2010-12-03.pdf

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THE TUFTS DAILY

Cloudy 43/30

Student successfully petitions against crated veal BY JENNY

WHITE

Daily Editorial Board

The town of Brookline, Mass., on Nov. 16 adopted a resolution against the sale and consumption of crated veal, a result of Tufts sophomore Rachel Baras’ efforts to raise awareness of animal cruelty issues surrounding its production. Formally titled Article 21, the resolution encourages restaurants, food vendors and consumers in Brookline to cease their sale and purchase of crated veal. Baras, herself a Brookline resident, presented her petition to Brookline’s Town Meeting — the town’s legislature — and the town subsequently voted to adopt the proposed resolution nearly unanimously, voting 163-4, according to Baras. Crated veal is meat taken from a calf that has been restricted to living inside an isolated crate from birth until slaughter, she said. Baras said that the resolution, which she authored, is not binding and does not outlaw the sale of crated veal. “I made it non-binding for a specific reason,” Baras said. “I did not want this to be a burden on food purveyors.” She felt that taking her cause through the Town Meeting pro-

JODI BOSIN/TUFTS DAILY

Sophomore Rachel Baras authored a Brookline resolution discouraging the sale of crated veal. cess and implementing an official resolution was the most persuasive means of getting businesses to alter their buying habits. The process of petitioning the town and then having the town review the petition is multi-faceted and takes several months, according to Brookline Selectman Richard Benka. Baras said that she initiated her project, called the Brookline Veal Calf Project, in August. Baras first submitted a citizen’s

petition, which requires at least 10 signatures from registered town voters who support the petition, Benka explained. From there, Baras had to present her petition to the Board of Selectman, then to a sub-committee of the Advisory Board, then to the full Advisory Board and finally at Town Meeting. “There are now 163 people agreeing with me,” Baras said. “I can go to businesses and say, there are these people who agree with me in the town. Therefore, it might be helpful to reconsider your sources of veal.” Baras said the focus on veal over other meats made the resolution more appealing. “People don’t really eat veal, so it’s easier to cut from the diet,” she said. Nancy Heller, a member of Brookline’s Advisory Committee, told the Daily that consumers still have options, including veal produced using more humane methods. “People can still have veal,” Heller said, adding that approximately 500 veal vendors in the United States alone ensure that their veal comes from humanely treated calves. As part of the resolution, restausee VEAL, page 2

UIT to raise data security awareness BY

DAPHNE KOLIOS

Daily Editorial Board

Tufts’ University Information Technology (UIT) next semester will launch a campaign focused on increasing the security of electronic data, part of broader efforts to ensure the safety of university information. The goal of the campaign is to highlight practices that guard against security breaches and keep data secure, Dawn Irish, director of communications and organizational effectiveness for UIT, said. “It can keep people informed of what they can do to protect information, so you know, creating strong passwords, clicking with care, ensuring that they remove or protect sensitive information that might be on their computer, staying up to date with antivirus software, using a firewall,” Irish said. “Just really basic, easy things that anybody could do that will help protect them personally and also help protect the university.” The campaign will target faculty, staff and students, according to Irish, and the implementation process will be gradual.

“We’ll probably be putting up about 200 posters over the next three to five months,” Irish said. The UIT campaign was precipitated by the recent surge in highly publicized security breaches, and a subsequent law put in place to counter these attacks, according to Irish. “There was a new law that was put into place … about a year and a half ago that requires companies to protect the information of their customers,” Irish said. “In this case, our customers are students, so by law, we must protect students’ data.” Planning for the campaign began last summer, according to Irish, and is set to begin after the new year. “It entails a brochure that we created for faculty and staff that gives them practical ideas to safeguard Tufts data,” Irish said. “And it involves an advertising campaign in the Daily that mirrors the posters that we created.” SeveralsubdivisionsofUITworked on the effort, including Information Security and Communications and Organizational Effectiveness, Irish said. The endeavor is not the first university effort to emphasize data

security. Last spring, UIT launched a website called “Guard It,” which increased awareness about protecting personal information. “That was the first iteration of the campaign,” Irish said. “On that site, we have all sorts of little tidbits, interesting information — we have videos, we have games, we have a lot of different things.” Though the chance of a security breach cannot be completely wiped away, Irish hopes UIT’s advertising efforts will stress to students the importance of protecting their data. “We’re just coming at it from many different angles, and none of these things will go away — they’ll just all be part of our catalogue of security awareness,” Irish said. Tufts OnLine, a student-run group that provides computer support services, has a similar ongoing awareness campaign and mission. Approximately a decade ago, it began distributing antivirus software to students, according to Judi Vellucci, supervisor of Tufts OnLine, which is a subgroup of UIT. Since then, the group has extended its outreach into student dormitories,

for the open seat. Senior Ian Hainline’s Nov. 7 resignation from the Senate vacated the seat, which dropped down to the junior class. Twenty-two percent of the Class of 2012 voted in the election, according to ECOM Chair

Report of gun-wielding individual proves to be false alarm The Tufts University Police Department at approximately 3:50 p.m. issued an e-mail security alert about a man carrying a handgun on Professors Row. The alert, however, turned out to be a false alarm, TUPD said in a followup e-mail to the community. Immediately after TUPD sent the first security alert about the 2:35 p.m. sighting, a man matching the physical description in the report called TUPD to say that he had been walking down Professors Row with a ratchet wrench at that time. After meeting the caller, TUPD determined that he matched the description in the first report and confirmed that the ratchet wrench had been mistaken for a revolver, according to the second e-mail sent approximately an hour later. “The police were able to confirm certain details with him … and that it was all completely innocent behavior,” Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler said. The person who made the original report to TUPD said there was a clicking sound that “might be the sound of a cylinder in a revolver,” Thurler said. She explained that the man who had been carrying the ratchet wrench had been twirling it, making a similar sound. After TUPD received the initial report, it conducted a search of the area along with both the Medford

Katherine McManus, a sophomore. Turnout was lower compared to other special elections that have been held this fall, according to McManus.

Inside this issue

—by Matt Repka

and Somerville Police Departments. The search was negative, according to the first e-mail. Thurler said that TUPD and Tufts administrators judged that an e-mail alert, rather than a message from the Tufts Emergency Alert System — which notifies students about emergencies via text and voice messages — was the best response to the initial report. “Tufts University Police, working with senior leadership at the university, considered how best to address this situation,” Thurler said in an e-mail to the Daily. “They concluded that in this case, an e-mailed safety alert was the appropriate channel, since Tufts had no evidence of any immediate threat to the community and no indication that anyone was planning any violent act.” Both the Medford and Somerville Police Departments were notified of the false alarm. “It’s basically a non-event,” Somerville Police Department Deputy Chief Paul Upton said. Upton said false reports of firearm sightings are fairly common. “We get these calls a lot more often than not,” he said. The Medford Police Department had no further information about the report. Calls to TUPD were not immediately returned. —by Nina Ford and Brent Yarnell

TIEN TIEN/TUFTS DAILY

Meditation, practiced by senior Jenna Dargie, is shown to have many mental and physical health benefits.

Psychologist, students: Meditation an effective path to stress-relief BY

see SECURITY, page 3

Sandiford wins junior Senate seat in special election Junior Jibade Sandiford won a special election to fill a vacant Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate seat, the Elections Commission (ECOM) announced this morning. Sandiford beat out his lone opponent, junior Jonathan Danzig,

TUFTSDAILY.COM

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2010

VOLUME LX, NUMBER 56

Where You Read It First Est. 1980

EMILIA LUNA

Daily Editorial Board

College students turn to a long list of activities to relax and blow off steam — working out, socializing, playing sports — the list goes on. But Christopher Willard, staff psychologist at Counseling and Mental Health Service (CMHS) and member of the board of directors at Boston’s Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy, recommends they add another,

more exotic activity to that list: meditation. The practice of meditation, according to Willard, can be quite simple, though not always easy. “Meditation is essentially just paying attention to what is happening in the present moment and deliberately avoiding distraction,” he said. “When I say paying attention to what is happening, that can mean what is happensee MEDITATION, page 2

Today’s Sections

Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ features in an unexpected place — the Annual Fall Dance Concert.

Tufts comes from behind to win Tuesday’s game against Salem State.

see ARTS, page 5

see SPORTS, back

News | Features Comics Arts | Living

1 4 5

Classifieds Sports

7 Back


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