Numerous Tufts students have likely had to deal with the following conversation:
"So, where do you go to school?"
"I'm a senior at Tufts."
"Where's that? I've never heard of it."
Indeed, with neighbors like MIT and Harvard and without the status of the Ivy League or the endowment of a university like Duke or Stanford, Tufts can sometimes seem underrepresented on the national stage.
Tufts students are proud of its famous and notable alumni like Meredith Vieira (J '75), Peter Gallagher (A '77) and Bill Richardson (A '70, F '71). And it's flattering to the university that celebrated pop culture figures, like neurotic Elaine Benes from "Seinfeld" (1989−1998), ostensibly went to Tufts. However, Tufts still does not have the name recognition of some of its peer schools.
So when acquaintances don't know about the school, students smile politely, inwardly offended, and fight off the urge to write off the person as ignorant. They are frustrated to realize that, after working so hard to get here, the prestige of a Tufts degree is not universally appreciated.
Recently, however, it seems as if Tufts has shot into the spotlight.
Because of the national media coverage of the new rule of The Office of Residential Life and Learning (ORLL) regulating sexual activity in dorms, the Beelzebubs' participation in NBC's "The Sing Off" (2009), the election of alum Scott Brown (LA '81) to the US Senate and references to Tufts in NBC's "30 Rock," Fox's "The Simpsons" and the blockbuster romantic comedy "Valentine's Day," Tufts' name has recently been cited in the mainstream media for reasons other than faculty research studies.
Julie Dobrow, the director of the Communications & Media Studies program at Tufts, said that she did not think media coverage was inordinately high this year.
"I've been here 16 years and I can remember times when Tufts has been in the news a lot and when we don't hear about it all," Dobrow said.
She noted that while Tufts may not have the name recognition of a Yale or a Georgetown, it is well−respected in the academic field.
The proliferation of Tufts references in the news is in part due to the hard work of Tufts' public relations team. Among other duties, the group works to determine which stories might be of interest to the mainstream media and to communicate with journalists by "pitching" stories and responding to reporters' inquiries. The PR team, for example, recently worked with the Boston Globe on an article about President Lawrence Bacow's tenure at Tufts.
Kim Thurler, director of public relations at Tufts' Medford/Somerville campus, said that her office, along with the PR offices of the Boston and Grafton campuses, which are led by Director Christine Fennelly, employ a variety of tactics to monitor coverage of Tufts in mainstream media, including a service that aggregates mentions of Tufts. In a rough comparison of Tufts' "hits" (for both undergraduate and graduate schools) in newspapers, magazines, major Web sites and blogs, Thurler found that in 2008 there were 21,000 hits, whereas in 2009 hits increased to 26,000.
However, Thurler cautioned that quantity of hits is not the most important goal of Tufts PR.
"Quality to us is more important than quantity," Thurler said.
The PR team also distinguishes between positive and negative or neutral coverage. Thurler estimated that 90 percent of the Tufts coverage that people from the PR office examine is positive. They analyze the message points of coverage to see if any of Tufts' fundamental positive characteristics are mentioned, including the university's promotion of active citizenship, its international outlook, and the reputation of its faculty and students. Often her team compares Tufts' hits to those of peer schools in order to discern how the school fares against the competition.
"What we find is that while of some of these schools have greater volumes in terms of media coverage, when we look at the top−tier media universe, Tufts has the same or higher percentage [of positive coverage] than most of our peer schools," Thurler said.
Arguably the most controversial media coverage occurred this fall, when the ORLL prohibited students from having sex in their roommates' presence in the 2009−2010 Habitats: Guide to On−Campus Living booklet.
It is doubtful that ResLife foresaw the media coverage the rule would unleash. Over a period of a few days, the story was covered on major websites like CNN.com and on late−night talk shows. "The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien" featured a skit of a nerdy, college−aged O'Brien attempting to concentrate on his fantasy games while his roommate and his roommate's girlfriend "fornicated."
Overall, the angle of coverage ranged from laudatory to sarcastic.
"I would say that some of the coverage was more or less positive," Thurler said. "I think it depended on the person writing or editorializing. I think there was a lot of subjectivity in how people viewed [the rule.]"
Dobrow said that, even though the coverage of this rule was not overwhelmingly positive, it did not negatively affect Tufts' reputation.
"I think it's the kind of thing that is gone tomorrow," she said.
Thurler stressed that all schools must occasionally cope with negative exposure: "The reality is that any institution that is an active, leading institution is going to sometimes be the subject of negative attention."
And because Tufts' reputation is buffered by lots of positive coverage, including the Bubs' well−received performance on "The Sing Off," the public's memory of negative or neutral coverage is even more likely to fade away.
With the world of media continuously and quickly changing, Tufts and its PR team have had to incorporate new social media tools into its communications plans. The university has, for example, a Facebook.com fan page and a Twitter.com account. The PR team now aims to place stories in certain blogs — a sign of blogs' rising importance. Thurler hinted that the team will continue to test out new social media tools in the future.
"[It's] safe to say that we're going to be looking at new media and multimedia tools in addition to the traditional channels we've been using," Thurler said.
All of these tactics will, hopefully, continue to build the name, recognition and reputation of the school in a positive way. Dobrow believes that Tufts is well on its way to doing so.
"I think that maybe not in a huge, trumpeting way, but in a quiet way, Tufts is really making a name for itself," Dobrow said.
