to turn policies on paper into real change.
Kevin Outterson, a professor of health law, ethics and human rights at Boston University, spoke at The Fletcher School’s annual Dr. Maurice S. Segal Lecture on Feb. 29. Outterson’s talk, titled “The Social Ecology of Antimicrobial Resistance,” focused on the science, economics and accessibility of antimicrobial medicines.
The Tufts Association of South Asians hosted its annual Culture Show in the Cohen Auditorium this past Saturday. The lively “C-Show” set was made up of 15 acts including four South Asian dance teams, four class dances, three solo acts, a guest performance and a comedy skit intertwined.
In an email sent to the wider Tufts community on Monday, University President Sunil Kumar condemned the three recently passed Tufts Community Union Senate resolutions that called on the university to cut ties to Israel and to acknowledge the Palestinian genocide in Gaza. Sent less than 12 hours after the Senate announced results around 3 a.m., Kumar’s email sparked a student protest and die-in at Barnum Hall on Tuesday.
The Tufts Undergraduate Law Review, the only of its kind on Tufts’ campus, will publish its first edition in April. The publication follows in the footsteps of other undergraduate law reviews, notably those of Brown and Harvard.
The Office of Equal Opportunity recently sent out a survey to the Tufts community seeking to gauge the prevalence of sexual misconduct on campus. OEO worked with the education consulting group Grand River Solutions to develop the survey and has been collecting responses since Feb. 12. Campus organizations that focus on sexual misconduct and sexual health will use the results to fine-tune their offerings.
In the early hours of Monday, the Tufts Community Union Senate voted to approve three out of four resolutions formally calling on University President Sunil Kumar to recognize genocide in Gaza, for the university to divest from Israeli companies and for it to cease selling Sabra products in dining halls. It did not, however, pass a resolution calling on the university to end approval for study abroad programs at universities in Israel.
Four representatives, including the new Southwest Asian and North African community senator, join the ranks of the Tufts Community Union Senate following a special election, while the Indigenous community senator seat remains vacant. Polls were open from Thursday at 12 p.m. to Friday at 12 p.m.
Jennifer Nassour, the Massachusetts state chair for former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign and former chair of the Massachusetts GOP, shared her reasons for supporting Haley and answered questions from students during an event organized by Tufts Republicans on Feb. 21.
JumboCode organized Tufts’ first hackathon in five years over the weekend of Feb. 17–18 in the Joyce Cummings Center. JumboCode, one of the biggest coding clubs at Tufts, focuses on creating quality software for nonprofit organizations. Around 150 students participated in the event, which also featured guest speakers and workshops.
On Sunday, the Coalition for Palestinian Liberation at Tufts introduced four full-text resolutions to the Tufts Community Union Senate which, if passed, will call on the Office of the President and other senior leadership to acknowledge Israel’s continued assault on Gaza and to end all ties to the country. Senators will vote on finalized versions of all four resolutions at next week’s meeting, just two weeks after the introduction of abstracts on Feb. 18.
Community health majors learned earlier this month of Tufts’ decision to raise the summer cost of a required internship course, CH140, from $500 total to $1,035 per credit. This change, meaning an increase of over $3,640 for the 4-credit class, has surprised students who will experience increased financial burden when they work a required internship over the summer.
After completing a year-long probation for violating Tufts’ alcohol-free recruitment policy in December 2022, Theta Chi has resumed normal activities this semester. During its probation, the fraternity was suspended from hosting social events.
After serving as devoted leaders of the Daily’s News section, two former executive editors are spending their spring semesters in Europe. Junior Aaron Gruen, spring 2023 executive news editor and fall 2023 editor in chief, is currently studying at University College London, while junior Daniel Vos, fall 2023 executive news editor, is at the University of Amsterdam.
Dr. Talithia Williams, a renowned statistician and TED Talk speaker, discussed her unique perspective in the fight against health disparities in her most recent lecture at Tufts, “Data Driven Solutions for Eliminating Health Disparities,” jointly presented by the School of Engineering’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Justice Colloquium Series and Tisch College’s Solomont Speaker Series.
This semester, the Experimental College is hosting a class focused on helping aspiring writers enter the tech industry called “Careers for Writers in the Tech Sector.” Visiting Lecturer Rita Reznikova (LA’08), the course’s instructor, seeks to introduce students to the variety of professional opportunities for writers, even amid the rise of generative artificial intelligence models like ChatGPT that threaten traditional career paths.
In late January, the Massachusetts Life Sciences Center Women’s Health Initiative awarded grants to four Tufts faculty members to fund projects addressing the issue of inequities in women’s health research. Assistant Professors Nisha Iyer and Juan Gnecco, Professor Sameer Sonkusale and Frank C. Doble Professor Fiorenzo Omenetto received these grants towards their projects, which focus on understanding and solving issues related to women’s health.
