The Tufts Beelzebubs performed at the annual holiday open house at the White House on Dec. 9, 2023. The a cappella group got a phone call two weeks before the performance and canceled a show they had planned for that day to fly to Washington, D.C., group members said.
The Tufts University School of Medicine hosted the latest addition to its Global Health Seminar series on Wednesday, which focused on the emergence of African-centered healing circles to address long-standing effects of anti-Blackness in the U.S. Entitled “A People’s Mental Health Movement: Sawubona and the Rise of Healing Circles,” the event primarily featured Dr. Evan Auguste, assistant professor of psychology at UMass Boston, discussing his role in co-developing, leading and scaling community healing circles.
For the first time since November, University President Sunil Kumar publicly addressed the Israel-Hamas war in relation to university activism in a video message emailed to the wider Tufts community on Tuesday.
Boston Mayor Michelle Wu delivered her second annual State of the City address at the MGM Music Hall on Jan. 9, introducing new plans for housing developments and access to public education.
Representatives from the City of Somerville gathered feedback from community members at two public meetings earlier this month in order to update the city’s conservation and recreational development goals for the next seven years.
Closing a chapter of 33 years, Tufts’ Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences James M. Glaser will depart the university to begin tenure at Santa Clara University in California as its executive vice president and provost come July.
The Environmental Studies Program held its final Hoch Cunningham Environmental lecture series on Thursday, featuring Tyler McCullough (LA’17), manager of corporate climate action at the environmental advocacy firm Ceres. In the lecture titled “Investor Advocacy and Business Working to Address Climate Change,” McCullough discussed how Ceres facilitates corporate sustainability and how companies are transitioning to clean energy while maintaining financial ambition.
Tufts Labor Coalition hosted an event on Monday in partnership with the Justice Arts Coalition where students wrote letters to support incarcerated artists. Sophomore TLC member Hunter Payne organized the event along with other JAC volunteers. Payne worked with the JAC this previous summer in Takoma Park, Md. In a message to the Daily, Payne wrote that similar events were also being set up at other colleges by the organization.
“It’s emerging, it’s everywhere. It’s going to be even more everywhere, … and it’s scary and inspiring at the same time,” Jad Oubala, president and founder of the Tufts Artificial Intelligence Society, said when describing AI. For this reason, TAIS brought together computer science researchers and renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett to discuss the ethical concerns of developing AI technology at a panel discussion titled “Ghost in the Neural Net: Traversing the Ethics of AI” on Nov. 15. Matthias Scheutz and Tina Eliassi-Rad, both computer science professors at Tufts and Northeastern University respectively, joined Dennett on stage. Oubala, a first-year student, moderated the discussion.
Somerville Mayor Katanja Ballantyne and Somerville’s Police Chief Search Committee announced on Nov. 9 that their search for the next chief of the Somerville Police Department will continue. Somerville has been in the process of selecting the new chief since December 2020, when former Chief David Fallon retired.
Somerville Mayor Katjana Ballantyne and City Clerk Kimberly Wells officially removed the gender identification requirement from Somerville marriage certificates on Oct. 19. Rather than having to select either “male” or “female” on their marriage certificates, Somerville couples can now choose to leave this field blank.
On Nov. 2, the City of Medford broke ground on the half-mile Clippership Connector which will connect over 10 miles of preexisting greenways and bike paths whichreach from Boston to as far north as Lynn.The path, expected to be completed by 2025, will be the culmination of over 10 years of work by the city and the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation, as well as multiple civil society organizations.
As winter temperatures begin to drop, so will many people’s moods. The Tufts Employee Assistance Program facilitated a webinar titled “Maintaining Mental Health During Seasonal Change,” for employees on Nov. 15. Hosted by employee wellness organization KGA and sponsored by Tufts Human Resources, the webinar covered topics ranging from broader seasonal mood changes, how seasonal affective disorder can impact daily life and the risk of holiday-related stress.
Members of the Tufts Community Union Senate, which has officially been in session for over two months, report feeling both spirited and productive. With seven new senators from the Class of 2027 in its ranks, various projects have begun to take shape, many of them led by first-year senators.
Kesem at Tufts University hosted their annual fall Friends and Family Day in the Aidekman Arts Center on Nov. 5. A chapter of the national organization Camp Kesem, Kesem at Tufts offers programming to support children whose parents have been diagnosed with cancer, such as year-long support services and a free, week-long camp each summer. Club member and sophomore Josie Miller described Tufts’ recent Friends and Family Day as “a way to touch base with some of the families of children that we’re still supporting […] throughout the year.” During the event, club members played games such as Jeopardy and charades with the families in attendance as well as other bonding activities.
Jessica Lander, award-winning teacher, policy consultant and author, visited the Cabot Intercultural Center on Nov. 8 to discuss her book “Making Americans: Stories of Historic Struggles, New Ideas, and Inspiration in Immigrant Education” (2022).
Hassaan Khan, assistant professor in Tufts’ Department of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning, spoke at a Hoch Cunningham Environmental Lecture on Thursday about the intricate water challenges in Karachi, a major city in Pakistan.
Erin King, civic life coordinator for Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, unpacked the history of pet policy and its complex ties to racism and housing inequity in an Oct. 24 Civic Life Lunch hosted by Jonathan M. Tisch College. King is a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate specializing in human-animal interaction and has been a civic life coordinator since 2017. She earned her Master of Science at Tufts where she studied the link between animal cruelty and other forms of domestic abuse.
At least 250 students staged a walkout and 10-hour sit-in at the Mayer Campus Center in support of Palestine on Thursday. The protest was organized by the newly formed Coalition for Palestinian Liberation. “Hundreds of students walked out of their classes, many skipped their classes, their clubs [and] their obligations for the whole day to show Tufts that they stand against the ongoing genocide in Palestine and to demand that Tufts divest from Israeli apartheid,” a representative for Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine said. “It shows that there are more and more students joining the cause, we have momentum and we aren’t going to slow down anytime soon.”
The Tufts Community Union Senate announced major changes to club funding procedures on campus during an open meeting earlier this semester. New measures aim to improve access to campus life by minimizing barriers to club participation and enhancing student experiences through additional funding opportunities, according to TCU Treasurer Dhruv Sampat. The TCU Senate voted unanimously to pass the 244 changes to funding procedures. Sampat, who spearheaded creation of the new Treasury Procedure Manual last summer, emphasized the importance of collaboration when drafting revisions.
