The lost-and-found funds
Jodie Nealley and Ray Rodriguez pled not guilty in August to charges of having embezzled a combined total of almost $1 million between 2001 and 2007, but since then little has happened in the court case involving the two former Office of Student Activities (OSA) administrators.
Still, the effects of the scandal still ripple through the campus. Now called the Office for Campus Life, the department that used to be the OSA welcomed new director Joe Golia over the summer. In an effort to make sure its books stay in order, the office also added its first-ever business manager, Annie Wong, in June.
Most importantly, however, the embezzlement scandal led the administration to provide the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate with $902,338 as restitution for what the body purportedly lost. The Senate used some of the money to pay off or forgive debts, then spent most of the semester discussing internally and with the student body at large how it should spend the rest. Just last night, the Senate decided to invest some of the recovered funds in student activities and save the rest for later delegation.
Managing the market's effects
The Senate may be sitting on a wealth of extra funds, but the nation is deep in a recession, and for the university, the economic downturn has meant restraint and cutbacks. University President Lawrence Bacow has kept the community privy to the administration's approach to handling the crisis – and a crisis it is, as the university predicts its endowment to drop by 25 percent in the coming year – with school-wide e-mails.
The Daily's news section has sought to provide students with a more comprehensive picture of what this new wave of reluctant conservatism means for the many facets of Tufts, academic and otherwise. Capital projects have been put on hold, and the university is preparing for $36 million in budget cuts next year.
MOPs and JumboCash
One university department that has been looking to grow despite the financial horizon is Dining Services. Fresh off its well-received introduction of JumboCash last semester, the office set to work this fall to expand the Merchant Off-Campus Partners (MOPs) system, which enables students to order delivery from local eateries using JumboCash. Dining Services announced last week that Pizza Days, a popular late-night standby, will be one of two restaurants joining MOPs next semester.
Election '08
When Barack Obama on Nov. 4 became the first black man to be elected president of the United States, his victory capped off months of political activism on campus. The Tufts Democrats and Republicans both sponsored get-out-the-vote efforts, and the Dems put significant resources into canvassing in New Hampshire.
Although they were eager to publicize their message, the Jumbo canvassers faced many an apathetic resident tired of political games and deferred promises.
"People are sick of the negative campaign and sick of both candidates for that reason," canvasser Doug Foote (LA '08) told News Editor Sarah Butrymowicz, who traveled along with the canvassers one weekend to report on their efforts. "Part of it is a sense that all politicians are bad."
Nonpartisan groups such as Tufts Hillel and Tufts Votes also chipped in efforts this fall, heading up efforts such as voter registration drives and absentee ballot mailing stations.
On the local front, Carl Sciortino (LA '00) won reelection to the state legislature after a sticker campaign helped him slip by with a primary victory over Somerville Alderman Bob Trane.
Speakers on campus
Tufts hosted a wide range of speakers this semester, from the co-founder of a revolutionary television station to a former presidential candidate.
Tom Freston, who helped create MTV and bring the music video into the common consciousness, delivered the Richard E. Snyder Presidential Lecture.
Freston left MTV years ago, but during his talk he defended the station's relevance in the Internet age. "It's hard to be hot and cool and on the cutting edge for a long time," he said. "But they're still at it – they're still on the air."
In late October, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) told a packed Cohen Auditorium audience that Americans needed a new style of leadership – and that then-Sen. Barack Obama was the answer.
Kerry bemoaned the current state of affairs and emphasized that the new administration would need to take a comprehensive approach to confronting crises.
"We face a complex and urgent set of challenges," he said. "The very definition of national security is being rewritten."
Other big-name speakers included Norman Ornstein and Erin Brockovich. Ornstein, an American Enterprise Institute resident scholar and CBS News analyst, drew on the theme of change to compare this year's presidential election to the 1980 contest between Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.
Brockovich, who gained fame when her fight for environmental justice became immortalized in a hit movie, said that her battle against the Pacific Gas and Electric Company in California was just one of many necessary struggles against those who would do harm to the planet.
"What should be our most important and passionate priority is to make sure Mother Earth, this planet and this world continue to sparkle. Each and every one of us has a part," she said.
Debating speech
The Task Force on Freedom of Expression, commissioned by University President Lawrence Bacow in January to create a university-wide policy on freedom of expression, in September released a draft declaration. Some praised the preliminary version for taking a stance without being so specific as to embolden the university to trample on students' First Amendment rights, while others worried that the draft's wording would prove too vague to make any difference. Another contingent maintained that the task force should never have been assembled, calling the codification of a university-wide freedom of speech policy ill-advised.
In an interview with the Daily, Professor Jeswald Salacuse, the chair of the task force, expressed his opposition to Bacow's stance that Tufts should always preserve First Amendment rights for its students in the university's internal judicial system.
The task force has not released a final draft to the public, but it is expected to do so next semester; Bacow hopes to approve a version in time to submit it to the Board of Trustees in May.
Campus crime
On a campus that sometimes sees highly concentrated periods of local crime and more tranquil stretches at other times, this semester fell into the latter category. Over the summer, a rape near College Avenue and Dearborn Road portended trouble for late-night trekkers on and around Walnut Hill this fall. But the next big scare did not come until November, when junior Liz Friedman said that she was robbed at knifepoint before escaping from the attacker, who she said was trying to abduct her.
The Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) misreported the location of the crime, according to Friedman, who said she got in touch with TUPD about the misinformation soon after the department sent out an alert to the student body. She later came to the Daily with the information after receiving no reaction from TUPD regarding the mistake, she said.
Tufts tricksters
This semester was marked more by petty mischief than harrowing crimes. A group of students threw the entire campus for a loop with a bogus protest, raising an uproar over the removal of a tree that the administration actually had no intention of cutting down.
Two instances of more revolting misbehavior came toward the end of the semester. In Sophia Gordon Hall, students reported finding bags filled with fecal matter. In Wren Hall, residents turned up their noses after repeatedly finding urine in a laundry-room dryer.
Here at the news section, this semester has been easy to write about. We have seen and reported on life at Tufts in all its bizarre, history-making, worrisome and hopeful incarnations. A hearty thanks goes out to our readers and newsmakers — and on a day when the Somerville Journal looks to make the latter out of the former, we offer this humble advice: Wear a mask tonight.
