A campus bar is a staple of any university — a special place where students can celebrate a big game, grab a beer with an advisor or put their karaoke skills on full display. At Tufts, the MacPhie Pub was once a thriving part of campus life. Following its inception in the ’70s, the pub staged musical performances, organized special comedy acts and hosted trivia nights. While most of the acts were led by Tufts students, the venue occasionally featured outside performances including shows from Tufts alum Tracy Chapman (J’86), who played at the pub for “$5 and a free meal.”
After the drinking age was raised, however, the university began to phase out the pub. By the mid-2000s, students were already lamenting its absence, calling for a new campus bar to be installed in venues like Breed Memorial Hall at 51 Winthrop St. We, the Daily’s Editorial Board, two years ago, proposed the former site of Hillside Hardware at 325-331 Boston Ave. Fortunately, with the recent opening of the Pop-Up Pub in Hotung Café three decades after the closing of MacPhie Pub, there was a beacon of hope for reviving campus pub culture. However, this new pub is still a far cry from the lively, jovial, no-frills vision of a standard pub. A few tweaks to the environment might help this space realize its full potential and pack in students every week.
While recent efforts such as the Celtics watch party held on March 6 are a good start, having regular entertainment for students to partake in will help draw in more people — especially those who expect a pub night to entail long bouts of standing around without any stimulus to break the ice. Luckily, there’s an easy fix: Open the balcony doors and extend the pub into the Campus Center’s game room. This would allow students to hang out, play ping-pong or pool or even pull out a board game, giving them more of a reason to come and to stay at the pub.
Better music would also attract more attendance, and there’s an easy fix for this too: Take requests! If students had more influence on the playlists at the pub, we’d be able to curate an atmosphere that is more appealing to our peers. Better yet, the pub could invite student bands to perform. With so much musical talent in our midst, it’d be a missed opportunity to not bring them in. This would give them a platform and create a reason for students to come to the pub and watch them play.
At MacPhie Pub, Tufts Dining Services coordinated with Tufts University Social Collective, then known as the Programming Board, to plan events. Tufts should emphasize collaboration more, coordinating with TUSC and the Tufts Community Union Senate to plan and host events in Hotung. This would open the door for an array of theme nights — perhaps a St. Patrick’s Day celebration? Karaoke? Trivia? Pub Olympics? All of these would be great additions to the regular entertainment.
The food situation could stand to improve as well. One possible change is to move Late Night Commons into the pub. Late Night food is already very pub-oriented and would absolutely be an incentive for people to stop by. Including a Late Night dining option at the Pop-Up Pub would bring more Tufts students to the pub, especially those in search of a snack.
To top it off, a key issue is that the pub closes at 9:30 p.m. We believe the pub should be open until at least midnight and be open on Friday as well as Thursday. We understand that this can be a big ask for a pilot program, but without these changes the university will never be able to get a sense of the pub’s potential popularity.
While a pub may seem somewhat trivial, making these changes could have an outsized impact on our community. What we have now is a tremendous start, but we would love to see this pop-up become more popular. The Pub could bring Jumbos together to unwind in a safe and convenient way. We join the calls of the Editorial Board, current and former students and many in the Tufts community to encourage the creation of a permanent pub that can be a hub of social life at Tufts.
