Recession be damned!
While the rest of the country languishes in financial doldrums, the dissolution of businessman and engineer Frank Doble's (E '11) charitable trust funds recently added another $136 million to Tufts' endowment. Both President Lawrence Bacow and Vice President for University Advancement Brian Lee lauded Doble's gift as a generous contribution that will, as Bacow put it in an e-mail to the Daily, "have a far-reaching impact on Tufts."
But as Tufts students and administrators celebrate Doble's generosity, the university may want to consider keeping that "far-reaching impact" as close to home as possible - as in, right here on the Hill. While Tufts as an institution has been making great strides since its endowment topped the $1-billion mark, undergraduates haven't exactly reaped the benefits of the school's prosperity at the most basic level: on-campus housing.
Sure, fabulously flashy projects like the innovative Tufts Center for Scientific Visualization or the forward-thinking construction of Sophia Gordon Hall bring Tufts prestige and investment dollars whose trickle-down effects ultimately serve the interest of the student body. But any undergrad would tell you that he'd like to see a few bucks put toward fixing Lewis Hall's unreliable plumbing or Bush Hall's leaky ceilings before Tufts officials start drawing up plans for the new lab facility they're planning to build on Boston Avenue.
As Tufts grows in worldwide renown, its students' living conditions should more closely reflect the sterling reputation of this institution. Compared to other area universities such as Harvard, Jumbos live in relative squalor. And with the university becoming more formidable by the day within the realm of Tier 1 schools, it would be a shame to let something as fixable as crummy housing diminish Tufts' competitive edge.
And yet, that might just be the case: Lewis Hall suffers from an uncontrollable rodent infestation, and the legend of the mysterious breed of insect known as the Wren Bug continues to thrive amongst the student body.
A coalition of undergraduates recently formed the Tufts Students for the Improvement of Residential Life group in order to lobby for better housing conditions. This last item alone - the fact that students are so incensed by Tufts' decrepit residence halls that they felt the need to form a committee about it - should be proof enough that some serious time, effort and at least a few dollars need to be devoted to sprucing up our admittedly aging and eroding dormitories.
After all, to those high school seniors who have been visiting this campus recently, the fallout shelters that we call Carmichael basement rooms make a far greater impact on their decisions to attend Tufts than the lure of a new campus center at our medical school.
And since those pre-frosh are the potential Frank Dobles who will be financing Tufts' future years down the road, it makes sense to court their favor - even if investing in common room furniture isn't as exciting as a state-of-the-art laboratory.
