Opinion | Editorial

Editorial

Editorial: Course policies unfairly expect in-person attendance

By The Tufts Daily | February 15

As many classes return to an in-person format, Tufts students who remain isolated or in quarantine due to positive COVID-19 tests or contact tracing continue to face many difficulties compared to classmates who are able to attend every class session. In response, some professors remain aware of the challenges that a COVID-19-related absence may bring and have adjusted their syllabi accordingly. However,many have reenacted pre-pandemic course policies that place a cost on missing a lecture or attending virtually due to COVID-19 exposure.

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Editorial

Editorial: Tufts must communicate with students about omicron on campus and abroad

By The Tufts Daily | December 29

With omicron variant cases rising around the world — straining hospitals, canceling flights and altering colleges’ plans for returns to campus — Tufts students remain unsure as to what their spring semester will look like. After moving finals online following Dec. 17, Tufts has left students anxious as to what to expect this spring. 

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Editorial

Editorial: Installing a crosswalk by the Joyce Cummings Center is vital to student safety 

By The Tufts Daily | December 13

Already buzzing with conversation and collaboration, the Joyce Cummings Center opened to students two weeks ago today and has seen an influx of students, faculty and staff traveling to and from the new$90 million academic building. But with heavy Green Line Extension construction and no easy-access crosswalks in sight, students have been forced to navigate busy streets and illegally jaywalk over College Avenue in order to access the building. 

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Editorial

Editorial: A one-day reading period is unacceptable

By The Tufts Daily | December 6

As the semester nears completion, the anxiety provoked by yet another semester of masking, COVID-19 cases and general uncertainty will grow exponentially. In 2019, we published an editorial that asked Tufts to extend the reading period beyond just three days. In hindsight, three days sounds luxurious; fall semesters at Tufts tend to only have a two-day reading period, and this semester is ending with a disconcerting one-day reading period.

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Editorial

Editorial: Students deserve better support from Tufts in the housing process

By The Tufts Daily | November 19

There’s a housing crisis at Tufts. This is, of course,nothing new; however, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened this problem, forcing first-year students to live over a mile drive from campus, exacerbating unpredictabilities for sophomores preparing to lose guaranteed housing as juniors and creating uncertainties for those stuck with leases and planning to go abroad. There are three factors we discuss below that contribute to a pressing anxiety among the student body, all interconnected and centered around a basic human necessity: shelter. 

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Editorial

Editorial: Ending the Portuguese minor goes against Tufts' values

By The Tufts Daily | November 10

The Tufts School of Arts and Sciences recently announced the decision toend the Portuguese minor, placing the ability to learn the Portuguese language at Tufts in jeopardy. Current students who have already begun the minor sequence will be able to finish, and the department will continue to offer Portuguese language classes through the 2022–23 academic year. However, with the elimination of the minor, the Portuguese program as students know it will soon cease to exist, depriving members of the Tufts community of meaningful opportunities to engage with the language.

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Editorial

Editorial: Tufts’ illness policies unfairly burden students and faculty

By The Tufts Daily | October 25

This illness policy is fundamentally flawed, and leaves students without sure alternatives or recourse to continue their education in isolation. The Tufts short-term illness form does not excuse students’ absences, missed coursework or exams they may be too sick to take, and without a convenient way to request medical excuse notes, students are now reliant on professors to understand and judge their situations despite largely lacking health care training.

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Editorial

Editorial: Tufts' housing plan must take into account the interests of students and neighbors

By The Tufts Daily | May 7

Building more housing on campus is an issue of economic justice, as the current shortage leaves few options for low-income students at Tufts and for low-income renters who are being priced out of our surrounding communities. These problems risk getting worse in the years ahead with the Green Line’s imminent arrival to Medford, something that could contribute to further surges in housing prices. 

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Editorial

Editorial: Graduating seniors deserve better from Tufts

By The Tufts Daily | May 5

As members of the Class of 2021 enter their final days at Tufts, now is an appropriate time to reflect on what its members have accomplished in their time here. Finishing college in circumstances that no one could have even imagined four years ago, Tufts’ graduating seniors have shown respectable resilience in the face of a challenging year. But beyond just doing the bare minimum, this is a class whose members have looked out for others in addition to themselves. In the year since this pandemic first shook the world, members of our student body — led by graduating seniors — have turned outward rather than inward, continuing our community's commitment to social justice and its tradition of activism. And compared to many of Tufts’ peers, our community has avoided the worst COVID-19 outcomes, owing largely to the behavior of students, including the graduating seniors who have sacrificed traditions enjoyed by previous generations of Tufts graduates.

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Editorial

Editorial: Hate has no home here

By The Tufts Daily | May 3

Two reprehensible incidents of hate occurred on our campus in the past week. In the first, several Asian students were verbally assaulted with hateful anti-Asian rhetoric by the occupants of a passing vehicle while walking on Professors Row. In the second, a large swastika was painted on the Bello Field shed, and was found by members of a Tufts athletic team. The Daily stands in solidarity with the communities impacted by these despicable acts. When confronting this tide of hate, it is imperative that we do not become desensitized to these attacks, and instead that we act with urgency to promptly deliver justice

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Editorial

Editorial: Well-rounded education requires diversified curricula

By The Tufts Daily | April 23

At Tufts, like many other predominantly white institutions, curricula often center around the Eurocentric perspectives of Westerners — particularly white men — narrowing the worldview to which students are exposed. Not only does this reality undermine Tufts’ liberal arts foundation of exposing students to a wide array of subjects, it also fails to prepare students for civic stewardship in which they directly engage with the effects of patriarchy, colonialism and racism.

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Editorial

Editorial: Tufts should never return to requiring standardized tests

By The Tufts Daily | April 12

When the three-year window of the test-optional policy elapses, the university will have a critical decision to make: Tufts can either bring back its standardized testing requirement, making future generations go through the same process that current Tufts students endured, or it can repeat the process used to admit the Class of 2025, which saw the most diverse applicant pool in the university’s history.

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Editorial

Editorial: With little time off, professors should step up to reduce student burnout

By The Tufts Daily | April 8

One way for professors to support overwhelmed students is to create their own wellness days. Though some professors already took this commendable step ahead of Tufts’ “spring break,” these instances were the exceptions, not the norm. If similar gestures became more common, students would have room to breathe during a semester that has offered little.

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Editorial

Editorial: RAs have spoken, now Tufts must listen

By The Tufts Daily | April 2

One common struggle, among the myriad that RAs have faced this year, has been social isolation. In the fall, RAs were unique among students on campus in that they were typically considered "cohorts of one" rather than members of larger residential cohorts like most students; the end of the cohort system before the spring semester, however, did not spell the end of the social toll that comes with being an RA during a pandemic.

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Editorial

Editorial: To actively fight the opioid crisis, Tufts must advocate for supervised injection sites in Somerville

By The Tufts Daily | March 31

It is particularly important that our community play an active role in combating this crisis because Tufts itself benefited from the profits made by Purdue Pharma. As the Sackler family faced criticism for its marketing tactics, its members tried to build more positive reputations as patrons of museums and universities, including Tufts, which has received roughly $15 million from the family since 1980. 

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Editorial

Editorial: We as a community must combat anti-Asian racism

By The Tufts Daily | March 25

These acts of violence and hate are unacceptable, as are the ways in which Asian Americans have faced social and legal discrimination for over 150 years. Moving forward, it is urgent that Tufts evaluate how it, as an institution, can better serve the Asian American communities on and off campus. Furthermore, as members of the Tufts community, it is our responsibility to combat anti-Asian racism and foster an inclusive, safe environment.

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Editorial

Editorial: Lessons from a year of crisis

By The Tufts Daily | March 15

With every day that goes by, it seems less likely that we will ever “return to normal” — any post-pandemic world will be radically different than the one we left behind a year ago. So as we reflect on all that we’ve lost in the past year, we should also take a moment to think about what kind of new “normal” we want to create for the years ahead.

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Editorial

Editorial: To change TUPD, Tufts' words must be followed by action

By The Tufts Daily | March 12

Tufts' workstream report fails to offer guidance on the status of arming TUPD officers, only recommending the creation of a new working group to revisit the issue. Pushing this off to yet another working group represents an excessive delay, as every day that goes by with armed officers present on campus brings risk of violent escalation in TUPD-student interactions. In light of this, it matters that Tufts take swifter action to create a gun-free campus, and, hopefully, engage in a broader reevaluation of what service TUPD should actually provide.

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Editorial

Editorial: As the vaccination process moves forward, Tufts must embrace equitable strategy

By The Tufts Daily | March 4

Each time the state enters a new phase, Tufts should directly reach out to the most vulnerable of its eligible students and employees before resorting to a first-come, first-served basis among all who are eligible.

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Editorial

Editorial: Magnitude of the climate crisis demands full divestment from all fossil fuels

By The Tufts Daily | February 26

This latest act from the university is laudable, but even it does not do justice to the scale of climate change as a threat. Echoing the long-standing demands of student activists, we urge the administration to go further and pursue complete divestment from all direct and indirect holdings in the fossil fuel industry.

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