In recent weeks, students purchasing food from Hodgdon Food-on-the-Run will have noticed the dining location’s line layout appears to have undergone a subtle redesign and that customers now receive a paper receipt upon checking out.Often, a watchful employee stands near the door.
An unauthorized email purportedly announcing the death of University President Sunil Kumar was sent to Tufts community members on the morning of April 1, ending with the words “April Fools” and a call for heightened security measures.
The Department of Romance Studies is unveiling a new interdisciplinary major — aptly named Romance Studies — for the upcoming fall semester that will allow students to study two romance languages simultaneously. In addition, the French department has also tweaked requirements for the French minor to accommodate students with higher proficiency, with credit toward the six required courses beginning at French 4.
Tufts University accepted 10% of applicants to the undergraduate Class of 2028, the admissions office announced shortly after spring break. This year’s acceptance rate rose just half a percent above the record low acceptance rate set last year, just 9.5%.
On any given weekend morning, small crowds of students can be found waiting outside the Joyce Cummings Center entrance. Why? The building is closed to non-computer science students before 12 p.m. For this demographic, the following behavior is typical: fruitlessly pulling at the door handles, peering into the windows or awkward loitering until someone with the right keycard comes along.
TEDxTufts announced the speaker lineup for this year’s conference and a special exhibit that will be featured on the day of the conference. The conference, on April 13, is being presented as: “TEDxTufts Turns Ten: Refraction.” The speaker lineup for this year’s conference includes Bernadette Dineen, Cristobal Cea, David “Dee-1” Augustine, David Delvalle, Dr. Miguel Basáñez, Dr. Natalie Rubio, Nikhil Vootkur, Peter Kaldes, Sophia Day and Supreme Hassan.
For the sixth consecutive year, Tufts is hosting Global Tufts Month. Throughout the month of March, a series of collaboratively organized events will be put on following the theme “Humanitarian Aid: Working Together in Times of Conflict.”
The Tufts Federalist Society hosted a panel about the criminal indictments against former United States President Donald Trump on March 1 in the Joyce Cummings Center. The panel consisted of Jeffery Cohen, associate professor of the practice at Boston College Law School; Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank; and the moderator, Tufts’ own Eitan Hersh, an associate professor of political science and civic studies.
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.
