Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Tufts Dental professor develops curriculum to address opioid abuse see FEATURES / PAGE 4

Valiant effort in final period not enough as Jumbos bow out of championship

MFA’s #techstyle fashion and tech exhibition displays a successful meeting of media see ARTS AND LIVING / PAGE 6

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 LXXI, NUMBER 31

tuftsdaily.com

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Dining Services #BlackExcellenceTour makes its first stop at Tufts to revise food fact cards to include sugar content, exclude cholesterol information

by Jack Ronan

Executive Copy Editor

by Isha Fahad News Editor

In keeping with the newest national dietary guidelines, Tufts University Dining Services ( TUDS) has elected to add the sugar content to nutrient information cards and remove cholesterol information from them for foods served in dining halls, according to Director of Dining and Business Services Patricia Klos.

“The food fact cards were introduced [at Tufts] approximately 10 years ago,” Nutrition Marketing Specialist Julie Lampie wrote to the Daily in an email. “[However], sugar was added just last week to the food fact cards.”

Lampie explained that when the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ 2015-2020 Dietary Guidelines were released in Jan. 2015, there were some notable changes that influenced the decision to update the food fact cards.

“For the first time, a recommendation to limit added sugar intake to 10 percent or less of [all] daily calories [consumed] was added,” Lampie wrote.

“As a result, we have added sugar to our labels. Nutrient information for food service doesn’t typically break down ‘added sugar,’ so we are labeling ‘sugar’ on the cards.”

She added that TUDS also received two student requests this year to add sugar content to the nutrition cards.

Meanwhile, cholesterol information was eliminated from the nutrition cards, based on the lack of scientific support that cholesterol in food increases blood cholesterol, Lampie said.

As the registered dietitian for Tufts Dining, Lampie is responsible for obtaining information on ingredients, nutrients and food allergens from manufacturers and vendors and adding that data to the TUDS inventory database. see DINING CARDS, page 2

Please recycle this newspaper

Partly Cloudy 72 / 54

/thetuftsdaily

Joshua Allen, a black transgender-feminine organizer and abolitionist, and CeCe McDonald, a black transgender woman activist, spoke to an audience of over 100 people in the Alumnae Lounge last night as the first stop in their #BlackExcellenceTour, according to the event’s Facebook page.

The event was sponsored by a number of organizations and academic departments at Tufts including Tufts Queer Students Association, the LGBT Center, Loving Ourselves as Queer Students of Color in Action (LOQSOCA), Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, the Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies program, the International Relations program, the Peace and Justice Studies program and the Consortium of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora. The talk was also held as the second event in the Student for Justice in Palestine’s annual Israeli Apartheid Week.

The speakers discussed their identities as black trans people and issues that the black trans community face, including violence and cisgender sexism. First-year Elise Sommers, who participated in the Creating Change conference in Chicago — an activist organization for LGBT rights — introduced the speakers, who she, along with senior Renee’ Vallejo, worked to bring to campus, following their experience at the conference.

Allen began the talk by acknowledging that the #BlackExcellenceTour is a space for members of black and trans commu-

SOFIE HECHT / THE TUFTS DAILY

Tufts community members listen to activists CeCe Mcdonald and Joshua Allen open their #BlackExcellenceTour in the Alumnae Lounge as the second event of Israeli Apartheid Week on March 8. nities. They asked members of the audience to recognize people in their own lives who have made an impact.

“None of us are here as individual projects,” they said. “It takes a lot for us to survive in the time we’re living in.”

Allen linked the struggles of trans women of color to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. They discussed “pinkwashing,” the notion that foreigners should be sympathetic to Israel because of Israel’s support of LGBT rights. Allen argued that pinkwashing is a propaganda tool that fits into a larger narrative of indigenous and minority people being labeled intolerant.

Allen continued to describe what “black excellence” can mean to those

SOFIE HECHT / THE TUFTS DAILY

Activists CeCe Mcdonald and Joshua Allen kick off their #BlackExcellenceTour at Tufts on March 8.

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

tuftsdaily

tuftsdaily

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

outside of the LGBT community and people of color in the United States.

“Black excellence is not limited to just certain people … It transcends all people, all spaces, all times,” Allen said.

McDonald then spoke about the place of trans people in public spaces and conversations, including her own experience as a trans woman of color.

“Black trans bodies are left out of conversations about black power,” she said. “We tend to get left out of the bigger picture about what liberation looks like.”

She noted that discussions about trans women both within and outside of LGBT spaces are often condescending or misdirected.

“We tokenize trans women,” she said. “We have this false sense of uplifting … [But] we [members of the trans community] are still left dealing with these issues of bigotry.”

McDonald focused on the idea of “decolonizing” her mind, a process of eliminating her preconceived ideas, and she encouraged others to do the same.

“Giving people an idea of where I’m coming from can be very confusing,” she said. “They come from a world that’s very black and white.”

She then denounced the analogy, noting that the world is mostly white, not black.

McDonald also commented on how trans women are treated and represented in the media and in the eyes of the general public.

“People don’t understand our lives are roller coasters,” McDonald said. see #BLACKEXCELLENCETOUR, page 2

NEWS............................................1 FEATURES.................................4 ARTS & LIVING.......................6

OPINION.....................................8 COMICS.....................................10 SPORTS............................ BACK

2

THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Wednesday, March 9, 2016

T HE T UFTS D AILY Sarah Zheng Editor-in-Chief

EDITORIAL Nicholas Golden Mengqi Sun Managing Editors Nicholas Pfosi Associate Editor Arin Kerstein Executive News Editor Isha Fahad News Editors Abby Feldman Melissa Kain Sophie Lehrenbaum Emma Steiner Ariel Barbieri-Aghib Assistant News Editors Kyle Blacklock Gil Jacobson Robert Katz Liam Knox Catherine Perloff Vibhav Prakasam Hannah Uebele John “Joe” Walsh Kendall Todd Executive Features Editor Nicole Brooks Features Editors Nina Joung Jake Taber Diane Alexander Assistant Features Editors Constantinos Angelakis Emily Cheng Emma R. Rosenthal John Gallagher Executive Arts Editor Lancy Downs Arts Editors Justin Krakoff Josh Podolsky Jonah Allon Assistant Arts Editors Cassidy Olsen Eran Sabaner Hannah Hoang Dorie Campbell Emily Karl Erin Sifre Stephen Dennison Abigail Feldman Shannon Geary Allison Merola Cassie Bardos Miranda Chavez Frances DeFreitas Jake Goldberg Emma Henderson Michael Lefkowtiz Anita Ramaswamy Noah Weinflash

Executive Op-Ed Editor Op-Ed Editor Cartoonists

Editorialists

Maclyn Senear Executive Sports Editor Ray-Paul Biron Sports Editors Ross Dember Phillip Goldberg Alex Schroeder Chris Warren Yuan Jun Chee Assistant Sports Editors Maddie Payne Eddie Samuels Noah Smith Sofie Hecht Executive Photo Editor Alex Knapp Caroline Ambros Picture Tufts Editor Ray Bernoff Staff Photographers Laura DeArmas Maria Ferraz Henry Hintermeister Katlyn Kreie Mia Lambert Jiaxun Li Nora Nord Nicholas Pfosi Julia Press Evan Sayles Angelie Xiong

PRODUCTION Julie Doten

Production Director Astrid Weng Executive Layout Editor Jewel Castle Layout Editors Abbie Gantner Leila Li Allie Merola Brianna Mignano Mandip Pokharel Ellie Powers Annabelle Roberts Emily Sharp Andrew Stephens Sebastian Torrente Shirley Wang Creative Director Petrina Chan Executive Graphics Editor Allison Merola Graphics Editors Dana Pek Belinda Xian Jack Ronan Executive Copy Editors Dan Strauss Alison Beach Copy Editors Arthur Beckel Lancy Downs Alison Epstein Andrew Kager Melissa Kain Sarah Kalinowski Reena Karasin Sophie Lehrenbaum Rachel Salzberg Arielle Sigel Caroline Watson Maxwell Bernstein Executive Tech Manager Nitesh Gupta Online Editor Evan Sayles Social Media Editor

BUSINESS Yiran Xu Executive Business Director Qinyue Yu Receivables Manager Evan Sayles Online Advertising Eva Sachar Ad Managers Jay Hayes

tuftsdaily.com

Activists discuss issues related to the black trans community #BLACKEXCELLENCETOUR

continued from page 1 “We deal with mental health issues and financial issues … people only hear about trans women when they’re on the red carpet or when they’re dead.”

She went on to criticize the leadership role in the trans community that Caitlyn Jenner, American television personality, has attained, condemning her support of conservative presidential candidates.

“Honey, I don’t think Ted Cruz is pushing for a trans ambassador,” she said.

She discussed how her experience with incarceration and the prison industrial complex has driven her to fight for issues affecting people of color and trans people.

The talk was followed by a question and answer session moderated by

Vallejo, in which McDonald and Allen provided different interpretations of the term “ally,” commenting on how white, heterosexual or cisgendered people can support this movement.

“People throw around the term allyship like it’s a bag of funions,” McDonald said. “[People who are not within marginalized communities can] pick and choose which conflicts [they] want to get involved with … As a trans woman, my day to day life is confrontation.”

Allen argued that the term implies an unbalanced power dynamic.

“Allyship presumes a level of hierarchy that I don’t accept,” they said, noting that white, heterosexual and cisgendered people are often unfairly rewarded for speaking on issues that affect marginalized identities.

Both Allen and McDonald criticized the notion of “getting it” — people not belonging to minority groups understanding the struggles and experiences of those communities. They said that people should recognize their own privileges and act to reduce inequalities.

“Listen, learn and assist,” Allen said.

“No, you can’t understand everything…

But we can understand the nuances in our lives.”

The speakers encouraged members of the audience to think of black excellence as the foundation of a larger, more inclusive movement.

McDonald ended her portion of the event by addressing black audience members.

“Your black excellence is appreciated,” she said. “Wherever you are, let it blossom.”

TUDS alters nutrition cards to better reflect U.S. dietary recommendations DINING CARDS

continued from page 1 According to Klos, the information on the food fact cards comes from standardized recipes TUDS has created in its recipe database, FoodPro. “Each ingredient is assigned a corresponding food item for which nutrient values are known, and the nutritional and caloric values are calculated per serving based on these recipes,” Klos said. “For each meal period, the manager prints out the corresponding card for each food item that will be served.”

Students with specific food allergies and sensitivities explained that the food fact cards have been useful for them.

“I use [the cards] all the time,” Tess Callahan, who is gluten-intolerant due to celiac disease, wrote in an email to the Daily. “I’ve used them from the very first day, and they’ve been enormously helpful.”

Callahan, a sophomore, said she found many menu items that seem like they would not contain gluten or

wheat which actually do because of the information listed on the cards.

“I rely on these cards to keep myself safe during mealtimes,” Callahan said.

“The nutrition facts are helpful for anyone interested in watching their weight or just seeing what’s in their dinner, but I find them especially helpful in avoiding things that may make me sick.”

When asked if others in her social circle utilize the food fact cards, Callahan believed that it’s often not the case.

“I think I’ve been trained to pay attention to [the nutrient cards] because of growing up with celiac, but many others simply don’t pay much attention,” she said.

Callahan believes that adding the sugar content of food to the cards will prove helpful for certain students.

“It is paramount for any student with diabetes or a similar problem to know how much sugar [they are] consuming at each meal,” she said.

Sophomore Theodore Cahill, who is allergic to dairy products, also gave positive feedback about the nutrient cards.

“I do use the cards, and I’ve been using them since I got to Tufts,” Cahill said. “They have all the ingredients on them and have a list of common allergens that each food contains, which I find very helpful because I don’t have to guess what food I can eat.”

Any student wanting additional nutritional information on the food offered at Tufts can access this information on the TUDS website, according to Lampie.

“The interface on the web is similar to a retail food label, so cholesterol will appear in [nutrient information] as well as sugar,” Lampie said.

According to Lampie, students can also view the nutrient profile for an entire meal.

“It’s also a handy tool for students with food allergies as it allows you to filter by allergens, thus providing a list of foods to avoid,” Lampie said.

at 10:30 p.m. on March 1 after leaving the bag in the coat room area of the Jackson Gym around 9 p.m. that night. Upon returning, the backpack remained where she had left it, but the laptop was missing. She does not have tracking software on her computer.

The case is under investigation, and the Tufts University Police Department ( TUPD) is trying to find the laptop.

Ave.; although the light had been stolen on Feb. 29. This case is also under investigation, after a police report was filed.

Police Briefs

Scratched Door

A staff member reported that the driver’s side door of their car had been scratched earlier in the day at 4 p.m. on March 1 in the Pearson Chemical Laboratory parking lot. The person is unsure who scratched the car or how the car got scratched. The staff member had no issues with anyone from their workplace, and the case is currently under investigation.

Missing Laptop

Someone reported a missing MacBook Air from their backpack

Stolen Headlight

Someone reported a stolen front headlight from their bicycle at 4:30 p.m. on March 2 from 574 Boston

Lost iPad

A staff member reported losing his university iPad at some point between Thursday evening and Friday morning at 8:49 a.m. on March 4. The iPad has tracking software, and detectives were able to track the iPad to an on campus location. It was returned to the owner.

Want to get campus news the moment it happens?

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

/thetuftsdaily @tuftsdaily

/tuftsdaily /tuftsdaily

N

Wednesday, March 9, 2016 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

3

Features

4 tuftsdaily.com

Tufts Dental School joins the fight against opioid abuse

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

John Russell Bridge the Gap

Late night in review

by Coral Yang

W

Staff Writer

Recently, the Obama administration, along with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration, has spotlighted the emergence of a prescription drug and heroin use epidemic in the United States. According to a 2010 infographic produced by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, an estimated 8.76 million Americans had reportedly abused their prescriptions, 81.6 percent of whom had been prescribed these drugs by a doctor. In an effort to combat opioid abuse, the Tufts School of Dental Medicine has joined forces with Massachusetts’ statewide initiatives to introduce a curriculum focusing on preventing opioid addictions in patients.

According to a presentation emailed to the Daily by Ronald Kulich, a professor at the dental school who specializes in the psychological assessment of chronic pain, drug overdose has become a significant cause for emergency medical conditions which have led to 2.5 million visits in 2011, 1.4 million of which are related to prescriptive drugs. The new curriculum will cater towards informing future dentists about the epidemic in efforts to curb patient addiction.

“It’s a curriculum that addresses pain and addresses risks for substances use,” Kulich said. “The current program [at the dental and medical schools] everywhere certainly could use improvement …The goal is to improve all of them.”

Kulich’s presentation outlines the new curriculum’s “core competencies” for future dentists, focusing on effective and healthy management of pain. The program is a part of the effort of the Working Group on Dental Education on Prescription Drug Misuse initiated

by Governor of Massachusetts Charlie Baker, based on the joined forces of three major dental schools in Massachusetts – Boston University, Harvard and Tufts, as well as support from Massachusetts Dental Society. The working group was established in November 2015 with the direct purpose of combatting current problems in pain control and raising awareness among professionals to limit the prescription of opioid drugs.

Unfortunately, opioid abuse in the United States is an incredibly widespread problem. According to a Feb. 13 article in Modern Healthcare magazine, the United States was responsible for 99 percent of hydrocodone and 81 percent of oxycodone sales globally in 2012. Hydrocodone, more commonly known as Vicodin, and oxycodone, such as Oxycontin and Percocet, are commonly prescribed by doctors and dentists following dental surgery. In 2013, as many as 22,767 lives have been taken by prescriptive drug overdoses, 71.3 percent of which are related to opioid drugs. Drug overdose is also a significant cause for

JULIANA FURGALA / THE TUFTS DAILY

emergency medical conditions, leading to 2.5 million visits in 2011, with more than 1.4 million related to prescriptive drugs, according to Kulich.

According to the Modern Healthcare article, doctors have been unwittingly contributing to the widespread addictive behaviors throughout the country, often with the intention of relieving their patients’ pain. Opioids that are frequently prescribed include morphine, methadone, hydromorphone and fentanyl.

The new dental school curriculum offers “core competencies” which entail three major parts: the primary, secondary and tertiary prevention domains, with each focusing on distinct aspects of patient treatment. The primary domain deals with assessing the necessity and limiting prescription upon screening of patients and diagnosis, the secondary domain is concerned with effective communication and with cautionary treatment for high-risk patients and the tertiary domain with managing patients already troubled with prescriptive drug abuse. In other words, the primary domain applies in regular dental diagnosis, the second narrows its focus to high-risk patients and the third works with misusing patients directly.

Additionally, according to a Feb. 11 article in the Boston Globe, the program will ensure that future dentists not only evaluate their patients’ pain but also their risk for opioid abuse.

“Kulich…said because dentists are constantly addressing pain issues, they have a potentially influential role in detecting and helping troubled patients,” the article said.

As a major participant in Baker’s working group, Kulich has been promoting the curriculum and communicating it with the dental school faculty. According to Kulich, professionals around Massachusetts and the globe, including experts from Saudi Arabia and France, will participate in weekly sessions of the Inter-Professional Facial Pain and Headache Plenary Rounds, which give

dental students firsthand information on new directions in the pain management field.

Senior Ratan Marwah, a prospective student in the dental school class of 2020, said that appropriate pain control practices are critical to dentistry.

“The knowledge of all this, informing the patient and the students themselves learning about this is very important,” he said. “I think [the new curriculum is] a good thing.”

Another student who looks forward to being a dentist, first-year Nelson Zhang, looks at the practices at a more individual level.

“Dentistry is like a fine art,” Zhang said. “It really depends on each artist per se and how he handles things, on the level of education and generally the amount of skill that person has.”

While Zhang doesn’t think that dentists are solely to blame for the opioid crisis, he doesn’t put the responsibility on the shoulders of patients either.

He explained that many problems stem from the fact that different medical institutions often don’t communicate with one another.

“I’ve been through enough situations in which my friends try to abuse a prescription drug…which is [a] problem nowadays,” he said. “[If ] even one healthcare institution determines a certain patient as unsuitable for an addictive medication, he or she will be able to acquire it from another doctor’s hands [because] nothing is linked. It’s a more widespread issue, mainly in doctor to patient communication, patient intentions and hospital communication or clinic communication.”

The new curriculum hopes to address communication between doctors and patients by making the doctors aware of their responsibility to inform their patients of the potential threat of drug misuse, which will equip the population with proper pain management knowledge on a basic level.

Want to get campus news the moment it happens?

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook!

/thetuftsdaily @tuftsdaily

/tuftsdaily /tuftsdaily

ell, that was quick.

It has not even been two years since the MBTA first began late night service, and already the powers that be have decided not to continue the service.

The decision was made in a 4-0 vote of the MBTA’s Fiscal and Management Control Board last Monday. In an attempt to make Bostonians feel better about the change, the T prefaced news of the decision with the feel-good story that it has reduced its operating deficit by 43 percent. Happily for the Fiscal and Management Control Board, the fact that a mere 43 percent reduction in the deficit is a feel-good story at all reflects the Baker administration’s remarkable influence over the media narrative in Boston. Sadly for the Fiscal and Management Control Board, the good feelings evaporated as soon as the Board’s votes were tallied.

Late night service has been popular among the many college students in the area.

It has also been hypothesized that the service disproportionately benefits low income and minority riders. However, we don’t know this for sure because the T decided not to complete the equity analysis required by the Federal Transit Administration for major transit service cuts. This disclosure raises further questions: if the Fiscal and Management Control Board were so determined to cut the service that it declined to follow federal regulations when doing so, what other shortcuts did it take to reach this result?

For starters, the Board misconstrued ridership numbers by reporting only that late night ridership has declined since it began.

Accounting for the service reductions in July 2015, though, reveals that late night ridership per service-hour has actually increased since the program began, meaning late night trains are more full today than they were at the start of service.

More seriously, the cost of the service might also have been misrepresented. Using MBTA schedule data and MBTA-specific operating cost data from the National Transit Database, it is possible to estimate that the annual cost of late night service should be in the $5 to 8 million range. This is, in fact, how much the MBTA claimed late night service cost before the creation of the Control Board, when adjusted proportionally to the 2015 service reductions.

Yet the Control Board claims the cost of today’s service is $19 million, which is troubling beyond the sheer sticker shock: if $19 million is correct, why would the Board cut the service instead of addressing its out-of-control costs? Reducing the cost of the service from $19 million to $5 to 8 million would save $11 to 14 million, which is how much the Board claims it is saving by eliminating the service.

Instead, late night service will disappear in two weekends’ time, deemed a failure by four penny-pinching oligarchs. But was it actually a failure?

Consider this: the MBTA’s last venture into late night service, which ran from 2001 to 2005, exclusively ran buses. If the 13,000 nightly riders of the present late night service were to ride nine bus routes (one for each of the nine rail routes in the MBTA’s rapid transit system), the routes would need to run at an average three minute headway to accommodate everyone. Not a single bus route in the MBTA system approaches that level of service.

By 2005 standards, today’s late night service would undoubtedly have been a success.

John Russell is a senior majoring in mathematics. He can reached at john.russell@ tufts.edu.

tuftsdaily.com

Wednesday, March 9, 2016 | ADVERTISEMENT | THE TUFTS DAILY

Robert Manning

Chairman & CEO of MFS Investment Management

TODAY | 6:00 p.m.

Coolidge Room Ballou Hall Join Tisch College for a conversation with Boston’s own Robert Manning, whom we recognize as our 2016 Corporate Citizen Fellow for leading significant changes in core company operations in order to improve social impact.

To register, please email rsvpevents@tufts.edu

5

6 tuftsdaily.com

ARTS&LIVING

Vidya Srinivasan Screen Time

SHOW RETROSPECTIVE

High fashion meets high-tech innovation at MFA’s #techstyle

by Cassidy Olsen

Assistant Arts Editor

On March 6, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA) debuted #techstyle, an innovative fashion and technology exhibition featuring pieces by international designers including Iris Van Herpen, Viktor & Rolf, Alexander McQueen and Mary Katrantzou. The exhibition, which will run until July 10, focuses on the intersections of style and engineering in light of increasing Internet connectivity and emerging technologies.

The new exhibition is housed in the Henry and Lois Foster Gallery, the MFA’s main area for special exhibitions of contemporary art. The space is structured something like a stretched hourglass, with two spacious exhibition rooms connected by a narrow hallway.

The flow of visitor traffic gets caught in this hallway, as museumgoers stop to pore over the McQueens and other pieces mounted to the long wall behind glass. In the second main room, gray pyramidal step bases surround or uplift most of the garments, which contribute to the architectural aesthetic of the

exhibition but seriously impede movement around the gallery, particularly on a day as crowded as that of its debut.

The darkened, twisting and narrow entrance to the exhibition at the end of one of the main rooms is also used to create intrigue more than accessibility, as Saam Farahmand’s “Prototype” (2014) video loop on a massive screen that catches visitors and creates a bottleneck. In the video, a masked woman dances under an eerie red light, performing something like a deliberate and menacing ballet. The sound of metal scraping on glass is punctuated by sharp cracks as the dancer wields what appears to be a massive black spike in place of her lower right leg.

The video itself is so captivating that it can be easy to miss the actual star of the show: “The Spike” artificial leg (2015), the silicone composite bionic prosthesis worn and designed by the dancer in the video, English pop performance artist Viktoria Modesta. With its lacquered black finish, the wearable tech nearly disappears into the darkness of the gallery’s walls, until one passes by and catches the glint of the metal at its knife-sharp point. Although

Reshop, Heda

PHOTOGRAPH © MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

Bionic pop star Viktoria Modesta wears “The Spike,” an artificial leg created by Sophie de Oliviera de Barata. The piece is featured in the exhibition #techstyle at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston in the Henry and Lois Foster Gallery. both beautiful and menacing, the piece was designed in partnership with The Alternative Limb Project and Ability see #TECHSTYLE, page 7

THEATER RETROSPECTIVE

‘The Donkey Show’ makes audiences say ‘wow’

by Josh Podolsky Arts Editor

Club Oberon, the American Repertory Theater’s black box-cumclub space, hosts an eclectic range of shows that often redefine visitors’ expectations of theater performances — this is not the place for stodgy, conformist productions. A recurring element in the club’s revolving arsenal is “The Donkey Show,” a disco rendition of Shakespeare’s “Midsummer Night’s Dream,” which plays almost every Saturday. This is probably one of the best examples of Oberon’s blurring of the line between club and theater (after all, it isn’t a coincidence that the club’s name is the same as that of one of the main characters in the show’s source material).

The performance begins even before the audience enters the club. For one thing, the audience itself is part of the entertainment; more than a few spectators are dressed in the spirit of the show, sporting glittery clothes, leafy wreaths and fairy wings. For another thing, what appeared to be a drunken altercation in the ticket line between a smarmily dressed man and a woman sartorially expressing her devotion to flower power turned out to be a staged appearance by two of the performers outside the club. Even the bouncers played along, giving nothing away about the uncomfortable interaction taking place around them — maybe their inaction was, in fact, a giveaway.

Things start a lot like parties at any club: slowly. The audience trickles in, with a noticeable age difference between those dancing along on the dancefloor and those lounging at the tables ringing the elevated platforms around it. A bar inside the per-

formance space ensures that everyone (of the appropriate age) is in the mood to dance along with the go-go dancers. For the half hour between when doors open and when the per-

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

formance begins, these dancers interact with the audience — one, with an obnoxiously loud whistle, goes around see DONKEY SHOW, page 7

NIKISUBLIME VIA FLICKR

A performance of “The Donkey Show” at the American Repertory Theatre in Cambridge, Mass. in 2010.

Writer’s note: massive “The 100” spoilers ahead. Plan to start? A couple weeks behind?

Come back to me after 3.07.

You guys, I’m in mourning.

This week, I lost someone who illuminated my screen on Thursday nights and my heart for the rest of the week — and I’m absolutely gutted.

I didn’t start “The 100” looking to fall in love. Ask my brother — I was hell-bent on dismissing it as zeitgeisty “Teen TV,” a “Hunger Games” or “Lord of the Flies” knockoff. But like the newly earthbound Hundred, the show itself matured rapidly before my eyes, becoming an ever-murkier game of “would you rather” that interrogated leadership, survival, morality and justice.

Season two deepened these themes by introducing Grounder Commander Lexa as a foil to de facto Ark leader Clarke. Stoic, reflective, fierce and wise, Lexa quickly became my favorite TV character — an infuriating pragmatist, but also the visionary who had forged an unprecedented peace. As their people banded together against a common enemy, Clarke and Lexa’s wary alliance gradually gave way to a haunting intimacy born of the shared experience of holding too many lives in their young, trembling hands.

And so Clarke and Lexa became ‘Clexa,’ my goddamn Ship of Dreams. Clarke insisted Lexa’s compassion made her stronger, and the Commander slowly thawed. Alycia DebnamCarey added muted affection to the thousand emotions she let filter through Lexa’s eyes.

Clexa’s slow-burn romance was exquisite, restrained but hopeful—and then seemingly irreparably destroyed by Lexa’s 11th-hour betrayal.

But this show exceeded my expectations.

This year, in the truly perfect hour of television that was 3.03, Clexa progressed from adversaries to unbreakable partners. I was exhilarated.

Above all, I was proud of the writers for choosing to build such gorgeous complexity—for ruling with their heads and their hearts.

Which makes Lexa’s death this week— meaningless, unceremonious, rushed—hurt so particularly. Since she swore loyalty to Clarke by the light of a billion candles, Lexa and I have been ready to face the consequences of her love. But the sudden disappearance of the thoughtfulness and care lavished upon Clexa for the past year is a profound violation of the trust I had placed in this show to be great. That the writers could weave me a fairytale and snatch it away with the laziest trope plaguing fictional queer couples? There are no words.

But this I believe: good sci-fi rewards you for loving wholeheartedly — for teasing out loopholes and daring to wonder. I can’t shake the feeling sitting stubborn in my bones that we aren’t done with my brilliant, devoted Commander; I refuse to accept that this is really it.

So, may we meet again, Lexa, in this season or the next — though preferably not in a way that destroys me all over again.

Hidden Gems: 2.08. 2.10. 3.03. 3.04. Four incredibly layered episodes that anchor Clarke and Lexa, both individually and together. #RelationshipWhatIfs: Like, I wouldn’t work in Dichen Lachman again?! I would have killed for present-day or flashback Anya/Lexa scenes.

Selectively Forget: That TV is governed by capitalism and backroom negotiations, not the innermost desires of my black-bleeding heart.

Vidya Srinivasan is a senior majoring in international relations. She can be reached at vidya.srinivasan@tufts.edu.

A&L

Wednesday, March 9, 2016 | Arts & Living | THE TUFTS DAILY

7

Despite poorly designed space, new MFA exhibit #techstyle showcases works at intersection of engineering, fashion #TECHSTYLE

continued from page 6 Matter to functionally serve amputees such as Modesta.

According to the piece’s accompanying placard, “[Modesta] has embraced what many consider a disability and turned it into an alternative idea of beauty” in her creation of the artistic bionic prosthetic. In this way, “The Spike” speaks to the essence of #techstyle, combining advanced engineering and high-tech functionality with slick aesthetics that push boundaries related to notions of beauty and the body. It’s a bold, if traffic-generating, introduction to the exhibition and its concepts.

As visitors push through the bottleneck and into the gallery’s main rooms, they encounter lone-standing fashion pieces — predominantly dresses but also bodysuits, shoes and menswear — scattered throughout the space. Many pieces are paired with accompanying videos projected onto neighboring walls, either conceptual works like “Prototype” or film of the runway shows where they premiered.

One of the most powerful videos in the exhibition is of the “Possessed Dress” (2015), a synthetic knit embedded with robotics from designer Hussein Chalayan.

Although the dress itself sits in the gallery, the essential movement of the piece is only captured in the video pairing of a performance called “Gravity Fatigue” that premiered in London this fall.

As a performer standing on stage in a strapless red empire dress begins to dance, something within the garment’s

PHOTOGRAPH © MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON

The exhibition #techstyle at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. fabric begins to twist around her body, as though a snake is constricting her, or as though her organs have developed a life of their own. Is she controlling the dress’ movements, or are they controlling her?

The effect of the question on the spectator is hypnotizing and deeply unsettling, akin to the body horror of film directors like David Cronenberg and David Lynch.

According to Chalayan, the garment represents “the innate powers a dress can have…to influence and re-appropriate the behavior of its wearer.” For others visiting the gallery, the dress evoked pregnancy and the anxiety surrounding women’s changing bodies.

Although many of the conceptual pieces like Chalayan’s successfully balance the art and engineering at the

heart of the exhibition, others forgo one in favor of the other, such as the “MFA dress” (2015) commissioned

by CuteCircuit that allows visitors to #tweetthedress and then watch as their tweet scrolls across the garment’s 10,000 MicroLEDs. The black silk frock may be a feat of engineering, but the resulting fashion, with crystal chains running down a shapeless dress that is covered in pixels of trending topics, is anything but chic or artistically sophisticated.

Many of the more accessible and conventionally appealing works are interesting experiments in tech-driven textiles, with laser-cut leather and 3D-printed polymers featured prominently. This includes the work of Chinese-Canadian designer Ying Gao from his “sound-activated” line “Incertitudes

ensemble” (2013): a shirt and shorts set constructed from PDVF (polyvinylidene fluoride), robotics and metal pins. The ensemble recalls the pin and needle-laden garments featured in the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Spring 2013 Costume Institute exhibition, “Punk: Chaos to Couture,” but with a high-tech spin.

In a space limited in size and accessibility, the exhibition manages to work wonders with designs from veteran creators and newcomers alike, all of whom are looking towards the future of fashion and at its inextricable ties with technology. Although some designs fall short of expectations set by artists like Van Herpen and Chalayan, the majority create a strong and cohesive case for #techstyle.

Club Oberon’s ‘Donkey Show’ defies characterization DONKEY SHOW

continued from page 6 inspecting the wallets of anyone not dancing — pulling them up to dance with them and introducing themselves to the audience to explain whom they portray in the “Midsummer Night’s Dream” story.

If it weren’t for the frequent and direct addressing between characters, it would be extremely difficult to understand the story told by “The Donkey Show.” All in all, the story is of minimal importance to enjoying the

show. All one really needs to have a good time here is an appreciation for the kitsch and glam of 70s disco. At one point, potentially the highpoint of the show, the audience is encouraged to pair off and dance down the middle of the dancefloor while the entire club cheers on. Even during the performance, the audience is free to dance provided that it moves out of the performers’ way when they need a certain space — this is where the dancer with the whistle comes in handy, and oh does he make use of it — and after the

performance, Club Oberon turns into an actual nightclub.

There is a lot to this show that will rub some audiences the wrong way.

The degree of nudity (high) may not be for everyone, and anyone who wants to avoid getting glitter all over them should maintain a significant radius between themselves and the dancers.

Many of the male roles are played in drag, with the actors sporting hilarious fake mustaches and period suits. At the same time, many of these more risqué qualities may actually recommend the

show to audiences — it depends on your taste.

Whether or not you go to “The Donkey Show” for the performance, it is definitely an experience to share with friends, either in the moment or after the fact. To argue for the former, it is extremely difficult to describe the show accurately in words, especially written words, as this review just barely touches on the superficial qualities of the show.

If you’re looking for a performance that makes you say “wow,” regardless of the reasons why, this is the show for you.

CONCERT RETROSPECTIVE

NEC dual degree students perform jazz and classical pieces at weekend recital

by Shirley Wang Creative Director

Over winter break, Tufts acquired the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA), an official full adoption of the five-year combined degree program that awards students with two degrees — a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Arts or Science. Lesser known is the fiveyear dual degree program between Tufts and the New England Conservatory of Music (NEC), a music school in Boston dedicated to music education, composition and performance.

On Saturday, students from the NEC dual degree program played a short concert in the Distler Performance Hall in Granoff Music Center. The first part of the concert consisted mostly of classical music. First-year Tania Valrani and senior Sam Weiser played the first movement of “Centone di sonate” (1828) by Paganini, with Valrani on the guitar and Weiser

on the violin. First-year Ari Brown performed Ravel’s “Ondine” from “Gaspard de la Nuit” (1908) on the piano, followed by a string quartet featuring a mix of full-time NEC and dual degree students.

The latter portion of the concert after the intermission featured jazzier and contemporary music, and non-program Tufts students joined those on stage to play “Flight to Oslo” by Chris Potter. At the end of the show, Brian Aronow, a senior, played one of his original pieces.

There are only 10 students in the program currently, four of whom are firstyears, according to Matt Estabrook, a first-year in the program. The criteria for graduation is rigorous and time-consuming; students must complete 82 credit hours at NEC in addition to the foundational, distribution and concentration requirements to complete their Bachelor of Arts or Science degree at Tufts.

Estabrook, who played the tenor saxophone solo in “Flight to Oslo,” said

that he appreciates the liberal arts education he gets from being at both the conservatory and the university.

“Being in the program allows me to study academia artistically and art intellectually,” Estabrook said, describing the intersection of his NEC major in jazz performance and his cognitive and brain sciences major at Tufts.

Valrani, a Spanish and Russian major, has also found that her education at Tufts enhanced her work at the NEC and notes that her language classes at Tufts has helped train her ears to accommodate quick changes in intonation and sound pattern structures.

However, the nine-mile commute from the Medford/Somerville campus to the NEC is not always an easy trip, according to Valrani. Completing the program requirements has challenged their time management skills and demanded a rebalancing of academic priorities. Valrani currently takes

about seven to eight hours of class on Mondays and Thursdays, traveling from the Somerville/Medford campus to Boston about eight times a week on the Tufts-run SMFA/NEC shuttle, as she and other first-years in the program currently live on campus.

For many students, the trip is well worth their effort; at NEC, they get to network with composers and other musicians. It’s an opportunity, as Estabrook likes to say, to “jam with other students.” He’s been able to find a good musical community at Tufts as well. Currently, he plays for a small ensemble called Water Walks that performs in small local venues.

Generally, he was attracted to both Tufts and NEC for similar reasons.

“Students are not super competitive at Tufts or NEC,” Estabrook said. “They really have the same collaborative spirit, be it through activism on campus or working on a new song together.”

8 tuftsdaily.com

Opinion EDITORIAL

The place for religious curiosity on campus Like in many respects, the student body at Tufts University is relatively religiously diverse. According to a Tufts Chaplaincy survey conducted in Fall 2014, Tufts University students identify with more than 22 different religions. The Chaplaincy consistently attempts to promote interfaith awareness. This year, Tufts held its first ever interfaith awareness month. While the Chaplaincy does a solid job of hosting events and activities to expose the student population to the prevalent religious diversity on campus, most students still generally shy away from contending with the idea of religion, whether for or against.

Increasingly, people in the United States are deciding to not affiliate with a religion.

In the 2014 Chaplaincy survey, around 45 percent of undergraduates responded that they were either nonreligious, agnostic or atheist. While some of these students have some preceding historical or cultural knowledge of world religions, other do not have any at all. There is a commonly held notion that a conversation on religion is necessarily one in which the goal is proselytization, which leads many to reject the wisdom accrued in religious schools of thought out of hand.

In the United States, religious freedom is ensured as a constitutional right. Many consider this freedom to be one of the founding principles of the country. The United States is defined by a coming together of people of hundreds of different ethnici-

ties and numerous religious, spiritual and humanist heritages. So, it is odd that religion is not spoken about as a facet of life that can be as important as our cultural habits or our working lives. 42 percent of Americans identify with a religion different from the one in which they were raised, yet religious curiosity seems a rare subject. Of course, as everyone is rightly aware, religion in America and the world is often distorted to promote repression, violence and genocide; in America alone religion has been employed as justification for slavery, colonization of the American West and the destruction of indigenous culture and history, the oppression of women, the enforcement of the gender binary and the halting of women’s and gay rights, to name a few.

Yet at the same time, discrimination among religions deserves serious attention. Most notable of these groups in the United States is the Muslim-American population, which has been targeted for years now but recently at horrifying levels by and due to Donald Trump’s racist demagoguery. Muslims make up only two percent of the American population, but in 2011 they accounted for 25 percent of religious discrimination complaints. A Carnegie Mellon study in 2013 showed that job applicants that identified as Muslim were less likely to receive callbacks from prospective employers than Christians with the same qualifications. And these are the subtler forms of discrimination.

In February, the New York Times published an article that described students at the University of Arizona purposefully littering at and vandalizing a mosque near university residences. The article also reported instances of Islamophobia at four different universities across the United States. Universities are largely considered the centers for freedom of expression and open-mindedness in the United States.

However, when instances of religious violence and discrimination occur somewhat commonly in these institutions, one must reflect upon the state of religious freedom nationally. This is especially true in the context of the debate of Syrian refugees and the promises of certain presidential candidates to ban all Muslims from entering the United States.

It is not enough to simply not offend or to stay silent on the topic. We should condemn these hateful actions and work to build a nation in which religious freedom is honored and respected as a story of both deep goodness and sometimes terrifying evil. As a community, we must work to foster an environment in which religion is openly spoken about and all religious beliefs are equally respected. Cultivating intellectual curiosity for different thought systems and religious beliefs will allow us to be more willing to engage in religious conversations, explore different world views and appreciate others’ religious and non-religious identities.

EDITORIAL CARTOON

BY ALLISON MEROLA

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Pooja Sivaraman and Rebecca Solomon New York Style Dehli

It’s Econ*LIT* Rebecca: Being a second-semester senior is weird. I find myself nostalgic about the strangest things, like online databases.

The other day one of my professors mentioned that we should take advantage of resources like JSTOR and EconLit because when we graduate, our access to these databases will disappear. Anxiety washed over me, knowing that my ability to read as many articles as I wanted on gentrification in metropolitan areas or the impact of Guinea Worm disease was slipping away in a matter of months was heartbreaking.

The realization that my access to online databases would disappear also made me realize that my access to so many other things Tufts has to offer might disappear as well, like being in the same timezone as Pooja and Carm Stirfry Nights. So reader, the moral of the story is that in your time at Tufts, you should take advantage of the many opportunities this institution can offer you, even if it is just reading peer reviewed journal articles about changing urban landscapes. However, at NYSD, we recognize that while navigating the Tufts landscape and the many opportunities it presents, you may stumble on the way so for the next two months, we are still here to answer any questions you may have.

Dear NYSD, What was your last dream?

Rebecca: Sleep is one of those things that confuses me. I never feel like I have enough of it, and somehow when I do it, it’s stressful — just ask my dentist who is continually surprised by my grinding patterns.

In light of this, I think this question is better suited for Pooja, who has been keeping a dream journal for years.

Pooja: As an avid dreamer, particularly on NyQuil nights, I have a few interesting stories to share. For some reason, Bruce Willis made continual appearances throughout my junior year — he even got two of my friends pregnant. My dream last night, however, involved a good friend of mine (Lauren Kim). As replacement members on the cast of Orange is the New Black, Lauren and I were beginning our first day of prison where we had to face the wrath of the other inmates. If my dreams say anything about my lifestyle, it’s that I really need to stop watching television before bed.

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 oped@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.

Dear NYSD, I need to break up with my four-year long girlfriend because I want to be the next president of a country (which is also currently a massive war zone). How should I do it?

Pooja: I am confused whether your question is regarding how to be the president or how to end your relationship. Is your presidency and relationship mutually exclusive? Most great presidents tend to have great first ladies, so if your goals are to run a country, you might want to consider having someone by your side. That being said, as president you will have enough conflicts to deal with without the added war zone of your relationship.

Pooja Sivaraman is a senior majoring in economics. She can be reached at pooja. sivaraman@tufts.edu. Rebecca Solomon is a senior majoring in economics. She can be reached at rebecca.solomon@tufts.edu.

9

Wednesday, March 9, 2016 | Opinion | THE TUFTS DAILY

tuftsdaily.com

OP-ED

Share the love (of science)

by Kate Keenan As a wide-eyed freshman battling my way through Bio 14, I was quick to find fault in nearly every aspect of the course. The lecture slides were confusing and poorly organized. The clicker questions required logical leaps that I wasn’t comfortable taking. And the exams. Oh, those Bio 14 exams.

My frustration deepened over the next few years as I stumbled through the classes required for my biochemistry major — physics, organic chemistry, genetics. Science was supposed to be about creativity, discovery, elegant logic and beautiful explosions of color — not squished, grainy diagrams slapped onto PowerPoint slides or an

alphabet soup of confusing acronyms and jargon.

Despite my vexation with the structure of many of my science courses, I have realized over the past four years that my professors at Tufts are all brilliant, talented, well-meaning people.

But I have also discovered that communication is a major stumbling block in the scientific community. When I taught lab sections of general chemistry and organic chemistry, I faced the challenge of filling the role of the professors I once scrutinized. I realized that it is easy to twist and muddle scientific concepts into something frighteningly complex, but it requires deep understanding to distill them to their simple essence. Sharpening that skill

— the power to convey complex information in a simple, effective way — has become a central goal for me.

It saddens me to hear people refer to science as “beyond” or “above” them, something they’re not capable of understanding or contributing to. I believe that everyone has a place in the scientific community. In fact, we desperately need diverse, well-equipped people to address many urgent scientific challenges, such as developing an HIV vaccine, treating cancer and combating antibiotic resistance. Rather than selecting a small scientific elite or “weeding out” unfit students, I think educators should harness the energy and enthusiasm of each individual student and direct this force towards the

scientific problems that we face as a society.

This thought process fueled my decision to work as a Teach for America corps member in San Diego after graduation. I can’t wait to be the teacher who has her students model cellular processes with interpretive dance and sing about glycolysis and build molecules out of marshmallows and toothpicks. But more importantly, I aspire to be the teacher that coaxes the students who normally shy away from science into discovering their talent and potential.

Kate Keenan is a current senior studying biochemistry at Tufts. She can be reached at Caitlin.Keenan@tufts.edu.

Take the pledge at ItsOnUs.org

IOU_AdCouncil_Celeb_Consent_BW_11.5x21.indd 1

9/3/15 9:52 PM

NOW HIRING

10

THE TUFTS DAILY | Comics | Wednesday, March 9, 2016

Comics

tuftsdaily.com LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY Sarah: “What’s another word for strong?”

Jack: “Jack.”

Comics

CROSSWORD

SUDOKU

JUMBLE

Difficulty Level: Being satisfied with the weather this week.

Tuesday’s Solution

NON SEQUITUR

BY WILEY MILLER

Wednesday, March 9, 2016 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

S

Late goals from Carbone, Bilby carry the Jumbos to win MEN'S LACROSSE

NICHOLAS PFOSI / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVE

Tufts attacker John Uppgren, LA ‘16, falls to the ground during Tufts’ men’s lacrosse 25-6 victory over Hamilton at Bello Field on Saturday, April 11, 2015.

continued from back “I have a pretty easy job because the 14 other seniors are so successful playing and such successful leaders that my role [hasn’t] had to change that much,” Andreycak said. “We have 15 guys guiding the ship, and it’s really easy for me to just focus on doing my job on the field and bringing the team along because 14 other guys are doing the exact same thing. We had a really strong senior class, and I’m really lucky to have all those guys by my side.”

Although none of the 14 first-years saw playing time on Saturday, both Helfrich and Andreycak have spoken to the capability of the incoming class.

“They’re doing an awesome job adjusting to playing college lacrosse,” Helfrich said. “It’s a big commitment for them. We’re doing a great job coming together; we just have to keep improving as a team” Tufts heads to Keene State tonight, where they will look to maintain their 10-game winning streak dating back to last season.

Tufts hockey shows improving trend making NESCAC semifinals for second straight year ICE HOCKEY

continued from back Cole, one of the fastest players on the ice, received a Sabitsky pass and capitalized to put the Bantams ahead 2-0. The goal was Cole’s 10th of the season and earned Sabitsky his team-leading 16th assist of the season.

“I didn’t think we played our best game against Trinity,” Coach Norton said. “We didn’t have quite as good jump as we’ve had in some of our other games. We weren’t as aggressive as we’ve been in terms of confidence. By aggressive I don’t mean penalties, I mean jumping on loose pucks and winning one on one battles early on. Even though things weren’t quite going well for us, we stuck with it and didn’t get down on ourselves.”

Through the first two periods, the Jumbos were outshot 30-14. However, the third period was a different story entirely.

The Jumbos came alive at the outset, perhaps sensing the urgency and hoping to prolong their season. Despite the tangible momentum shift, two untimely penalties on Bell for hooking and charging held the offense back. On the second power play opportunity, Trinity senior tri-captain Elie Vered rocketed a shot past Nugnes from the right side. Junior brothers Ryan and Brandon Cole assisted on the play.

Normally solid on the penalty-kill, the penalties on Bell and Ouellette were especially difficult to kill because, according to coach Norton, both captains are among the best penalty-killers on the team.

Down 3-0, the outlook of the game had turned bleak for the Jumbos. However, refusing to accept defeat, the Jumbos redoubled their attack. Sophomore defenseman Dan Kelly won a face-off on the left side and slung a pass to first-year Nick Abbene, who wasted no time blasting the puck into the back of the net behind sophomore goaltender Alex Morin. Bell said Abbene’s shot was one of the best he’d ever seen in person.

Having cut the deficit, the Jumbos seemed to slow down, especially on a power play a minute later that the Bantams easily killed. The Bantams went on the offensive a few times, earning one-on-one opportunities for Vered and junior forward Ethan Holdaway. However, Nugnes solidly anchored the Jumbos defense and denied both attempts. Despite Nugnes’ impressive play, Jumbo first-year Peter Straub was called for hooking at 17:45 and Brandon Cole converted the power play on his own 20 seconds later.

The Jumbos flipped the switch in the last minute, fighting tooth and nail to keep their season alive. After pulling Nugnes for

the extra skater, junior forward Mike Leary was able to sink an open look at 19:19 after Ouellette’s shot was deflected. The deficit was once again cut to two, and Granato improbably found twine at 19:50 off an assist from sophomore Chad Goldberg to make it 4-3.

Ten seconds and one goal separated the overtime from the end of their season. The Jumbos won the face-off and sped down the ice to fire a shot at Morin, who snagged the puck with his gloved hand. Just under five seconds remained, but the Jumbos watched precious seconds tick by on the clock despite Morin holding onto the puck.

The clock finally stopped at 1.8 seconds and the crowd let the referees know their displeasure. Without replay or any other means to check the correct time, the referees settled on 2.9 seconds remaining. The Jumbos and Bantams faced off in the left circle of the Bantam’s defensive zone and the Bantams won the face-off. Despite the furious comeback attempt, Tufts’ season was over.

“It’s obviously a little bit too-little-toolate, but three [goals] in a minute, minute and a half or so,” Randaccio said. “It’s nice to go down swinging and have that knowledge that your team wants to fight to the end and claw for something that seemed out of reach. I think we are all a little bit disappointed. It wasn’t our night. We gave up some bounces and made a couple mistakes that led to their goals. We definitely saw ourselves playing for the NESCAC championship the next day, so I’m not going to say we’re not disappointed.”

Finishing the season 10-10-6 is an improvement on last year’s 9-15-2 finish for the Jumbos. Their second half record demonstrates how the team improved throughout the season, as the Jumbos went 8-6-3 following the break in coach Norton’s first season coaching the Jumbos.

“It’s good to see the program is in good hands and [Norton] came in and did an unbelievable job for his first college head job,” Randaccio said. “I’ve a tremendous amount of respect for him, and I think all of the seniors would agree they think the program is in good hands with him. It was a transition period, definitely, and I’m just glad that we as seniors got to see it.”

Junior goalie Mason Pulde finished second in the NESCAC in regular season save percentage at .946 and Nugnes finished third at .943. Earlier in the season, coach Norton had intended to alternate goalies throughout the regular season and pick a starter for the playoffs. However, he ended up alternating Pulde and Nugnes in the NESCAC tournament.

“I’m looking at the weekend with the expectation of playing two games, and I felt like I wanted to continue with the consistency of what we’d been doing all year,” Norton said. “I felt like Nik [Nugnes] was more than capable of doing the job, and Nik played tremendously. He was outstanding throughout the game.”

The Jumbos finished sixth in scoring, worst in penalty minutes, third in power play and fifth in penalty kill and tied for sixth in defense. Statistically middle of the pack, the team proved it could at times step up to play with anyone in the NESCAC with the win over Williams and the close loss to Trinity. Sophomore Chad Goldberg showed promise, scoring six conference goals with four assists in just 14 games due to injury.

He missed almost all of last season with a broken collarbone.

Bell finishes with over 100 games played in his Tufts career, the most on the team, and 27 goals to go along with 30 assists.

Ouellette scored 11 goals with 28 assists in 89 career games.

“I think the leadership this year from the top down has been excellent,” Randaccio said. “Our captains this year, Brian Ouellette and Stewart Bell were, I think, some of the best captains I’ve seen in college sports in my career. They did an unbelievable job from last April when they were elected to today. They expected a high level of integrity and work ethic on the team, and, I think everybody really wanted to work hard for them.”

“I was really happy with how things went this year,” Norton added. “I was lucky enough to have two outstanding captains in Stewart Bell and Brian Ouellette who were tremendous all year. They really stepped up to a lot of the responsibilities that I put upon them and not only did they meet those expectations but I thought they actually went above and beyond those.”

For the seniors, the end of the season is bittersweet.

“I’ve been playing hockey for 20 years,” Randaccio said. “I tried to really enjoy the day, start to finish. We were able to get down there the day before and have a walkthrough, team breakfast at the hotel, warmups at the rink kind of thing. Seeing the rink fill up, parents and friends came. I try to just take it all in. You don’t want it to be your last game, but playoff hockey your senior year, it’s kind of like you’re staring down the end of a 20-year pipeline kind of thing. I tried to enjoy every minute of it and go out and earn it, shift by shift. I had a lot of fun despite the loss. I’m still digesting the end of it to be honest.”

11

Eric Smiley Flashes of Brilliance

March Madness

T

his month, 68 Division I basketball teams will enter a single elimination tournament. Sixty-seven of these teams’ seasons will end in a loss. Sixty-seven separate times, senior students that have dedicated an incomprehensible amount of their life to the sport will weep when the clock hits zero.

Just one team will exit “March Madness” victorious. However, this tournament isn’t really about which team is left standing at the very end.

The tournament is not a bastion for amateur integrity and fairness. The essential appeal and popularity of the tournament is that it lends itself quite perfectly to uneducated gambling; the American who has not submitted a bracket at least once has been deprived of the unique, unearned pleasure of rooting with desperation for 12 new young men dozens of times in a single weekend. Additionally, one game samples are fundamentally cruel, and only the most naïve among us would pronounce the eventual victor the undisputed “best” team.

The tournament is full of players you’ve never heard of living out their childhood dreams on national television. The tournament is George Mason making an impulsive and thrilling Final Four run. The tournament is Davidson’s un-recruited and undersized Stephen Curry entering the national consciousness for the first time. The tournament is two kids from Florida Gulf Coast University connecting on an irresponsible alley-oop that I remember vividly years later. None of these schools won the championship.

Bored one day last March, I decided to watch a game in the round of 64 between No. 3 seed Baylor University and No. 14 seed Georgia State University (GSU). I gravitated towards GSU quickly; they were both the enormous underdog and the better story. Less than a week earlier, Georgia State’s coach Ron Hunter had torn his Achilles while celebrating a win that catapulted GSU into the very game I was now watching. During timeouts, coach Hunter assembled the team around his improvised scooter because he could not stand.

GSU kept the game close until it began to slip away late in the second half. With 2:39 left in the game, GSU trailed Baylor 56-44. Baylor wouldn’t score again. Possession after possession, GSU stole the ball. When they didn’t steal it, Baylor missed every shot. Shouting for a team I had no relation to, I cheered as a Baylor player missed a free throw that could have sealed the game. I watched GSU bring the ball up the court, down by two points. I heard the frustration in the announcer’s plea, “what are they doing?”, as GSU seemed in no hurry to shoot the basketball. I watched R.J. Hunter, GSU’s star player and impossibly also the son of the wounded coach, shoot a three from a distance that would make Steph Curry blush.

The ball went in. The proud father and delirious coach fell out of his makeshift chair. I leapt out of mine.

The coach’s son had hit the game-winning shot in the biggest game of either of their lives. GSU lost their next game. It didn’t matter.

Eric Smiley is a senior majoring in Mathematics. He can be reached at eric.smiley@ tufts.edu.

12 tuftsdaily.com

Sports

Wednesday, March 9, 2016

ICE HOCKEY

Despite late drama, hockey team can’t pull off second upset to keep season alive

by Phillip Goldberg Sports Editor

The No. 2-seeded Trinity Bantams ended the No. 8-seeded Tufts Jumbos’ Cinderella story postseason by handing them a 4-3 loss on Saturday in the NESCAC semifinals. For the Bantams, the win avenged last season’s 2-1 defeat in the first round of the playoffs at the hands of the bottom-seeded Jumbos, the greatest stain on a season that saw them go on to win the national championship.

For the Jumbos, the loss marked their second straight season ending in a NESCAC semifinals loss after improbably taking down the conference’s No. 1 seed in the quarterfinals. Last year, No. 8-seeded Tufts upset the top seed Trinity in the opening round of the NESCAC tournament, and in déjà vu fashion this year — again seeded eighth — Tufts upset the No. 1 seed Williams Feb. 27 to make it to Saturday’s semifinals.

The Bantams, ranked sixth in the nation, sealed their third NESCAC championship — after winning in 2003 and 2008 — with a dominant 5-1 victory over the Amherst Purple and White and earned the NESCAC’s automatic bid to the national tournament.

“We’re obviously disappointed that we weren’t able to get a NESCAC championship,” senior co-captain Stewart Bell said.

“We were in the final four last year and would have loved to have taken that next step to win the semifinal game and to get in the finals and see what happens. It’s still promising that we were back in the final four this year.”

In the first period, the Bantams came out aggressively and the Jumbos started slow. The forward trio of sophomore Oliver Takacsi-Nagy and seniors Dom Granato and James Randaccio came close to scor-

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVE

Tufts forward Conal Lynch, LA ‘17, lines up a shot in the game against Conn. College on Friday, Feb. 5. ing as Granato rifled a shot just wide of the goal. Despite the Jumbos’ defense letting up 15 shots on goal, sophomore goalie Nik Nugnes held out until the very last second of the first period. Senior co-captain Brian Ouellette was called for hooking at 19:45 and with half a second remaining in the period, sophomore forward Tyler Whitney lit up the scoreboard on an assist from

senior forward Michael Hawkrigg and sophomore Anthony Sabitsky.

“James Randaccio had a great game,” coach Patrick Norton said. “I thought James was a factor physically every shift. I thought he was finishing his checks. I thought he played a real simple smart game, and I thought he attacked the net and tried to get some shots off. He wasn’t afraid of the

moment. He came out and had good energy and even though he hasn’t played a lot this year, his work ethic has been outstanding.

He’s one of the first guys on the ice every day [in practice].”

The second period was more of the same.

Just 2:29 into the period, junior forward Ryan see ICE HOCKEY, page 11

MEN'S LACROSSE

Men’s lacrosse kicks off 2016 title-defense campaign by winning season opener

by Maddie Payne

Assistant Sports Editor

The reigning NESCAC and NCAA Div. III national champions opened their season with a tense 14-13 victory over Stevens Institute of Technology on Saturday. The Jumbos went into the final quarter two goals down but managed to outscore the Ducks 4-1 in the final quarter to claim the win.

Face-off expert and senior midfielder Connor Helfrich won Tufts’ first face-off of the season to open the game, but the attack failed to convert the possession into a goal.

Although senior co-captain Ben Andreycak brought the ball down to the Stevens goal and got a shot off, it was blocked and repossessed

by Stevens senior Tim Fair. The Ducks quickly went on the attack and capitalized on the opportunity. Tufts senior goalie Alex Salazar saved the first shot attempt, but eventually Stevens senior Conor O’Shea found the net on the second try to give his team a lead they would not lose until the fourth quarter.

Ironically, face-off wins rarely turned into immediate scores for either team. The second face-off, won by Stevens, led to an initial turnover to give Tufts a chance to equalize. But Stevens first-year goalie Carson White made the save and sent the ball back up the field, with his team quickly putting another goal in the back of Tufts’ net to go up 2-0.

Seniors Garrett Clarke and Kyle HowardJohnson scored a goal apiece in quick succession to bring the Jumbos back equal with the Ducks. However, a face-off violation gave Stevens the opportunity to get ahead again. With just over three minutes left, two Jumbos received penalties, giving the Ducks a two-men-up situation. Stevens capitalized again to score twice more, ending the first quarter 5-2.

“We weren’t really worried too much [about being down early],” Andreycak said.

“We wanted to make sure that we were getting back to plays that were successful, and that’s just working hard, getting ground balls and doing the little things right. So we had confidence that when we got back to playing Tufts lacrosse that we’re going to have success.”

The Jumbos opened the second quarter strongly, with sophomore Nico Pollack taking only 11 seconds to score. Two minutes later, Andreycak, who had assisted Pollack’s goal, found the back of the net himself, decreasing the deficit to one. However, the Ducks were able to maintain this lead for the remainder of the first half. Tufts stayed in the game largely due to the impressive goaltending of Salazar, who made four saves in the last four minutes to keep the score at 8-6 in favor of Stevens at the half.

Tufts got fired up during halftime, and thanks to a man-up situation, immediate-

ly equalized through efforts from seniors Connor Bilby and Jake Gillespie.

“It was a great effort from our wing play,” Helfrich said. “Guys like [junior] Tyler Carbone, [senior] Jake Gillespie, [senior] AJ Enchill [and senior] Curt Townshend did a good job all game long helping us get those extra possessions.”

The third quarter was an even matchup between the two teams with both scoring four goals. Tufts stepped up its attack to make 16 shots to Stevens’ 11 but were still held to only four goals, while Helfrich won seven of the eight face-offs during the quarter. Two goals from Stevens put Tufts down for the third time in the game, but two goals from junior Austin Carbone allowed Tufts to equalize again.

For the first three quarters the Jumbos had been forced to play catch-up as Stevens repeatedly went two goals up. However, the fourth quarter brought about a decisive change. Howard-Johnson found the back of the net only 10 seconds into the quarter and again with just under seven minutes remaining to tie it up again at 12-all.

Carbone slotted a shot past Stevens’ White for his third goal, giving the Jumbos their first lead of the game. Carbone then assisted Bilby who put the Jumbos two goals up with two just under two minutes remaining. One minute later, a last-ditch effort from the Ducks put the score brought them within

one, but the Jumbos just managed to hold on for the 14-13 win.

A crucial four saves in the fourth quarter by Salazar, who made 15 overall, kept the Jumbos in the game. One thing that proved difficult for both teams was converting their face-off wins into goals. Of Helfrich’s 20 face-off wins, only six were converted into goals by the Jumbos, a relatively low percentage given the Jumbos’ usually hyper-efficient offense.

Despite the close result, head coach Mike Daly was satisfied with the team’s performance.

“The fact that our team kept grinding for 60 minutes, I thought that showed our experience and toughness,” Daly said. “We certainly need to keep striving and improving every day.”

Both Daly and Andreycak cited the key role that the defense played in giving the Jumbos their first win of the season.

“All the credit goes to the defense. They played really tough and had a lot of guts,” said Andreycak. “They are the ones who carried the team on Saturday and made sure that no matter what happened on the field that we came out with a victory.”

Andreycak, who leads the team with senior John Uppgren, lauded the senior class for its ability to lead by example. see MEN'S LACROSSE, page 11