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The Tufts Daily
Where you read it first | Sunday, February 16, 2025

Local children give fingerprints, get faces painted

Civil war reenactments, a capella performances, face painting and four-year-olds - not the usual Sunday on Walnut Hill.

The Medford campus hosted the third annual Community Day on Sunday, giving local parents and their children a chance to make the hike up the hill to see what the University is all about.

The day kicked off with a speech by President Abraham Lincoln - local resident George Cheevers in disguise. Cheevers, who joked with children about history and politics, was there to promote the upcoming exhibit at Tisch Library, "Forever Free: Abraham Lincoln's Journey to Emancipation."

Other actors impersonated Harriet Beecher Stowe, Louisa May Alcott and Frederick Douglass to promote the exhibit, which starts Oct. 12.

Many Tufts students volunteered at the day's activities, which included a reading corner, hula hoops and face painting.

"One kid wanted a mustache," freshman Brittney Bannon said. Bannon painted children's faces. "Every time I thought I was finished, I'd show him the mirror and he'd ask for more hair. And another one asked me to paint a mailman on his face."

Most of the student volunteers were coordinated by the Leonard Carmichael Society (LCS), with about 80 LCS volunteers running the group's six activities and the information booth.

LCS changed the way it looked for volunteers this year, opting to recruit outside of normal group members.

"We pushed the idea of getting new volunteers who hadn't necessarily volunteered through LCS before," student coordinator junior Irit Lockhart said.

Lockhart said the majority of student volunteers responded to an announcement on Tuftslife.com and did not come from LCS meetings. "What's nice for us is this is garnering a new body of volunteers," she said.

LCS struggled to get volunteers for last year's event, Lockhart said. This year, instead of trying to first recruit students into LCS, the group focused on students who would only be willing to participate in one-day community service projects.

The day included performances from a capella groups The Beelzebubs, The Amalgamates, Essence, and sQ!, the BEATS percussion group, and LCS' Traveling Treasure Trunk.

Community Day was co-sponsored by Medford and Somerville. Representatives from the Eastern Massachusetts Literacy Council, the Somerville Community Center and the Somerville Family Center also took part in the event.

The Tufts University Police Department took children's fingerprints and gave them and their parents safety tips.