The Tufts Daily

When white police officer Darren Wilson shot Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teen, in 2014, Sarah Iacobucci, director of undergraduate laboratories at Tufts, and her friends from church wanted to do something. Iacobucci, who identifies as white, attends a Unitarian Universalist church, where social justice is a core part of religious programming. After attending a […]

The MBTA announced on Aug. 5 that the Green Line Extension Medford branch — which was scheduled to be completed by the end of the summer — will not open until late November. This is the project’s third delay from the planned completion date of December 2021. The MBTA simultaneously announced that the recently opened […]

National newspaper chain Gannett plans to cease print publication of 19 weekly papers in eastern Massachusetts and merge another nine papers into four, beginning this month. Tufts’ host communities will have their papers — the Medford Transcript and the Somerville Journal — merged into one. The combined paper will still be distributed in print weekly. […]

University President Anthony Monaco announced in February that Tufts would prohibit direct investments in 120 coal and tar sands companies. In addition, the university committed to investing between $10 to 25 million in positive impact funds, which seek to make a positive environmental impact in addition to generating a return on investment over the next […]

Tufts reported 463 cases of COVID-19 across campuses this semester, or approximately 33 per week, according to Patrick Collins, Tufts executive director of media relations. This represents a 12.6% decrease in the number of cases compared to last spring, when the university reported 530 cases. According to Collins, 321 of these cases came from the […]

DARTing across the cosmos: NASA’s plan to protect planet Earth  NASA plans to launch a spacecraft this week that, in late 2022, will intentionally crash into an asteroid, hopefully changing its trajectory. Planetary defense research has been conducted over the past several years in hopes of preventing foreseeable meteor crashes. Although scientists believe massive meteorites […]

COVID-19 vaccination rates in Tufts University’s surrounding Medford and Somerville communities have plateaued recently, despite remaining high compared to others in the state. As of Nov. 11, 79% of Medford residents have received at least one COVID-19 vaccine dose, compared with 77% as of Oct. 28. In Somerville, 85% of residents have received at least […]

As the delta variant of the COVID-19 virus continues to spread through Tufts University’s campuses in the form of breakthrough infections, the university has clarified its quarantine, isolation and contact-tracing protocols. Notably, close contacts of COVID-19-positive individuals no longer need to quarantine and the university has reduced capacity to house students in isolation.  Amid these […]

As smartphones, online shopping and cryptocurrency have become more prevalent in the past 20 years, so too have ultraprocessed foods, which make up the majority of youth diets. The percentage of child and adolescent diets composed of ultraprocessed foods — those made with refined ingredients and additives — has increased from 61% to 67% in […]

Tufts University is switching to a pooled COVID-19 testing procedure for the 2021–22 academic year; pooled testing processes up to 10 samples at once, performing the same polymerase chain reaction (PCR) COVID-19 test that was used for individual testing in the past. “Pooled testing combines samples from up to ten students and performs a COVID-19 […]