Monday, April 24, 2017

WOMEN’S TRACK AND FIELD

Activists and admins: tensions on the rise see FEATURES / PAGE 5

Jumbos sit several in last regular season meet

Netflix’s ‘Chelsea’ is Handler at her most authentic self see ARTS&LIVING / PAGE 7

SEE SPORTS / BACK PAGE

THE

INDEPENDENT

STUDENT

N E W S PA P E R

OF

TUFTS

UNIVERSITY

E S T. 1 9 8 0

T HE T UFTS DAILY

VOLUME LXXIII, NUMBER 53

tuftsdaily.com

Monday, April 24, 2017

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Tufts Dining reinstates Linda Furgala at Carmichael Dining Center

Activism at Tufts: Tensions on the rise between student groups and administrators

by Daniel Nelson

by Liam Knox

News Editor

Disclaimer: Linda Furgala’s daughter is an assistant news editor at the Daily.

She was not involved in the production of this article.

Linda Furgala, an employee at Carmichael Dining Center who was fired during the middle of her shift last Wednesday night, told the Daily on

Friday afternoon that her job has been reinstated. Furgala said that she will resume work in Carmichael today.

The turn of events capped off a confusing two days during which the fate of Furgala’s job and the reasoning behind her initial dismissal were unclear.

Furgala said that she had been let go on Wednesday night at around 6:30 p.m. by Peter Soucy, Carmichael’s unit see TUFTS DINING, page 2

BEN KIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

Carmichael Dining Center staff member Linda Furgala swipes in a student for dinner on March 28.

News Editor

Editors notes: This series was reported

by The Tufts Daily’s Investigative Team.

Reena Karasin and Cathy Perloff contributed reporting.

This is the first segment of a fourpart series exploring the past, present and future of activism at Tufts.

Tufts made national headlines in May 2015 when students from Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC) staged a five-day hunger strike to protest the university’s plans to lay off up to 35 janitors. The action was the culmination of tensions between TLC and the central administration that had stretched throughout the academic year.

Tufts holds a reputation for harboring passionate activists, and many students interviewed for this series cited that reputation as part of their decision to attend Tufts. But actions like the 2015 hunger strike underline the friction between activists and the administration that has been present for decades.

From a 2015 Tufts Climate Action (TCA) sit-in that landed six students on Disciplinary Probation II to May 2016 demonstrations protesting continually increasing tuition hikes, increased student action has resulted in heightened tensions. In an effort to improve relations with the activist community, Dean

of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMahon told the Daily her office has plans to launch a working group to clarify university policy around demonstrations.

Why student concerns often lead to organized action Student activists interviewed for this series, who represent a variety of different activist groups on campus, all echo the same complaints: The university often refuses to engage cooperatively with student groups that are critical of university policy until a public, attention-grabbing action is staged — and that even if the action is successful in eliciting a university response, it can be disingenuous, slow and ineffective.

TLC member Nicole Joseph explained that the 2015 hunger strike was not an isolated protest, but rather an attempt to gain the attention of administrators who were dismissive of the group’s concerns during a series of conversations with Executive Vice President Patricia Campbell’s office that took place in the months leading up to the hunger strike.

There were 12 meetings, Campbell said.

According to Joseph, a junior, the meetings themselves were the result of a TLC occupation of the Coolidge Room in Ballou Hall in December 2014.

Joseph, who is also involved in Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) as well as many other student activist see ACTIVISM, page 5

Benya Kraus announces candidacy for TCU President

by Seohyun Shim

Assistant News Editor

Benya Kraus, the diversity & community affairs officer for Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate, is the only candidate for Tuesday’s election for TCU President. As a result, this year’s election will be uncontested, and Kraus, a junior, is the presumptive president-elect for the next academic year.

Kraus said that, having moved around frequently while growing up, she is passionate about the idea of finding a home.

She added that she has been trying to center her campaign on the phrase, “Home as place and home as each other.”

“I’ve grown up moving to a lot of different communities and have always found ways to make different places my

Please recycle this newspaper

Partly Cloudy 65 /45

/thetuftsdaily

homes,” Kraus said. “Coming to Tufts … I feel very invested in making sure that other people can find home here, despite how difficult that may seem.”

She explained that she wants to focus on home both as a physical space and as a supportive community. She pointed out that some places on campus are underutilized and that financial resources are consolidated in certain locations.

“If you just look at a map of our campus right now, it even just physically looks segregated,” Kraus said. “If you want to create [a] home and bring people together, you need to have a physical design that allows you to bring people together.”

She said that she feels the campus has become divided on controversial

For breaking news, our content archive and exclusive content, visit tuftsdaily.com @tuftsdaily

tuftsdaily

tuftsdaily

issues and that she wants to bring people together.

“I think everyone is dealing with a lot of hurt in different ways,” she said.

“What if we could use that hurt to really listen to each other and feel the sense that we want to alleviate the hurt of other people?”

In particular, Kraus would like to create more shared social spaces on campus, including a campus pub in the Mayer Campus Center. Her campaign website also calls for the creation of a more diverse system of theme houses and improving student groups’ access to on-campus spaces.

Additionally, Kraus would like to expand language class offerings, increase resources for the Department of Computer Science and potential-

Contact Us P.O. Box 53018, Medford, MA 02155 617 627 3090 FAX 617 627 3910 daily@tuftsdaily.com

ly reduce distribution requirements, according to her website.

As for campus diversity, she proposed hiring more faculty of color, diversifying the Office of Admissions’ outreach and making pre-orientation programs mandatory. She also suggested creating a process of community-based budgeting for part of the university’s tuition budget, through which the university would allow for student input on financial decisions.

Kraus commented on the fact that she is the only candidate running for president.

“Those who chose not to run: I hope that’s out of trust that I would do a good job with it, and I also think honestly

NEWS............................................1 FEATURES.................................5 ARTS & LIVING....................... 7

see TCU PRESIDENT, page 2

COMICS.......................................9 OPINION....................................11 SPORTS............................ BACK

2

THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Monday, April 24, 2017

T HE T UFTS D AILY Kathleen Schmidt Editor-in-Chief

EDITORIAL

Jei-Jei Tan Miranda Willson Managing Editors Joe Walsh Executive News Editor Ariel Barbieri-Aghib News Editors Zachary Hertz Gil Jacobson Robert Katz Liam Knox Daniel Nelson Catherine Perloff Emma Steiner Hannah Uebele Charles Bunnell Assistant News Editors Emily Burke Daniel Caron Aneurin Canham-Clyne Juliana Furgala Elie Levine Natasha Mayor Jesse Najarro Minna Trinh Costa Angelakis Executive Features Editor Becca Leibowitz Features Editors Jake Taber Emma Rosenthal Emma Damokosh Assistant Features Editors Zach Essig Elie Levine Jessie Newman Sean Ong Hermes Suen Grace Yuh Eran Sabaner Executive Arts Editor John Gallagher Arts Editors Cassidy Olsen John Fedak Assistant Arts Editors Libby Langsner Setenay Mufti Paige Spangenthal Anita Ramaswamy Executive Opinion Editor Stephen Dennison Cartoonists Shannon Geary Noah Kulak Lydia Ra Miranda Chavez Editorialists Julia Faxon Hannah Kahn Lena Novins-Montague Madeleine Schwartz Daniel Weinstein Eddie Samuels Executive Sports Editor Yuan Jun Chee Sports Editors Maddie Payne Maclyn Senear Liam Finnegan Assistant Sports Editors Savannah Mastrangelo Brad Schussel Sam Weidner Sam Weitzman Ray Bernoff Executive Photo Editor Margot Day Staff Photographers Scott Fitchen Lilia Kang Max Lalanne Rachael Meyer Vintus Okwonko Zachary Sebek Alexis Serino Seohyun Shim Angelie Xiong Sitong Zhang Ezgi Yazici Executive Video Editor Olivia Ireland Executive Video Admin.

Ana Sophia Acosta Staff Videographer

PRODUCTION Sebastian Torrente Production Director Connor Dale Executive Layout Editors Ezgi Yazici Morgan Berman Layout Editors Jewel Castle Julie Doten Peter Lam Nasrin Lin Brianna Mignano Ellah Nzikoba Emily Sharp Astrid Weng David Westby Sharmitha Yerneni Alice Yoon Peter Lam Executive Graphics Editor Gil Jacobson Zachary Hertz Jack Ronan Arthur Beckel Caroline Bollinger Reena Karasin Bibi Lichauco Katie Martensen Netai Schwartz Nihaal Shah Liora Silkes Dan Strauss Mary Carroll Madhulika Gupta Anna Hirshman Tess Jacobson David Levitsky Ali Mintz Alexis Serino Anahita Sethi Seohyun Shim Hannah Wells Jiayu Xu Vanessa Zighelboim

Executive Copy Editor Senior Copy Editors Copy Editors

Assistant Copy Editors

Nitesh Gupta Online Editor Seohyun Shim Social Media Editor

BUSINESS Josh Morris

Executive Business Director

tuftsdaily.com

Carmichael employee Linda Furgala says rehiring partially due to student support TUFTS DINING

continued from page 1 manager. According to Furgala, Soucy had informed her that as a temporary employee, she could be fired at any time. Soucy did not respond to requests for comment.

Soucy then escorted Furgala out of his office and to the swipe-in desk to collect her belongings, and then out a back door of Carmichael. “[At the time] I felt like a criminal,” Furgala said in a Thursday interview with the Daily. “They did it in front of everybody.”

Furgala said she met with Tufts Human Resources on Friday, and they concluded that she should not have been let go.

The events leading up to the Wednesday firing were unclear, and Furgala said she had not initially been told why she was being let go. She said that it may have been caused by a misunderstanding between her and a different manager at Carmichael.

Furgala said that she started working in Carmichael in October 2015. She had moved from California to Massachusetts with her daughter at that time.

Furgala credits her return to the Tufts students who reacted to her firing. Students shared a pre-written letter on social media on Wednesday night that praised Furgala and asked for her return. Sophomore Marissa Birne urged students to contact Soucy about her firing.

“This was a really good reminder to people of how important employees of Tufts Dining are,” Birne said.

In an electronic message to the Daily, Tufts Executive Director of Public Relations Patrick Collins declined to comment on the details of the matter due to privacy concerns. Collins did address the students’ efforts in support of Furgala.

“We are aware that some students expressed concern about this matter,” Collins said. “We are committed to treating all employees fairly and in accordance with our stated policies.”

Furgala said she looks forward to returning to work today.

“I’m so happy to be going back because I missed all the kids,” she said.

Events on the Hill — Week of April 24 MONDAY “Peace in the Middle East? One hundred years after the Balfour Declaration” Details: Miguel Ángel Moratinos Cuyaubé, Spain’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs and the European Union’s former Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process for seven years, is speaking at an event hosted by the Institute for Global Leadership (IGL).

Where and When: Alumnae Lounge; 6 p.m.

Sponsor: IGL WEDNESDAY “Mental Health Task Force Listening Session” Details: The Mental Health Task Force, which was formed last semester by University President Anthony Monaco, is hosting a session to gauge students’ thoughts on mental health resources and policies. The university

is hosting a number of other sessions this week at Group of Six houses and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA).

Where and When: Mayer Campus Center Room 207; 12 p.m.

Sponsor: Mental Health Task Force “The Global Commons: A TuftsFletcher Discussion” Details: Undergraduate international relations journal Hemispheres is releasing its 40th issue this week, on the theme of “The Global Commons.”

The journal’s launch will be marked by a series of presentations by students and faculty of the School of Arts and Sciences and The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

Where and When: Crowe Room, The Fletcher School; 12:20 p.m.

Sponsors: Tu f t s Hemispheres, Fletcher Science Diplomacy Club and International Relations Program.

THURSDAY “2017 Birger Lecture Series” Details: Edward Glaeser, an economics professor at Harvard who studies and teaches courses about urban economics, will give a speech on the role of cities in development.

Where and When: Tisch Library 304; 5 p.m.

Sponsor: Department of Economics FRIDAY “The Future of Trans-Pacific Trade” Details: Barbara Weisel, assistant U.S. trade representative for Southeast Asia and the Pacific, will speak about the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP).

Weisel was a negotiator for the TPP. Where and When: ASEAN Auditorium; 3 p.m.

Sponsor: Fletcher School

– Joe Walsh

Monday, April 24, 2017 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

News

3

TCA hosts climate rally in conjunction with Boston’s March for Science

by Seohyun Shim

Assistant News Editor

Tufts Climate Action ( TCA) hosted the ‘Rally for Climate Justice’ on Mayer Campus Center Lower Patio on Saturday, in part to urge the university to divest its direct holding in the fossil fuel industry. The rally took place on the same day as the March for Science in Boston, which was part of a series of national marches organized in reaction to President Donald Trump’s climate change denial and threats to cut research funding.

The rally began at 12:30 p.m. and ended around 12:50 p.m. About 45 students attended, according to TCA member Shana Gallagher. After the rally, TCA members and some students joined the March for Science, which took place in Boston Common from 1–4 p.m.

Thousands of people gathered for the march, and crowds filled up much of the Boston Public Garden and Boston Common. The main speakers included notable scientists and activists such as former Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Director Gina McCarthy (G ’81) and Dean of Harvard Medical School George Q. Daley.

Gallagher, a senior, explained that TCA was looking to connect to the March For Science, though TCA is not a science advocacy group specifically.

“Even though the purpose of the march today was to stand up for science in much more of a political sense, which is very important, we wanted to connect that message to the fact that Tufts University is still actively profiting from climate change by being invested in fossil fuels,” Gallagher said. “We see that almost as a form of climate science denial as well because it seems like our administration is making a statement that climate change is not a problem or a priority.”

Similarly, Bianca Hutner, another TCA member, stressed the connec-

SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

TCA members hold signs during March for Science that took place at Boston Common on April 22. tion between TCA’s rally and March for Science. She claimed that both the Trump administration and Tufts are practicing a form of science denial.

“The link is still there because I think one thing that’s important is to understand how the climate denial that we see from the Trump administration is kind of what also we see at the Tufts administration as well, by refusing … to acknowledge the gravity of the issue,” Hutner, a junior, said.

Tufts administrators have said that the university will not divest its endowment holdings from fossil fuel companies. After a conversation with TCA last fall, the Board of Trustees decided against divestment, saying it would harm the university financially, accord-

ing to an Oct. 25, 2016 Daily article.

More recently, after the passage of a Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate resolution two weeks ago calling for divestment from companies involved in the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the university said in a statement that divestment “was not compatible with the university’s current manner of investing.”

Hutner added that the rally was also an effort to expand TCA’s influence on campus.

“It’s just important to get our presence back on campus because we haven’t had a rally event for a long time,” she said. “Divestment and fossil fuel investments are really still, and will always be, [important issues] until they are resolved.”

Hutner added that she feels the university has not addressed the issues properly.

“It’s been like they really just want to appease us … hoping we will go away,” she said.

Gallagher affirmed that TCA’s main objective is to drive the university to divest from fossil fuel investments and that the group will continue the effort in coming years.

“We really need to be taking the sort of action that is going to avert more ecological destruction and human suffering that’s already happening, and the divestment is the most important way that an institution like [a] university can do [this],” she said. “We are definitely going to keep fighting for it.”

TCU presidential candidate Benya Kraus discusses campaign, vision TCU PRESIDENT

continued from page 1 it’s a hard job to take on,” Kraus said.

“I understand it’s not really the most attractive position to go for.”

She added that she feels confident that she would be a strong candi-

date even if there were others running, given that she created TCU Senate’s Two-Minute Thursday videos and has budgeted many student groups on campus.

“I feel pretty confident in [being the most qualified candidate],” she said. “I

TCU President Benya Kraus poses for a portrait in front of Ballou Hall on April 20.

think [that’s] because I spent three years on [TCU Senate], and the leadership positions I’ve had on it have been really wide ranging in their applications.”

Current TCU President Gauri Seth said that while she would have liked to see more candidates run for the position, she does not see it as an inherent concern. She added that she appreciates Kraus’ campaign’s attempts to get students engaged with campus politics.

“I wish there were more than one person running, just because I think it’s really important to have a lot of participation and democracy,” Seth, a senior, said. “I think from what I’ve seen of [Kraus’] campaign, I really appreciate the work [she is] doing to reach out to the Tufts community.”

Seth said she understands why people would not SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY run for the position,

particularly considering the current climate on campus.

“You have to deal with a lot of challenges and that’s not always pleasant,” Seth said. “It’s also really difficult to put yourself out there in front of over 5,000 people.”

TCU Vice President Shai Slotky, who openly endorsed Kraus, pointed out that this is not the first time the election has been uncontested. In 2015, Brian Tesser was elected as TCU President in an uncontested race.

Turnout for the 2015 election was only 11.65 percent of the student body, whereas the 2016 election between Seth and Ryan Johnson saw more than double the turnout, according to 2015 and 2016 Daily articles.

“Anybody can choose to run or [choose not] to run,” Slotky, a senior, said. “Two years ago, Brian Tesser ran uncontested, and I candidly don’t think [it is a problem]. I get that there are questions to legitimacy and I think those are completely fair to be had, to say, ‘Why is only one person running?'”

Nonetheless, Slotky said that Kraus is a well-qualified candidate. “[Kraus] is just a legitimate candidate on her own, as she would have been if she were to be contested,” Slotky said. “I don’t think that detracts any legitimacy that she has as a candidate.”

4

THE TUFTS DAILY | ADVERTISEMENT | Monday, April 24, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

invites the campus to a

Dr. Jean Mayer Global Citizenship Award Lecture on

“Peace in the Middle East?

One Hundred Years after the Balfour Declaration” with

Miguel Ángel Moratinos Former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Spain Former Europe Union Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process TONIGHT, Monday, April 24, 2017 6:00pm, Alumnae Lounge, 40 Talbot Ave Miguel Ángel Moratinos has committed his professional and political activity to international relationships and development cooperation. Position he has held include: • Head of the Coordination Section for Eastern Europe, Spain • First Secretary, Spanish Embassy in Yugoslavia • Political Adviser, Spanish Embassy in Morocco • General Deputy Director for Northern Africa • Director of the Institute of Cooperation with the Arab World • General Director of Foreign Policy for Africa and the Middle East • Ambassador to Israel • EU Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process, where he promoted Peace Agreements and carried out actions on behalf of the EU to foster the Arab-Israeli dialogue and turn the Mediterranean into a region of peace and prosperity • Member of Parliament, Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE), Córdoba • Minister of Foreign Affairs and Cooperation • Presidency of the United Nations Security Council and the chairmanships-in-office of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe and the Council of the European Union • Member, Global Dry Land Alliance in Qatar • Member, High Level Advisory Panel, President, 67th UN General Assembly

For more information: tuftsgloballeadership.org or x73314

Monday, April 24, 2017

Features

Activists claim poor communication, lack of engagement from administration

5 tuftsdaily.com

Rainbow House 2016-2017 On Queer

On coming out

I

NICHOLAS PFOSI / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Protesters march during a TCA rally outside Ballou Hall on April 24, 2015.

ACTIVISM

continued from page 1 groups on campus, said unproductive meetings are par for the course when it comes to negotiating with administrators.

“My experience in meeting with administrators is that they do a lot of talking in circles and trying to appease you to a point where you say, ‘Oh, something will come out of this,’ but it really just gives them credibility to say they did something,” she said.

Campbell told the Daily that while the meetings did not result in TLC’s demands being met, she felt that the university had given careful consideration to the group’s concerns.

“It isn’t that they weren’t heard, but whatever those demands were, they were not something we agreed with them on,” she said.

TLC’s experience in these meetings led the group to believe more extreme action would be needed to save the 35 janitors’ jobs.

However, Joseph said the hunger strike did not result in administrators reaching out to discuss their demands further. Other than Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) officers fencing in the protestors’ campsite and former Executive Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler requesting that the students “be mindful of their health and safety,” the administrators who the strike was directed toward — namely, those in Campbell’s office — did not reach out to TLC for the first three days of the five-day hunger strike, according to Joseph.

“No meeting, no response, no comment, nothing. They didn’t even contact us,” Joseph said. “I was pretty shocked about that.”

University administrators say that these extreme actions are not an effective way of communicating with them.

“There wasn’t going to be an offer [to discuss TLC’s demands during the hunger strike],” Campbell said. “A hunger strike is not the way to engage with us in a conversation, so our primary concern was for their welfare and health.”

Campbell recognized tensions between the university and activist groups, but cited overly disruptive student action as one of the main causes.

“There are certain policies or rules or expectations in our community that, if our advocates want to be treated respectfully, they should do that in turn and treat the community respectfully,” Campbell said.

Cassie Barnhardt, a professor of educational policy and leadership studies at the University of Iowa, said this is a common pattern for activists at universities around the country.

“Intensity keeps elevating until somebody pays attention to it,” she told the Daily. “So what you see is that oftentimes activists will become more antagonistic, to the extent that they don’t feel campus administrators are actually attempting to address them.”

TCA member Shana Gallagher said that in her experience, it has been extremely difficult to secure meetings or conversations with administrators without first staging a protest or some other action deemed disruptive by the university.

“Any meetings we’ve had with [Chair of the Board of Trustees] Peter Dolan, the [Climate Change] symposium, it all came after student action,” she said.

“So when collaboration is presented to us as an option and it seems like it will be productive, then we take that option, but when it’s not, that’s when we have to move toward other means of public pressure and protests in order to make sure those meetings even come about.”

Gallagher, a senior, cited TCA’s occupation of University President Anthony Monaco’s office in the spring of 2015 as one example of how poor communication, as well as a disconnect between the urgency felt by activists and administrators over certain issues, led the group to feel that the sit-in was the only way to catch the attention of administrators like Campbell.

In a series of emails spanning from April to October 2014, Gallagher had attempted to communicate with Campbell’s office to express her interest in participating in the newly created Sustainability Fund. Her emails, which were provided to the Daily by Gallagher and made public during her successful appeal trial to lessen the disciplinary

measures incurred as a result of the sitin, received only one 20-word response.

Campbell, however, said the university had made efforts to include TCA in sustainability efforts that resulted from the Sustainability Council’s 2013 report.

“I can’t accept that we didn’t meet with them,” Campbell said. “We put students on a committee. I have another committee that’s a sustainable investment fund, I have students participating in that committee with trustees and administration.”

TCA members, along with student activists in general, say that the measures put forth by administration don’t effectively address the issues, lack transparency to the student body and are designed to placate students and delay university action.

The Sustainability Fund itself was dismissed by some TCA members as a measure to placate them following the Divestment Working Group’s rejection of complete divestment from fossil fuel companies earlier that year.

Campbell said the university had listened to TCA members’ demands, and said the group’s complaints stemmed from frustration over the university’s unwillingness to budge on the issue of divestment.

“One of the issues where we really do have disagreement is on divest,” she said.

Gallagher said that while she recognizes administrators may not be intentionally adversarial, there is a sense that the university’s profit margin and desire to avoid controversy is prioritized over student needs and wishes.

“I understand that it’s difficult in terms of the administrative perspective to sort of consolidate [turning a profit] with the rhetoric of trying to promote positive student traits like passion or protest,” she said. “Obviously Tufts is a school with a big social justice ethos, so I think it’s even harder for students to come to terms with … It definitely is upsetting to me personally that Tufts doesn’t see it as more of a priority to take on some of the issues that student activists really care about.” see ACTIVISM, page 6

never stop coming out to new and old friends.

Every time I converse about my weekend or about romantic or sexual adventures, I contemplate the terms my peers and I mutually understand. Most of the time, I can get away with saying “partner” and leave it at that.

However, more often than not, there is confusion when the people I identify as my partner(s) are cisgender women. It creates a moment where I have to describe the nuances of my own identity and the relationships I have with others through a medley of simplified, agreed-upon definitions.

When I scroll through my news feed, I find articles like “Things I wish I knew before I came out” or “Things to do after coming out.” These articles describe the “coming out” experience as a dramatic address and adaptation to the social ripples caused by breaking away from a heteronormative culture.

There is less of a focus on how the experience involves learning the terms that best describe your position in the cultural space and struggling to communicate these complex coordinates with your peers in the heteronormative world around you.

Dialogues that involve my partner(s) describe not only my intimacy and friendship with specific individuals but also the kind of person I am sexually involved with.

While a straight person can reference their person(s) without scrutiny in a heteronormative culture, any mention I make to a partner is held to a higher degree of scrutiny by both straight and LGBTQIA+ individuals because there isn’t a singular term that describes a trans (androgynous-femme) biological male involved with persons who identify as cisgender women.

The lack of a term is a blessing because it’s as close as I can get to living in a world where my gender and sexual identity are never assumed and not strictly defined, but it’s also a curse because when people make assumptions about me and my relationships, they’re always a little right.

When familiarizing my family with my identity, I presented myself in the most primitive terms because the jargon of my exact understanding of my current position is overwhelmingly difficult to communicate.

Because I must define myself to different people in terms they understand, I am constantly tweaking my own definition. I am, in essence, always coming out, because I have never come out exactly the same way to different people.

This article was written by an anonymous member of the Rainbow House. They can be reached at rhousecolumn@gmail.com.

6

THE TUFTS DAILY | Features | Monday, April 24, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

Administrators consider creation of working group on student activism ACTIVISM

continued from page 5 As activism involvement increases, Tufts looks to improve relations Like many liberal arts colleges across the country, Tufts encourages active citizenship in official university rhetoric, arguing that passion for bringing about change is an essential part of becoming an active citizen.

But what happens when that passion is turned on Ballou?

“Tufts’ mission is to promote active citizenship in its student body, and it just very much feels like the administration doesn’t live up to that standard it’s set for itself,” senior Brian McGough, a member of TCA, said.

“There’s this dissonance between what they say they’re doing and what they’re actually doing.”

This perceived misalignment might become even more problematic for the university in the coming years. According to a survey by the UCLA Chronicle of Higher Education, 8.5 percent of the nationwide class of 2019 said there was “a very good chance” they would participate in a protest, the highest level recorded for this item since the survey started in 1966. In few places is this trend toward greater social consciousness clearer than at Tufts, where student activist efforts are frequent, ambitious and polarizing.

According to a survey conducted by Tufts Enigma in January 2016, over 13 percent of the student body are “regular members” of political or activist organizations, while another 7.7 percent of

students say they support on-campus political action.

McMahon said in an October 2016 interview that her office is working to be better prepared to meet the needs of a student body that is increasingly active and demanding of the university.

“This is a unique time in the volume and coordination of student energy around these things,” she said. “I think it should be seen as a call for structural reimagining of how we address different endemic things … thinking as a structural institution, how are departments and functions defined, and how do we think of them in a way that allows us to collaborate and address things in a different way?”

Increasing student involvement in activist groups and causes has prompted the Office of Student Affairs to explore creating a working group to review the existing Policy on Gatherings, Demonstrations, Protests and Disturbances and to improve the campus understanding of them, according to McMahon.

Tufts’ Communications and Media Specialist Mickey Toogood, who served as Judicial Affairs Administrator until Jan. 3, wrote in an email to the Daily that while the working group is not a response to a specific incident, it is a culmination of “ongoing discussions … with a number of students and student organizations.”

The fact that this effort to improve the university’s relationship with student activists is coming from the Office of Student Affairs is not surprising —

,

Professor of History, Salem State University

A

Co-sponsored with: Anthropology Department ⋅CHAT⋅ Center for Interdisciplinary Studies ⋅ History Department⋅Latino Studies ⋅Sociology Department For additional information, contact: Audrey.Aduama@tufts.edu

SOFIE HECHT / THE TUFTS DAILY

Five Tufts students, reportedly arrested in Powderhouse Square for obstructing traffic during a protest, are kept to the side on April 30, 2015. according to students and administra- and her office have been the most receptors, this office has been especially help- tive to criticism and typically offered ful in addressing student complaints more opportunities for cooperation and about campus life. discussion.

McMahon said that this dynamic “When Mary Pat came to Tufts, the might be a result of the unique role of first thing she did was realize that her office on campus, which is to deal students were tremendously upset by directly with students. the sexual misconduct problems hap“My world is different than other pening at Tufts and the administrative administrators. My function at the uni- responses to it, so she made an effort to versity is to support the student experi- meet students and to put us all in one ence,” she said. “My ability and frame- room in the campus center and hear work around the student voice … is us,” senior Allyson Blackburn, a memshaped by that. More so than a lot of ber of Tufts Action for Sexual Assault other people, where it’s not as core to Prevention, recalled. “It meant a lot to their job function.” have her listen, which was not at all Student activists who spoke to the something I was accustomed to from Daily for this story agreed that McMahon administrators.”

Monday, April 24, 2017

ARTS&LIVING TELEVISION REVIEW

Chelsea Handler on her new show and the blending of politics and comedy

7 tuftsdaily.com

Antonio Bertolino Art-à-Porter

Elsa Schiaparelli, the artist who makes clothes

F

COURTESY CHELSEA HANDLER

Jim Parsons, Rashida Jones, Gaby Hoffmann and Mary McCormack attend an education dinner hosted by Chelsea Handler on the upcoming May 5 episode of her show.

by Libby Langsner Assistant Arts Editor

Chelsea Handler is known for never holding back. Her fiercely honest critiques of public figures, which used to only target celebrities, have now shifted to prominent politicians in her new Netflix talk show, “Chelsea” (2016– present).

To introduce the second season of the show, which premiered earlier this month, Handler begins the first episode with, “Thank you! I’m back! The last time I was sitting here, I was sitting at this desk, and the president of the United States was a hot young parasailing novelist named Barack Hussein Obama. And now we have a new president, whose name is Donald Putin Trump.” What is fascinating about the show’s political coverage is that

the show is more than just an outlet for political commentary, but also about Handler herself. In the same episode, Handler gets involved with a local political campaign, calling potential voters for Los Angeles Council District 9 candidate Jorge Nuño.

During a press conference last week with several college news organizations, including the Daily, Handler explained the reasons behind her switch to more political coverage in “Chelsea” as compared to her former show, “Chelsea Lately” (2007–2014).

“Since the election, I’ve been motivated to get more people involved with politics, especially when it’s not a presidential election,” Handler said.

“The things I cared about, I wasn’t able to talk about on my old show.

So I wanted to have more of a spectrum of conversation and be more

well rounded. As a person, you’re not just interested in one thing … so I wanted to incorporate that and feel like a fish out of water, because that also lends itself to being really stupid and funny.”

Compared to her last show, “Chelsea” allows the comedian to more easily be herself. Her political asides and personal quips throughout the show give viewers a look into Handler’s world. What makes “Chelsea” stand out from other political talk shows like “The Daily Show” (1996–present) or “Full Frontal with Samantha Bee” (2016–present) is that Handler’s comedic personality is the show’s strong point, rather than her political commentary.

“I’m not a journalist,” Handler said. “First and foremost, I’m a comedian.” see CHELSEA, page 8

VIDEO GAME REVIEW

Jump right into explosive aerial combat with ‘Cloud Pirates’

by Isaac Brown Staff Writer

A lot of people are suckers for games about pirates — not so much the plundering and looting part but the part where you sail ships around and put broadsides into enemy vessels. Naval gameplay should give the player the feeling of excitement they would get if they were fighting in the climactic battle of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” (2007), when the pirates are facing off against the Royal Navy around a maelstrom. A few games — like Ubisoft’s “Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag” (2013) or “Blackwake” (2017), an indie title in early access — really capture that feeling. Others add a twist with steampunk

airships like Muse Games’ “Guns of Icarus” (2012) or modern-day navies like “World of Warships” (2015).

“Cloud Pirates” (2017) has no twist at all. As uninspired as the name implies, “Cloud Pirates” features few ideas that could be described as new or original; it just combines “Guns of Icarus” airships with Wargaming’s freemium progression model that turned “World of Tanks” (2010) into a cash cow. Even the game engine in “Cloud Pirates” looks like it was salvaged from a now-defunct MMORPG from 2012. But just because the ideas behind it are unoriginal doesn’t mean that the game is dull to play. Allods Team, the developer behind “Cloud Pirates,” has succeeded at making the combat fun, fast-paced and easy to learn.

What the main gameplay boils down to is two teams of airships battling for control points with respawn on death, although there are other game modes.

Players can pilot various kinds of airships that excel in different areas, such as ships designed to get in close to ram the enemy, ships that launch a volley of torpedoes, sniper ships that excel at picking off slow and lumbering units at great distances or support ships that help repair damaged teammates. The better a player performs in these battles, the more in-game currency and experience they get. They can then use these to upgrade their ships and buy better ones. Players can also join clans see CLOUD PIRATES, page 8

or my column this week, I decided to throw it back to the 1930s, when Elsa Schiaparelli and Coco Chanel were the two rivals contending for the title of queen of the fashion industry. Schiaparelli eventually lost that ‘rivalité,’ as her name today is clearly not omnipresent as Chanel.

The innovations she brought to designing are nonetheless invaluable, as she was arguably the first fashion designer to think of her clothes as works of art.

The “Skeleton Dress” (1938) is one of Schiaparelli’s most cutting-edge pieces. The Italian fashion icon designed a long black gown that challenged the ideas of femininity of the time by featuring padded shoulders as well as grotesque elements such as an apparent ribcage. The appearance of the dress having actual bones was attained through a trapunto quilting technique. Schiaparelli wanted the wearer of the dress to go against standardized gender norms and to assume femme fatale or vamp-like qualities.

The “Skeleton Dress” is regarded as one of the first examples of power dressing for women and has had a tremendous influence on the work of many contemporary designers, like Alexander McQueen. The motif of the skull/skeleton is found in many of McQueen’s pieces, such as the “Skeleton Heel” he designed for Lady Gaga.

It is, however, impossible to discuss Schiaparelli’s work without addressing her collaborations with some of the most celebrated artists of her time, like Salvador Dalì and Jean Cocteau. Schiaparelli worked with Dalì on her 1938 “Circus Collection” that featured the “Tears Dress,” which is perhaps her most iconic work. Schiaparelli and the Spanish surrealist designed a gown with a trompe-l’oeil effect of torn pieces of fabric falling off the wearer’s body, revealing spots of her signature hue, shocking pink.

This particular dress is a direct reference to one of Dalì’s recurrent oneiric motifs, which is a macabre image of a woman with skin falling off her body. This can be seen in one of Dalì’s less well-known works, “Necrophiliac Springtime” (1936). Another iconic piece that resulted from Schiaparelli and Dalì’s collaboration was the “Shoe Hat” (1937), a headdress shaped like a stiletto that is worn with the sole pointing up. This particular work shows how Schiaparelli was the first designer to incorporate a humoristic aspect in her designs. This is especially true if one were to compare the headdress with the contemporary “Chanel Suit,” which, though still groundbreaking, was unquestionably plainer.

Her collaborations with Cocteau were also successful from an artistic standpoint, and they revealed Schiaparelli and Cocteau’s interest in optical illusions and the duplicitous nature of reality. The duo collaborated on an evening jacket which, on its back, featured a remarkable design that could be interpreted both as a flower vase and as two silhouettes about to kiss.

This particular piece speaks to the surrealist view that reality can never be interpreted in solely one way, which is why many surrealists were interested in the irrationality of dreams.

Schiaparelli therefore may not have enjoyed as much commercial success as her rival Coco Chanel, but in my opinion, she won the contest with her rival in terms of creative genius.

Antonio Bertolino is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. Antonio can be reached at antonio.bertolino@tufts.edu.

8

THE TUFTS DAILY | Arts & Living | Monday, April 24, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

Handler’s new show features guests from a variety of backgrounds CHELSEA

continued from page 7 Many comedians today struggle to deliver funny jokes without making light or making fun of certain groups of people and identities. Handler, however, believes that it is possible for comedians to make jokes about the Trump administration’s policies, even though these policies have real impacts on the lives of marginalized peoples. In fact, she sees comedy as a vehicle for healing and rumination.

“I think there are certain groups of people that humor resonates [with] more than actually watching CNN or watching the news,” she said. “The rotation of the news cycle gets exhausting. So … I think comedy is the best way to make fun of things because you can have serious conversations about stuff and you can also make jokes. The two don’t preclude each other.”

During her show, Handler frequently pushes people in the entertainment

world to recognize that they have a responsibility to give voice to people who do not have the platform they have as members of the public eye. Her guest lineup is striking. On what other show will you have the highest-ranking Hispanic congresswoman speak on the same episode as Charlize Theron? While the political and celebrity spheres may seem unrelated, on “Chelsea,” Handler illustrates the similarities between the backgrounds of comedians, celebrities,

politicians and political commentators.

She also encourages viewers to recognize the similarities they share with her, as her brutal honesty places her in a vulnerable position.

It’s no coincidence that Handler’s comedy has the power to bring so many people together and show how everyone from celebrities to politicians, as well as ordinary people, can have a positive impact on the world around them in their own unique ways.

‘Cloud Pirates’ targets small, dedicated fanbase CLOUD PIRATES

continued from page 7 and participate in battles against other groups if they’re looking for a more competitive experience.

Though the game engine looks dated, the ships themselves are detailed and visually appealing. More often than not, steampunk art can end up looking too mechanical, gritty and washed out, but that’s not the case here. The designs of the ships are reminiscent of something out of “Treasure Planet” (2002), with sails that have a glowing honeycomb pattern. The visual feedback during combat is quite clear and satisfying, with ships sustaining progressively more visual damage as they receive incoming fire until they finally explode in a shower of twisted metal.

Less appealing, perhaps, is a quick glance at the progression tree. The Wargaming business model generally requires that you sink a significant amount of hours or dollars into a game if you want to experience endgame content without waiting months.

There’s not much of a reason to progress faster though, as lower level battles are probably the most fun you’ll have in a title like this. The gradual pace at which upgrades and new ships are acquired is the main way this type of game gets you to pay real money to speed up the process. Ship upgrades allow you to improve things

MY.COM

‘Cloud Pirates’ (2017) is an entertaining if unoriginal game about pirates. such as your engine and hull durability as well as choose from multiple weapon options and customize your ship’s “skills” depending on your playstyle, to some degree. You can equip certain abilities that make your ship substantially more powerful or resilient, such

as a way to teleport short distances, get a temporary speed boost, launch various types of torpedoes, self-repair or make your ship invisible.

Though it may be a new entrant into a crowded MMO scene, “Cloud Pirates” has decent potential to succeed if it can

find a way to increase player numbers.

The target audience for airship combat is small but dedicated, and reaching out to it won’t be easy. Right now, as the game emerges from alpha testing, player count is still pretty low, but hopefully, that will improve with time.

Monday, April 24, 2017 | Comics | THE TUFTS DAILY

tuftsdaily.com

Comics

LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY Eddie: “We’ve been working on a clone of Shim. One sleeps, while the other works.”

Comics

SUDOKU

GARFIELD

BY JIM DAVIS

NON SEQUITUR

BY WILEY MILLER

Difficulty Level: Getting a ticket for Spring Fling

Friday’s Solution

CROSSWORD

ATTENTION TUFTS STUDENTS! Mention this ad to receive 10% off your order!

Friday’s Solution

617-623-9263 132 College Ave, Somerville, MA 02144

9

10

THE TUFTS DAILY | ADVERTISEMENT | Monday, April 24, 2017

tuftsdaily.com

2017 BIRGER LECTURE SERIES

“Cities in the Developing World” Presented By: Edward Glaeser Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor Glaeser teaches microeconomics theory, and occasionally urban and public economics. He has served as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government, and Director of the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He has published dozens of papers on cities economic growth, law, and economics. In particular, his work has focused on the determinants of city growth and the role of cities as centers of idea transmission.

Professor of Economics

Harvard University

Thursday, April 27, 2017 5:00—6:30 p.m.

Tisch 304 TUFTS UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

American Studies Ted Shapiro Memorial Award Winners for 2017 Five American Studies majors were selected to receive a Ted Shapiro Memorial Award for 2017. They will be honored at an awards ceremony on Monday, April 24th. Welcoming remarks will be presented by Dean James Glaser and attended by Dean Bárbara Brizuela. Mrs. Elaine Shapiro and her daughter, Ellen Wolfson, will be present along with friends, faculty and past winners.

Nina Joung, a junior studying American Studies and Film & Media Studies, will conduct research on Korean Diasporic Melancholia in Flushing, Queens NY. Research may inform a Senior Thesis or contribute to a feature article.

Miranda Perez, a junior majoring in American Studies, will take a deeper look at Critical Autoethnography as a research method, to map the ways that it can be and has been used for healing within marginalized communities.

Leanna Pham, a junior majoring in American Studies and Community Health, will create a short documentary series on her mother’s reflections on her identity as a Vietnamese American refugee and how her experiences relate to what she hopes younger generations of Vietnamese Americans will know and learn.

Lindsay Sanders, a junior majoring in American Studies and Sociology, will study the relationship between the labor movement and political parties in Chile. She plans to continue this research into her senior honors thesis.

Vivian Tam, a junior majoring in American Studies and Community Health, plans to examine how Asian American students reflect on their experiences in New York City exam entry public schools. This research will inform her senior thesis.

Opinion

Monday, April 24, 2017

OP-ED

Transferring to Amsterdam

by Lanie Preston When I’ve told people over the past couple of weeks that I’m transferring from Tufts to a small university in Amsterdam, their words have been encouraging, but I see the skepticism reflected in their faces.

I know people wonder how I can leave such a well-established university for a school of just over 900 people in Europe.

I understand your concerns. You think I’m compromising my future for the thrill of three years in a foreign country. I had the same fears, and I debated whether I should stay or go for months. However, my reasonings run much deeper than three years of windmills and Heineken, and they are ultimately why I’ve decided to leave.

In high school, at least in the East Coast hypercompetitive bubble I lived in, I felt as though students lived to the extreme, expecting perfection in all that they did. At Tufts, as with many upper-tier American universities, I feel the same extreme fear of failure that I saw in high school. There’s a mentality that anything less than perfection is a reflection of a character defect.

Nobody wants to take risks, because it translates to the potential for failure. And while I haven’t found Tufts to be academically cutthroat between students, we talk about depression and suicide as if they’re punch lines to a dark joke, casually joking about the toxic nature of the pressure we put on ourselves to succeed.

This level of academic intensity might have been bearable if I had a semblance of a social life to balance it out. But simply put: This has been the loneliest year of

my life. I am not an extrovert, but I’ve also never struggled to make friends, especially in an environment where I’m surrounded by hundreds of similar people. I had ideas of what college life would be before I came to Tufts, both from the media and from my friends, and I feel that Tufts defied all of my expectations. On the weekends, campus feels like a ghost town. I don’t know the name of a single person living in my hall. And for the first time in my life, even after living abroad for a year, I find myself feeling deeply homesick.

This comes coupled with the incredibly polarizing campus debates this semester.

In my experience, there is a complete lack of willingness to discuss or make compromises with on-campus issues, and it makes me worried for the future when students who aspire to be politicians, lawyers and other catalysts for change in society refuse to even consider the other side of a situation.

However, my concerns are not limited to Tufts as an individual institution; many of my problems relate to the system of American higher education as a whole.

There’s been a lot of buzz on campus about the recent hike in tuition bringing Tufts’ estimated cost next year to over $68,000. This is not unique to Tufts.

We’ve become so normalized to private college costs in the United States being over $60,000 that the absurdity of paying nearly a quarter of a million dollars for a bachelor’s degree is almost lost on us.

What’s worse is that there is a level of opacity that goes into college costs in the United States. Millions of dollars a year

go to administrative positions that don’t need to exist as well as improvements and upgrades that only serve to feed into competition between private colleges.

And, of course, the biggest thing we’re paying for at a university like Tufts is the name. Tufts, like any other prestigious private university, is a brand as much as it is an educational institution. So much of the focus on higher education in the United States has gone towards the empty notion of ‘prestige,’ and with this name comes the promise of a better educational experience. I have taken eight classes at Tufts, and most of them have been forgettable. Several have been terrible. I don’t expect every class I take in college to be perfect. But when a school charges nearly $70,000, I do have certain expectations.

Ultimately, I don’t regret my time at Tufts. I appreciate it for what it let me realize about what I value in my life and for helping me understand what I want out of my education. Most of all, I appreciate it for giving me a glimpse into the realities of a system that I spent years of my life yearning for. My path from here is certainly a lot less straightforward and secure. The name of my university won’t impress anyone anymore. I won’t have a sweatshirt or a sticker to put on my parents’ car. But I’ll be happy, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Lanie Preston is a first-year who has not yet declared a major. Lanie can be reached at lanie.preston@tufts.edu.

BALANCE

STEPHEN DENNISON The Tufts Daily is a nonprofit, independent newspaper, published Monday through Friday during the academic year, and distributed free to the Tufts community.

The content of letters, advertisements, signed columns, cartoons and graphics does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tufts Daily editorial board.

EDITORIALS Editorials represent the position of The Tufts Daily. Individual editors are not necessarily responsible for, or in agreement with, the policies and editorials of The Tufts Daily.

OP-EDS The Op-Ed section of The Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. The Daily welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community; the opinions expressed in the Op-Ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Daily itself. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length and submitted to opinion@tuftsdaily.com. The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity, space and length. All material is subject to editorial discretion and is not guaranteed to appear in the Daily. Authors must submit their telephone numbers and day-of availability for editing questions.

ADVERTISING All advertising copy is subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief, Executive Board and Executive Business Director.

11 tuftsdaily.com

Evelyn Bellew and Jessica O'Flanagan Food for Thought

Whole Foods or Whole Paycheck?

I

t takes but one trip to a health food store to see that hipster-veganism is just the capitalist machine with a mannub. Organic food trends have shepherded countless clueless shoppers into expensive grocery stores using buzzwords like “superfood” and “probiotic.” Even the best of us have fallen victim to drinking the Kombucha Kool-Aid. After an expensive impromptu health-kick, you might ask yourself, why does organic mean twice as expensive? More importantly, why didn’t you just go to Trader Joe’s?

Contrary to popular belief, organic is not necessarily synonymous with healthy and sustainable. Most look to organic foods to provide an expensive escape from chemical modification and processing, but there isn’t a ton of reason to believe that is true. Organic produce can still use some loosely defined “natural” pesticides, so compounds like copper sulfate are still legal for use on organic foods despite its links to liver cancer and death. A 2012 Stanford University study found that in comparison to eating regular (non-organic) food, those who ate organically did not have any less disease occurrence. And, while organic farming does release fewer toxins into the environment, it also uses 84 percent more land than non-organic farms, which is a hard hit for Mother Nature. What this means is: It’s complicated. We can’t just expect increased food prices to lead to improved health, because we aren’t always receiving what we are paying for.

While it’s true that maintaining a healthy lifestyle can be more expensive, health stores and supermarkets expect you to think that the more expensive it is (and the grosser it tastes), the healthier it is for you. In the past decade alone, organic farming has become one of the hottest food trends to date, seeing a nearly 300 percent growth rate since 2002. Food markets crank out a lot of cash by appealing to the ‘natural’ agenda, often asking for more than twice the price for organic foods. What organic means, though, is an entirely different question that few people can answer without realizing that they’ve been scammed by health hippies.

Diet companies and food brands have noticed our confusion and have used it to leverage a new kind of health campaign. Terms like “natural” and “wholly grown” are extremely vague and leave a lot of room for interpretation and price stretching. When shopping for groceries, consumers have to parse out exactly what the labels mean and why they demand such a pretty penny. A Jan. 20, 2016 NPR article asserts that these buzzwords are not entirely truthful — “These and other restrictive notions of eating have been quick to catch on, but often don’t have consistent scientific evidence backing them up as healthful or effective for weight loss.”

Organic food, or ‘food’ as our grandparents called it, is not the path to perfect health. While it may seem impossible to know how to get the healthiest food and support good farming practices, there is a solution: Look local! Bostonians have access to a ton of different farmers markets (Copley Square, Union Square) — all of them support local agribusiness and are much kinder to your wallet than angsty Whole Foods cashiers. Plus, carrots taste so much better with a little dirt.

Evelyn Bellew is a sophomore majoring in environmental studies and political science. Evelyn can be reached at evelyn. bellew@icloud.com. Jessica O'Flanagan is a sophomore majoring in computer science and English. Jessica can be reached at jessica.o_flanagan@tufts.edu.

12 tuftsdaily.com

Sports

Max Goder-Reiser Out Of Left Field

WOMEN'S TRACK AND FIELD

Several Jumbos set PRs in last regular-season meet

All-MLB weird name team

O

by Mackenzie Bright Staff Writer

Tufts competed this weekend at the Trinity College Invitational, the team’s last regular-season meet before the start of NESCACs. The team was smaller than usual last weekend because many of the players took time off to rest.

“The girls who did compete were able to hit some solid marks, and even got some [personal records],” junior Jennifer Sherwill said.

Although it was a non-scoring meet and several of Tufts’ top runners sat out the competition, the Jumbos still stacked up well against opponents.

“With a lot of our top performers resting up for our big meet next weekend, I’d say those that competed still gave their best effort,” sophomore Paige Fielding told the Daily in an email. “I think our team is well-rounded, which bodes well for us at NESCACs. Additionally, it was a few seniors’ last races in a Tufts uniform.”

Sherwill had an impressive weekend in all of her events, even setting some personal records of her own. She won the discus throw with a throw of 133 feet 7 inches, out-throwing her closest competitor by more than seven feet.

The throw ranks her in the top 40 in the country.

Sherwill also came in second place in the hammer throw with a career-best of 130 feet and finished third in the shot put with a throw of 37 feet 1.25 inches.

The triple-jump saw sophomore Trish Blumeris take second with a jump of 32 feet 7.75 inches. Blumeris also tied for fourth in the long jump, recording 15 feet, 2.25 inches on her best jump.

Senior Alice Wasserman posted a 4:54.17 in the 1,500-meter run, earning herself second place. The 5,000-meter run saw sophomore Caitlin Porrazzo finish fifth with a time of 18:54.33, and sophomore Kelsey Tierney came fifth in the 3,000-meter steeplechase with a time of 12:08.36.

The 100-meter relay was made up of first-year Franny Kiles, senior co-captain Rita Donohoe, first-year Raquel Whiting and first-year Alina Strileckis.

The squad earned second place with a time of 50.56.

In what was an impressive weekend for Strilekis, the first-year also finished fourth with a time of 13.12 in the 100-meter dash and added a personal record in the 200-meters.

The 800-meter saw two Jumbos placing, with Sara Stokesbury coming in at 2:20.31 for third place, and first-year Lauren Diaz coming in right behind her at 2:23.51 for fourth place.

First-year Nehalem Kunkle-Read finished second in the 400-meter hurdles with a time of 1:08.21. KunkleRead also came in fifth in the 100meter hurdles, posting a 16.40 split.

The successful weekend for the Jumbos left them in a good place heading into the postseason, according to Sherwill.

“A lot of people competing were able to place high, which will certainly help

BEN KIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

First-year Alina Strileckis throws a javelin at a women’s track and field home meet on April 15. our confidence moving into NESCACs next week,” Sherwill said.

The NESCACs, the first postseason meet of the outdoor season, are the next step for the Jumbos and the most important team meet this season. Tufts will travel to Bowdoin on Saturday to begin a weekend of tough competition.

Despite entering such a crucial crunch time, spirits on the team are high.

“We feel really excited to compete at NESCACs on Saturday,” Sherwill said.

“It’s our biggest team meet of the season, and after graduating a few major contributors from last year’s team, we’re ready to prove that we can fill their shoes. This week, we’re going to focus on getting in some strong work-

Monday, April 24, 2017

outs as well as taking care of our bodies to prepare us.”

The upcoming week will be spent preparing for the last team competition.

After NESCACs comes New England Championships, and only runners who qualify will compete there. Although the number of runners who are competing is dwindling, team chemistry is as strong as ever.

“Track and field is a very individual sport, but this week, my teammates and I will be making an effort to check in with other event groups to see how they’re doing,” Fielding wrote. “Even though the season is over for some athletes, they will still be fully present and driving to NESCACs to cheer on their team like they always do.”

n April 15, Jackie Robinson Day across MLB, the Oakland A’s started players named Khris Davis, Ryon Healy and Jaff Decker. Weird, right? Inspired by this odd string of names and the Chicago White Sox’s all-Garcia (Willy, Leury and Avisaíl) outfield on April 14, I’ve compiled an All-MLB weird name starting nine. No offense to these guys or any readers with these names.

Our starting pitcher is Mat Latos. The hefty righty is currently in the Toronto Blue Jays organization, trying to work his way back up to the majors. After a pretty solid 2012 and 2013 (118 and 120 ERA+, respectively), Latos was plagued with a series of injuries and hasn’t been the same since.

At catcher, we have Welington Castillo.

Admittedly not too unconventional a name, but it always trips me up that he only has one ‘l’ in his first name. Now the starting catcher for the Baltimore Orioles, Castillo is enjoying a pretty decent career.

Playing first is Wil Myers. Myers, who is short one letter in his first and last names, is in the middle of one of his best months, batting a slash line of .360/.380/.640 in April. Maybe this is the year he puts it all together and becomes the superstar the Rays traded for.

Up the middle on the right side we have a throwback: Rogers Hornsby. One of the best, if not the best, second basemen of all time also happens to have one of the weirdest spellings of ‘Roger’ I’ve seen. Why make it plural? Too many questions and too few answers.

His counterpart in the infield is Jhonny Peralta at short. Despite playing third now for the St. Louis Cardinals, Peralta is historically a shortstop. I’m confident that for the 15 years he’s been active, I have spelled his name right maybe twice.

However, according to Peralta, ‘Jhonny’ is a common spelling in the Dominican Republic, his home country. He went on to say that anyone spelling their name ‘Johnny’ is wrong.

At the hot corner is the A’s Ryon Healy.

Honorable mention: Maikel Franco.

Despite playing first base now, Healy came up as a third baseman and was expected to play there until the signing of Trevor Plouffe. Healy impressed as a rookie last season, batting .305/.337/.524.

The A’s are hoping for continued success in Healy’s sophomore season so they can avoid coming in last in the AL West for the third straight year.

Our outfielders are the A’s Jaff Decker and Khristopher Davis as well as the Washington Nationals’ Jayson Werth, who has both names spelled ‘wrong.’

Decker was recently called up from Triple-A, where he batted .387/.472/.452 early this season. Interesting fact about Jaff Decker: He’s named after his uncle, who was supposed to be named ‘Jeff,’ but due to a typo on his birth certificate was named ‘Jaff.’ Jaff, in fact, did not know this story until 2008 and just thought ‘Jaff’ was German.

Ladies and gentlemen, your 2017 AllMLB weird name squad. Formidable? Not really, especially since Hornsby is dead.

Driving sports writers crazy? Yes.

Max Goder-Reiser is a senior majoring in biology. Max can be reached at max. goder_reiser@tufts.edu.