Letter from the editor

To the Class of 2019 and all members of the Tufts community,

Today marks the graduation of the Class of 2019. As you look back on your four years at Tufts, you may be thinking about the moments you spent within various communities on campus — your first-year dorm room floor, your sports team, your religious or ethnic affinity group, your major or even the group of close friends who you feel like have been around since you came here. Looking back at our semester on the Daily, several experiences stand out to us: the late nights we’ve spent in the basement of Curtis Hall editing and laying out the paper, the interviews we’ve conducted with dynamic speakers from different disciplines and the face-to-face conversations we have had with student groups about important community issues. I am awed by the sacrifice of our copy, graphics and layout editors, who work incessantly to make the paper elegant and readable; our photographers, who drop everything to take an assignment; and our intrepid reporters, who go to great lengths, like driving two hours to New Hampshire or biking to a courthouse in Cambridge to retrieve materials for their stories.

At the Daily, we know we must reconcile our identities as students with providing objective coverage of issues that affect the Tufts community. This conflict adds a layer of complexity to our work as journalists. While we are constantly learning and growing, we consistently adhere to high standards of journalistic integrity. This semester’s managing board, along with a staff of close to 200 dedicated editors and contributors, has read and edited hundreds of articles pertaining to issues both on our campus and in the global Tufts community.

This semester, Tufts changed in innumerable ways, and we shared these stories with our readers. Hateful acts have threatened to undermine the strength of the Tufts community, and controversies abounded. The semester began with an incident of blackface as well as a postering at Tufts Hillel, the second such incident at Tufts this academic year. Doctoral student Tiffany Filler was expelled from the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine for grade hacking, but maintains her innocence. A housing crisis continues to plague Tufts, and members of our surrounding communities of Medford and Somerville insist that Tufts is not giving back enough.

But the semester was marked by so many successes as well — events that the staff of the Daily has been privileged to report. On April 4, the dining workers unanimously ratified their first union contract after voting to authorize a strike a month earlier. Our sports teams also reached new heights, with the men’s soccer team winning a national championship, the women’s basketball and men's lacrosse teams earning NESCAC titles and the women’s lacrosse team achieving their best season in years.

Looking back on a memorable semester and toward the 2019–2020 academic year, I am full of ideas for the future of this publication and our university, and I’m excited to leave this job in the extremely capable hands of next semester’s managing board. To the seniors who are graduating today, I hope you’ve felt that the Daily has been right alongside you as we’ve watched these past four years unfold. I can’t wait to see where you go next.

Best,

Elie Levine, editor in chief