Editor’s Note: Kunal Botla is a deputy opinion editor. Botla was not involved in the writing or editing of this article.
Sunday’s meeting of the Tufts Community Union Senate covered club funding requests, a new campus pub and its long-running effort to increase syllabus access.
In the Committee for Community and Diversity Report, TCU Diversity Officer Alexander Vang announced plans for a Community and Diversity Town Hall meeting set for Nov. 18. The town hall is an opportunity for students to pose questions to community senators about campus issues important to them.
During the Presidential section, Joel Omolade presented plans for future engagement with University President Sunil Kumar and discussed proposed plans for a new campus pub.
“The idea was that we really want to make sure that students have a safe space to drink on campus.” Omolade, who is a senior, told the Daily after the meeting. The pub would be set up in an existing location on campus, which would be converted to a pub at night.
“Obviously it would be reserved for individuals who are 21 plus and have all the legalities and safety measures,” Omolade said.
The establishment of an on-campus pub is not entirely new to Tufts. The MacPhie Pub was established in the 1970s after many states, including Massachusetts, lowered the legal drinking age to 18.
Since most students were of age, the university set up the pub in what is now the Dewick-MacPhie Dining Hall, hiring students as workers and bartenders and playing host to a myriad of musical performances, comedy shows and memories. Some of the performances included A-list acts, such as Phish and the Village People.
“Tracy Chapman used to play in this room for $5 and a free meal,” Tufts Dining’s Procurement Manager for Tufts Dining John Fisher told the Daily in 2017, referring to the famous Tufts alum.
After the legal drinking age was raised, the pub was phased out in 1994.
The pub is “coming out soon” according to Omolade to ensure that students who drink have the opportunity to do so in a safe, regulated environment. Plans for a “soft launch” next week are in the works, and according to Omolade and TCU Historian Caroline Spahr, Tufts Dining is seeking student input in the planning process.
The Senate addressed a long-standing initiative by the Senate to encourage professors to make syllabi from previous iterations of a course accessible to students before registration, including indicating costs of class materials. Administration and Policy Committee Chair Kunal Botla said that professors have shown increased support for the project, which has raised its profile among the administration.
“I think Tufts has a culture of sharing information, of providing students with the information they need to make decisions about the courses they want to take on their academic journey,” Botla told the Daily after the meeting. “I think faculty recognize the importance of it, but I think the technicalities, the infrastructure needed for nearly 7,000 undergraduate students to have access to a volume of years of information is a challenge.”
Both Botla and Omolade said that the logistics of coordination between departments and professors would be among the biggest challenges.
TCU Treasurer Dhruv Sampat led votes on four supplementary funding requests.
The Senate approved $5,000 for the Tisch College Election Night Extravaganza: a collaborative event planned by University officials and a variety of political student clubs including Tufts Democrats and Tufts Republicans.
The Tufts chapter of Global Medical Brigades — a national organization that gives premed students the opportunity to volunteer abroad — received $1,440 for their new club budget. Tufts Hillel received $3,820 in funding for a board retreat.
A budget of $1,100 was approved for The Zamboni’s trip to Washington, D.C. to gather content for the upcoming general election. The proposal raised questions about whether the trip constituted a retreat or trip, which are funded differently by the Senate, and the relevance of covering the election in Washington D.C. as opposed to a swing state.
Finally, the Middle East Research Group’s request for $5,838 an academic research trip to Dearborn, Mich. to talk to voters ahead of the election.
Next, Omolade discussed The Space, which is a student wellness center in the basement of Stratton Hall created by the Senate. Due to low levels of awareness about the center, some furniture has been stolen. Senators shared their ideas for how to better advertise The Space. Ideas included creating an Instagram page for the center and hiring a student employee to manage social media and deter future furniture theft.
