Students in Carmichael Hall reported an uptick of mouse sightings and encounters following their return from winter break, with the university formally addressing the problem of pest control on Jan. 19 via an email from the Office of Residential Life & Learning.
In a walkout from classes on Thursday, students assembled in front of the Mayer Campus Center to protest Israel’s continued war in Gaza, which has now taken the lives of over 28,000 Palestinians since Oct. 7, 2023. The protest, organized by the Coalition for Palestinian Liberation at Tufts, coincided with similar demonstrations at other schools in a National Student Day of Action for Divestment.
In the school’s first round of admissions since the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action, admissions officers lack access to any part of applicants’ racial background, leaving the Class of 2028’s racial makeup, for now, ambiguous.
Club leaders from media, programming and performance groups met with Tufts Community Union Senate leaders in the Alumnae Lounge on Friday for a shared lunch, part of a five-part series where the TCU Senate invites different club presidents to lunch. These meetings were coordinated to discuss problems these clubs face and to foster a stronger connection between TCU Senate leaders and student organizations.
The Tufts Community Union Senate heard and denied the Singaporean Indonesian Malaysian Students Association’s request to fund an additional off-campus retreat on Sunday, and heard from Dean of Students Camille Lizarríbar on her plans to promote “restorative justice” on campus in order to “build community” and “strengthen relationships among students.”
The university held its annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. celebration in the Joyce Cummings Center on Jan. 31, featuring keynote speaker Christian Walkes, who studies race and inequality within the U.S. education system as a PhD student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. The event centered around the theme of a “single garment of destiny,” a concept first described by King in his 1963 “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” highlighting the shared nature of the future.
In March, students will have the opportunity to dedicate their spring breaks to civic engagement through a new program, Jumbo Spring Break, which was collaboratively designed over the last semester by the Dean of Students Office, Tufts Community Union Senate, Tisch College of Civic Life, Career Center and the Chaplaincy.
Sanjana Paul, the co-founder and executive director of Earth Hacks, explored the philosophy of her nonprofit’s mission to make hackathons more environmentally conscious on Jan. 25. The event, titled “Hacking the Climate Crisis: Environmental Hackathons as a Vehicle for Justice-Centric Climate Action,” was part of the environmental studies department’s ongoing Hoch Cunningham lecture series.
More than 50 students gathered by the Mayer Campus Center’s lower patio and later marched through campus in an “emergency protest for Palestine” on Friday, organized by the Coalition for Palestinian Liberation at Tufts. The group’s first protest of 2024 follows a semester marked by activism over the Israel-Hamas war.
Hemispheres: The Tufts University Journal of International Affairs, the country’s oldest undergraduate international relations journal, officially launched its magazine counterpart on Jan. 24.
Maya Roman — the family member of two women kidnapped by the U.S.-labeled terrorist organization Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023 — spoke in front of over 120 students at Tufts Hillel on Wednesday. At the Hillel-branded “Critical Conversations” event, Roman spoke about her experience and subsequent activism to earn the release of Israeli hostages — including one of her family members still held captive.
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.
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.
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.
