The Tufts Daily - October 24, 2017

Part-time faculty play a vital role in and out of the classroom see FEATURES / PAGE 4

TUFTS FIELD HOCKEY

Jumbos recover from loss to Bobcats with a pair of shutout wins

Takashi Murakami makes modern works in traditional context at MFA exhibition see ARTS&LIVING / PAGE 6

SEE SPORTS / BACK PAGE THE

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VOLUME LXXIV, ISSUE 32

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Tuesday, October 24, 2017

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Protesters raise allegations about national, Tufts Greek organizations at Parents Weekend

by Ariel Barbieri-Aghib News Editor

During Parents and Family Weekend, a group of students arranged an anti-Greek life protest in front of Sophia Gordon Hall and the Aidekman Arts Center.

The protesters held three signs with the following text: “1. DID YOU KNOW??? Kappa Alpha Theta ~ A Phi ~ DTD ~ Chi O ~ Theta Chi ~ AOII ~ ZBT ~ Zeta Psi FUND LOBBYING GROUPS WORKING TO HALT RAPE INVESTIGATIONS 2. DTD & PI RHO ARE GUILTY OF SEXUAL HARASSMENT AND HAZING VIOLATIONS. THEY RECRUITED THIS FALL 3. Panhellenic Greek Life was founded for and by white students. It can never escape this history. Violent pasts lead to violent futures.”

The main goal was to educate parents about the current status of Greek life, explained Aidan Huntington, the organizer of the event.

“It was important that parents know where the money goes that they might be paying towards their child’s dues, or that their child is paying,” Huntington, a third-year combined degree student, told the Daily in an email. “It also is a reminder that the ‘fraternal experience’ is tied hand-in-hand with sexual assault.”

Huntington explained that, because parents are usually the ones paying tuition, they tend to have more of a voice with the administrators, and explaining to them the shortcomings of Greek life on campus is imperative. see GREEK LIFE PROTEST, page 2

RAY BERNOFF / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Mauri Trimmer (left) and Ben Kesslen (center) lead a protest march to Kappa Alpha Theta during sorority recruitment events on March 30.

Students lead hurricane relief efforts, Tisch College organizes in support

Women’s Center initiates POC Circles for students of all gender identities

by Daniel Nelson

by Simran Lala

News Editor

Tufts undergraduates have responded in force to Hurricane Maria’s devastation of Puerto Rico, launching fundraisers and staging supply drives with the aim of helping residents of the struggling U.S. territory.

At the same time, the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life is working to support those efforts through the Jumbo Hurricane Relief Response group, a new student-administrative group that aims to support existing efforts to aid the communities affected by Hurricane Maria, as well as those harmed by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma earlier this year.

The most recent student-led fundraiser, the Tufts Athletics Swim-A-Thon, was held this past Sunday in the gym’s Hamilton Pool. The four-hour event, which involved many sports teams swimming laps in the pool, raised over $9,700 as of press time, according to the event’s Crowdrise fundraising page.

The Swim-A-Thon’s inspiration came from Tufts’ Swimming and Diving team, according to event organizer and swimmer Jessica Fan. Fan, a junior, told the Daily in an email that the swimming and diving team has a strong emotional

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connection to Puerto Rico, host to the team’s winter break training sessions for several years.

“Some of our best memories of being on the swim team [have] been from our time spent [in Puerto Rico],” she said.

“When the hurricanes hit, many of us wished to give back since the island had given us so much.”

Tufts Essential Medical Supplies and Activism for Inequities and Disasters (EMS-AID), which formed last academic year in response to the Venezuelan humanitarian crisis, aims to provide essential medical supplies to underserved communities and raise awareness about disasters. The group held a medical supply collection drive last week.

Co-President Eric Pretsfelder told the Daily in an email that President Donald Trump’s politicized response to Puerto Rico has ensured it the airtime that the Venezuelan crisis lacked.

Pretsfelder, a sophomore, said that EMS-AID has focused on gathering medical supplies for the people of Puerto Rico, particularly those in the southern part of the island. He said that the event was a success, and that supplies would be sent to Ponce Health Sciences University in see HURRICANE, page 3

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The Tufts Women’s Center has initiated biweekly POC Circles, which are dedicated to “community care, solidarity and intentional coalition building” for people of color, according to their first Facebook event. The first POC Circle was hosted on Sept. 14 at the Women’s Center and will meet every other Thursday.

The Circles, created by seniors Made Bacchus and Natasha Karunaratne and graduate assistant Koko Li, are the Women’s Center’s first effort to create a space specifically for POC of “all gender identities,” according to Women’s Center Director K. Martinez.

“We haven’t taken such an initiative, specifically for students of color, on campus,” Martinez said.

According to a survey taken after the first POC Circle, more than 90 percent of respondents who had attended the event felt that there are not spaces similar to the Circles for students of all races and gender identities to connect on campus, Martinez said.

Bacchus and Karunaratne told the Daily in an email that the initiative was inspired by positive feedback from the

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Women of Color and Feminism Panel, created last year by senior Priyanka Padidam.

“People really loved having the space and asked us if this was something that we could do regularly,” Bacchus said.

“Unfortunately, last year we didn’t have the capacity to do so since the center did not have a director, but this year, supported by our Grad Assistant Koko Li and our new Director K, we’ve built the capacity to hold this space every other Thursday.”

Circle themes will include friendship and food, relations to the POC community, inter-POC relations and understanding each other’s backgrounds, hair and spooky things, according to senior Amanda Ng Yann Chwen, who works at the Women’s Center.

One of the central intentions in the creation of the POC Circles was to make them a space for marginalized identities, Bacchus and Karunaratne said.

“Our biggest challenges came out of making a space that centers race and gender simultaneously while also rejecting the gender binary,” the two leaders wrote. “This [led] us to many see POC CIRCLES, page 2

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

COMICS.......................................8 OPINION.....................................9 SPORTS............................ BACK

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Tuesday, October 24, 2017

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IFC, protesters both feel dialogue on Greek life stalled GREEK LIFE PROTEST

continued from page 1

“The national chapters of these Frats/Sororities pay money to the Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee which lobbies to ‘protect the fraternal experience,'” Huntington said. “They do things like push congress to make it harder to investigate rape cases on college [campuses].”

A 2015 Boston Globe article reported that committee is making it harder for schools to investigate cases of rape by requiring that they first go through the criminal justice system. Furthermore, this political action committee supported the Safe Campus Act, which fights to protect the exemption of fraternities and sororities from Title IX. However, according to protester Yoji Watanabe, during the protest they were approached by an alumnus.

“A middle-aged White Man, telling me and the other POC protester that we were wrong about Greek Life’s white and segregated past; that they were created for all students, and his own White children had such great experiences in Greek Life that we are wrong in holding these opinions” Watanabe told the Daily in an email.

The Greek life alumnus then shifted the conversation to gun violence in Medford, stating that it would be a more useful issue to protest, added Watanabe.

According to both Huntington and Watanabe, many Tufts fraternities and sororities are complicit in donating money to the Fraternity and Sorority Political Action Committee, because dues that members pay to national organizations may be contributed to the committee’s causes. Watanabe cited eight Tufts fraternities and sororities whose national chapters are linked to the committee. “[Greek life at Tufts] is contributing money to lobby congress to protect rapists, use charitable donations to the organizations on house improvements, and make Greek-affiliated organizations exempt from Title IX policies, which are in place to ensure all students have equal opportunities on a college campus,” Watanabe said.

According to a 2013 article in the Sydney Morning Herald, The Fraternity and Sorority Action Committee has lobbied Congress for a multi-million dollar tax break which would allow charitable donations to be put toward the building and renovating of chapter houses.

Luke Murphy, the president of the Interfraternity Council (IFC) and a Daily columnist, told the Daily in an email that despite protesters’ accusations, fraternities are committed to safety and inclusivity. Murphy said he had not reached out to protesters.

“The Interfraternity Council is committed to continuing to improve the safety and inclusivity of our organiza-

tions,” Murphy, a senior, said. “We continue to encourage dialogue between Greek and non-Greek students about how Tufts Greek Life can play its best role on campus.”

The protesters have not reached out to administrative offices like the Office of the Dean of Student Affairs or the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, according to Huntington. Watanabe said that, so far, only one Greek organization has reached out to the protesters to discuss issues, remedies and long-term initiatives.

Murphy invited protesters to reach out to the IFC. “The Interfraternity Council is not planning to make a public statement to address these protests,” he said. “I encourage people to reach out [to] us and have real conversations about our role on campus. If those that displayed the signs on Parents’ Weekend (I do not know who the individuals were) want to talk about Greek Life and improving campus life, I am just an email away.”

Watanabe also expressed a desire for dialogue.

“White Greek Life members, talk to POC protesters, that’d be a great start.

Ignoring the racial issues is taking a step backward. Engage with us. We are open to talk during our protests,” Watanabe said. “Yes, reading our signs are a start, but that should not be the end of your engagement with issues of sexual assault, class divide, and racial disparities.”

POC Circles aim to use Women's Center to create new kind of space

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The Women’s Center at 55 Talbot Ave., a space open to people of all genders and identities, is pictured on Oct. 20. Organizers of POC Circles aim to spark discussions surrounding gender equality, patriarchal power and the gender binary.

POC CIRCLES

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conversations about how we would foster an inclusive space that would center those who find themselves in the margins of the margins of these identities.”

Chwen said they felt that one of the benefits of the POC Circles will be their broad inclusivity for all people of color.

“In my experience, some of the other spaces organized on campus are very race-specific, and there aren’t a lot of broader general ones, such as for people of color,” they said.

Furthermore, students will have complete control of these circles, both leading and designing their format, Martinez said.

“I wanted the space to be designed in a way to make the students feel like they have autonomy over the space,” they said.

News

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 | News | THE TUFTS DAILY

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Athletics, EMS-AID, other groups organize to support Puerto Rico

BEN KIM / THE TUFTS DAILY

Ali Dorneo from the women’s swimming and diving team discusses the Swim-A-Thon fundraising event, during the Jumbo Hurricane Relief Response meeting in the Rabb Room on Oct. 19.

HURRICANE

continued from page 1 Puerto Rico for distribution.

The swimming and diving team and EMS-AID both said that they also received support from Tisch College’s Jumbo Hurricane Relief Response group.

Mindy Nierenberg, senior director of programs for Tisch College, said the Jumbo Hurricane Relief Response group was founded after a student approached the university this fall about developing student-led fundraisers for hurricane survivors in the Caribbean. According to Nierenberg, students currently interested in realizing their own fundraising efforts can seek funding assistance from the Tisch College Fund for Civic Engagement.

Nierenberg and Marian Woznica (LA ’17), student outreach coordinator for

Tisch College, brought together students and administrators interested in organizing relief efforts for a brainstorming session in early October.

The group decided to form a centralized student relief efforts hub.

“Rather than [having] people do a bunch of individual efforts, making individual decisions about where to send any money that they raised, [we decided] that there would be one university fund and that there would be a board of students representing all different interests [to decide where and how to disperse raised funds],” Nierenberg said.

Woznica said that the new group is still in development, and it has not yet finalized its founding vision. But even so, the group has been eager to help students stage their own fundraising efforts.

“We’re trying to make it as easy as

possible for students to do whatever they want to do in terms of hurricane relief,” she said.

EMS-AID and the Swim-A-Thon were largely self-reliant in the planning and staging of their respective fundraising events, Woznica explained. But she said that Jumbo Hurricane Relief Response did help them spread awareness on social media.

The new group also hopes to make use of Tufts resources by calling upon the diverse set of students and staff members that make up its board. The University Chaplaincy co-sponsors the group’s weekly meetings, and Reverend Greg McGonigle sits on the board.

“Often, working with religious and philosophical communities is an effective way to organize and mobilize people and transfer resources to

where they can quickly provide relief,” McGonigle told the Daily in an email.

The chaplaincy has also implemented plans first discussed in the group’s meetings, including a vigil McGonigle proposed at the very first gathering, according to Oct. 4 meeting minutes.

“Last Friday, we hosted a vigil that responded in part to the hurricanes and other recent tragic events,” McGonigle said. “Our Buddhist Mindfulness Sangha and other partners are preparing a follow up program on November 5.”

For now, Woznica said that Jumbo Hurricane Relief Response will focus on supporting existing student efforts.

“Our plan right now is not to stage any big fundraisers of our own,” she said, “but to take advantage [and support] events that are already happening that people are already going to.”

4 tuftsdaily.com

Features

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Unpacking the part-time faculty presence at Tufts

EDDIE SAMUELS / THE TUFTS DAILY

Tufts Labor Coalition protestors gather on the Residential Quad before marching to the site of the adjunct faculty contract negotiations at 200 Boston Ave on Sept. 29.

by Jenna Fleischer Staff Writer

On Oct. 11, the part-time faculty bargaining committee and the School of Arts and Sciences reached a tentative five-year agreement for a new contract.

The contract has not yet been ratified, according to Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences James Glaser, but nonetheless represents an important milestone in the administration’s relationship with the faculty bargaining committee and part-time faculty as a whole.

“Assuming that it is ratified, there are features of the contract that were very important to the school, and there are aspects of the contract that improve the situation of our part-time faculty,” Glaser told the Daily in an email. “The contract aligns with the principles that guided the administration through the negotiations. We aimed to reward excellence and commitment to students. We sought broad-based fairness (to the lecturers as well as to others who are not in the union). We were invested in a system that provides for ‘clean administration’ (processes that are easy to execute and remember, and that can prevent clerical mistakes).”

The contract represents a community of educators at Tufts that teach many of the university’s required classes. According to the Tufts 2016-2017

Fact Book, part-time faculty make up approximately 34 percent of the faculty in the School of Arts and Sciences including the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) (236 out of 687 faculty members), while in the School of Engineering part-time faculty form about 44 percent of the total faculty (77 out of 177 faculty members). As a whole, for both Arts and Sciences as well as Engineering, including programs like the Experimental College, 38 percent of the total faculty are part-time (337 out of 892 faculty members).

Within the School of Arts and Sciences, the highest concentration of part-time faculty can be found in the SMFA (62 part-time faculty members), the romance languages department (28 part-time faculty members), and the English department (25 part-time faculty members).

Chair of the Department ofRomance Languages Pedro Palou said that the heavy concentration of part-time faculty in his department could be attributed to the School of Arts and Sciences’ language/culture requirement. Under this requirement, students have to demonstrate proficiency in a language other than English through at least the third semester at a college level.

“The language requirement explains not only why Tufts has so many part-timers, but also full-time lecturers and ten-

ure stream faculty,” Palou said. “Last year we had 580 sections of language, just in romance languages. More than 1,200 students just in Spanish and 750 in French.”

Similarly, Joseph Litvak, chair of the Department of English, said the concentration within his department is largely due to the first-year writing requirement and a variety of creative writing course offerings.

“We are a very large department with lots of moving parts. We have literature courses, but we also run the first-year writing program, as well as a creative writing program,” Litvak said. “The only way we can teach all of those courses and satisfy all the demand is to assign many of them to part-time lecturers. We don’t have enough full-time faculty to teach all of the courses we offer.”

Lecturers, according to Glaser, teach almost all foreign language and writing courses because the nature of the courses that fall under the scope of the romance languages and English departments makes having part-time faculty favorable.

“These tend to be specialized skill-building courses with small enrollments and heavy student-teacher contact. At some point in the past, it was determined that these courses would be most effectively and efficiently taught by non-tenure stream faculty,” Glaser said.

“Many of the part-time faculty in the graduate-heavy departments teach more specialized courses. Some of these part-time faculty are practitioners, not traditional academics, and bring something important to the curriculum.”

Palou noted that Tufts is unique in having part-time lecturers who have dedicated many years of service to the university, such as Viola Thomas, who has been a French lecturer for 41 years.

“That makes a very special cohort because at some universities that I know of, there is a lot of turnover among the part-time faculty,” Palou said. “A part-timer comes for one or two semesters and then goes, and we don’t have that experience.”

Elizabeth Lemons, a senior lecturer in the Department of Religion, who has been at Tufts for 19 years, believes it benefits the students to have continuity with faculty they can work with over the course of their undergraduate career.

“I think it’s to Tufts’ credit that there is a culture of recognizing when someone is doing a good job,” Lemons said. “There are a lot of part-time faculty that are very committed to and put a lot of energy into their teaching. This makes the whole community work better together.”

Litvak emphasized that part-time faculty bring an important perspective see PTF, page 5

F e at u r e s

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 | Features | THE TUFTS DAILY

Part-time faculty are core members of English, foreign language staff PTF

continued from page 4 to many of the courses offered in the English department.

“Part-time lecturers teaching our creative writing courses are poets, fiction writers, journalists,” Litvak said. “They have experience in their respective genres outside Tufts, which adds to the classroom experience.”

Writing, language and practice-based courses are more likely to be taught by parttime faculty, but according to Jianmin Qu, dean of the School of Engineering, there is a growing need for part-time lecturers in STEM subjects as well.

“Technological advances have increased exponentially over the past decade and as a result, engineering education has become much more complex and specialized,” Qu told the Daily in an email. “In order to address teaching the vast amounts of technical skills necessary to become a well-rounded engineer today, we hire [parttime faculty] with specialized knowledge to teach specific courses that either fulfill our current curricular requirements or add additional elective choices for our students.”

While there may be increasing number of part-time faculty in the School of Engineering, within the School of Arts and Sciences, part-time faculty numbers are low in the natural science departments, such as biology (two part-time faculty members) and chemistry (one part-time faculty member).

Harry Bernheim, vice chair of the Department of Biology, said that unlike the writing and language requirement, where students often have to take specific courses such as English 1 and 2, course requirements are not as strict within the natural sciences.

“Even though each student has to take two of these types of course, most departments in the natural sciences have non-major intro courses taught by full-time lecturers or tenured or tenure-track professors,” Bernheim told the Daily via email. “Since there are many of these types of courses, part-time lecturers are not needed since collectively the demand can be met.”

Part-time faculty members are hired to handle the large student enrollments that arise from the huge demand for required

courses and because of this, lecturers fill an important role at a research university, Lemons added.

“Our primary job is teaching and I think we don’t do it for the money, but when you love teaching, when you love working with students, it’s rewarding and we would hope to be recognized for that by the institution and since we’ve unionized I feel like we have made progress with that,” Lemons said.

Palou emphasized that part-time faculty are not only important to their departments, but also that they are indispensable members of the Tufts community.

“Part-timers who teach at say three different places, they come and go, and they don’t have that feeling of a home department. I feel I can speak for my faculty that this is their department,” Palou said. “This is important for me because in small programs like Italian or Portuguese, you talk with a student and they say, ‘I’m continuing [with this language], I want to go into a minor or even a major because of this professor,’ and that professor is a part-timer.”

Kristen Moran Failing Big

No relevant experience required

T

ufts Dance Collective ( TDC) applications are terrifying in a way that other, more normal applications are not. Getting rejected from groups with skill-based application processes hurts because it’s them telling me that I don’t have what it takes; getting rejected from TDC says that they just don’t like me as a person.

Is that being dramatic? Yes. But what other conclusion is there when none of the questions focus on dance backgrounds or musical inclination? It all comes down to if I picked the right “booty tooch” to submit or if my dating app horror story was terrifying-yet-humorous, unique-yet-relatable.

Every TDC submission feels like sending a text to your crush that just says “I’m funny, I promise, you’ll like me once you get to know me” and hoping he’ll take you to the prom. It’s a lot of pressure packed into one Google form.

The night that applications opened, I applied for five separate dances with a wide range of topics, hoping that one of them would strike a chord with me — or at least the funnier version of myself who I pretended to be on those applications. After being rejected from the three I had applied for last year, my hopes were not high, but I dutifully wrote a fictitious Bachelor bio instead of working on homework.

A week later, I heard back: three rejections and two acceptances. A 40 percent success rate might not sound great, but I was over the moon.

I picked one, per new TDC restrictions, got pumped throughout the week, and then missed my first rehearsal … sorry, Nath and Amanda.

But luckily I was reassured that a lot of people couldn’t make it to the first rehearsal and that I wouldn’t be far behind in the choreo. So, I showed up a week later to Jackson Dance Lab, ready to learn and meet new people. That’s easier said than done when you’re moving around the room for the first 15 minutes, trying to look fierce but also like you know what running is. No one really wants to talk to the girl who is basically copying the slow-motion Baywatch run but with zero sex appeal in a heavy, New England-weather sweater.

But at that rehearsal, we all sat in a circle and shared our worst/best middle school dance stories. I personally shared the time that I jumped up and down all night (because that’s what White kid middle school dancing is), but then couldn’t walk the next day due to what my dad diagnosed as a painful build-up of lactic acid in my calves, so I had to stretch through tears to fix it. Who wouldn’t want to be my friend after hearing that?

Will this TDC dance be a new community for me? Probably not, due to the nature of its single semester, once a week schedule. But it may open doors for new friendships, and that’s all I can

Before anything else, we are all human.

It’s time to embrace diversity.

Let’s put aside labels in the name of love.

Rethink your bias at lovehasnolabels.com

5

Kristen Moran is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. Kristen can be reached at kristen.moran@tufts.edu.

6 tuftsdaily.com

Arts & Living

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

MOVIE REVIEW

‘The Snowman’ is a film caught in a blizzard

by Tommy Gillespie Assistant Arts Editor

Fans of Scandi-noir have come to expect a certain general formula in the years since the genre exploded onto the scene: bleak, snowy landscapes, beleaguered alcoholic heroes and villains of particular depravity and brutality lurking beneath the surface of the seemingly liberal, socially cohesive societies of their Nordic settings. It may seem that the genre has gotten stale. Enter “The Snowman” (2017), which manages the almost impressive feat of bringing nothing new to Scandi-noir while simultaneously being a uniquely incoherent and bizarre mess of a film.

With such impressive names working on the adaptation of Norwegian author Jo Nesbø’s 2007 novel, one wonders just how “The Snowman” went so wrong. Directed

by Tomas Alfredson of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” (2011), the film follows Oslo detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) as he tracks down a killer whose calling card is an ominous-looking snowman, along with Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson), a recent transfer from the Bergen office with a personal connection to the case. It also features Charlotte Gainsbourg, Val Kilmer, J.K. Simmons, Toby Jones and Chloë Sevigny.

The cast’s credentials make the film’s awfulness all the more baffling. Alfredson has stated in interviews that the shooting schedule forced them to scrap almost a fifth of the original script, along with a host of other issues surrounding production. Still, one would expect editors such as Oscar winners Claire Simpson and Thelma Schoonmaker, of “Platoon” (1986) and “Raging Bull” (1980) respectively, to use their expertise to craft some semblance of a narrative structure. Instead, what results is a film seemingly composed of scenes

UNIVERSAL PICTURES / TRIBUNE NEWS SERVICE

Michael Fassbender as Harry Hole in ‘The Snowman’ (2017). dropped into the film at nearly “The Room” (2003) levels of randomness, with abrupt cuts and inexplicable pans.

Narratively, the film is no better. About an hour in, it jarringly enters a subplot taking place nine years earlier that follows Kilmer’s

poorly dubbed and drunken ne’er-do-well character investigating the same killer in see SNOWMAN, page 7

EXHIBITION REVIEW

Pop art reframed at MFA’s Takashi Murakami exhibition

by Ruijingya Tang Contributing Writer

In the primarily Western-dominated discourse of contemporary art, it is easy to attribute the “superflat” world of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami largely to the legacies of postmodern masters such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. Admittedly, Murakami’s glossy and mass-produced

works much resemble American pop art stylistically. But it would be illogical to assume that Murakami uses the pop aesthetics to pose the exact same critiques against materialism as his American counterparts. This is because Murakami’s works are essentially continuations of traditional Japanese art, which celebrates two-dimensionality and decoration. The recent exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA),

COURTESY REBECCA TANG

A painting by artist Takashi Murakami. His artwork hangs in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The exhibit opened on Oct. 18.

“Takashi Murakami: Lineage of Eccentrics, A Collaboration with Nobuo Tsuji and Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,” disassociates the pop aesthetics from its often critical and political connotation assigned by the West, and explores it within the dimensions of Japanese art history.

The MFA welcomed Takashi Murakami at the exhibition’s press preview and the Late Nites event on Oct. 13. The exhibition opened to the public on Oct. 18.

The displayed works include a mix of the MFA’s unparalleled collection of traditional Japanese art and Murakami’s paintings and sculptures inspired by the Edo-period eccentric painters featured in Professor Nobuo Tsuji’s book “Lineage of Eccentrics.”

Some Edo-period paintings in the MFA’s collection have directly influenced several of Murakami’s exhibited works; Professor Nobuo Tsuji, a renowned Japanese art historian, has been Murakami’s mentor for years. The three parties also collaborated in curating the exhibition — video guides recorded by Anne Nishimura Morse, the William and Helen Pounds Senior Curator of Japanese Art at the MFA, Takashi Murakami and Nobuo Tsuji are available to visitors for free.

The monumental Murakami painting “Transcendent Attacking a Whirlwind” (2017) vividly illustrates the artist’s roots in old Japanese traditions. The painting is a theatrical recreation of a painted screen of the same name by the Edo-period painter

Soga Shohaku, and is a part of the MFA’s collection.

The 17th-century original depicts a scene of three men withstanding an approaching whirlwind. The painting represents this dangerous situation in a humorous way.

The whirlwind is a highly stylized motif in Chinese and Japanese paintings. It represents a strong wind using a neat spiral, thus transforming the natural force’s otherwise aggressive connotation into a whimsical one. Just to the right of the whirlwind, a standing man confidently faces the coming disaster with a smile on his face and a sword in hand. His confidence dwarfs the whirlwind into a mere foil to his strength instead of a fatal threat. The two figures toward the right end of the screen are blown to the ground. However, their bodies twist so unnaturally that they seem to be performing some juggler’s dance. Through the artificial representation of both the danger and its targets, Shohaku frames the scenario as a mere play, evoking the Chinese proverb “life is but a stage.”

Murakami’s version of “Transcendent Attacking a Whirlwind” takes this playfulness to the next level. The light reflected by the smoothly polished surface of the painting and its dazzling colors keep the audience eyes busy; the painting’s scrolllike composition disorientates the audience even more. see MURAKAMI, page 7

Arts & Living

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 | Arts & Living | THE TUFTS DAILY

The star-studded 'Snowman' can't get it together SNOWMAN

continued from page 6 another city, then jumps back and forth without context between past and present at inopportune times. Simmons’ sinister businessman-philanthropist with suggested ties to sex trafficking and an unclear connection to the murders is introduced, then treated as an afterthought. All the while, the audience is left confused over whether to care about the film’s constant reminders that Oslo is bidding to host the “Winter Games World Cup,” and why nobody has a Norwegian accent.

“The Snowman” goes beyond merely confusing its audience in the plot; it also provides countless moments of inexplicable weirdness. In one such scene, Gainsbourg mounts a reclined Fassbender for some fully-clothed jostling for about 15 seconds before halting and mentioning that her son has run away from home. In particular, Gainsbourg, who has impressed

as a muse of art cinema auteur Lars von Trier in turns like “Antichrist” (2009) and “Nymphomaniac” (2013), brings a jarring avant-garde strangeness to her role as Hole’s ex-girlfriend Rakel. “The Ringer’s” Adam Nayman has speculated, among others, that the filmmakers “[were] trying … to turn a salvage job into an avant-garde art project.”

Still, the bizarreness of “The Snowman” is not limited to Gainsbourg’s character.

We see Fassbender wrestle Ferguson to the ground when they mistake each other for hostiles, then continue to hold her in a Half Nelson while they discuss new case developments. Finally, we get a killer reveal that makes as much sense as just ending the film with a title card stating: “It was actually Old Man Jenkins from ‘Scooby-Doo.’” The stellar cast, unfortunately, largely fails to make up for the film’s insurmountable issues. Fassbender brings a competently portrayed but ultimately off-putting alcoholic misanthropy to Hole. Gainsbourg radiates an ethereal weirdness as Rakel, Kilmer is laughably bad in the flashback

subplot, and potentially interesting turns from Sevigny and Simmons are wasted.

Only Ferguson, whose star has been steadily rising since her role in “Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation” (2015), gives a solid performance as the determined Katrine, though she is by no means spectacular.

If a generous helping of handsomely grim shots of a snowy Norwegian landscape are enough to make you sit through a two-hour mess of a mystery-thriller, then “The Snowman” is a film for you. Otherwise, Alfredson makes a mulligan of a film that is awkward and head-scratching enough to be entertaining viewing, but with too high production value and too many stars to enter the prestigious pantheon of historically awful cinema populated by “Gigli” (2003), “Battlefield Earth” (2000) and others. “The Snowman” is simply an exercise to forget for all involved, unless you find yourself coming face-to-face with a coffee-bean faced snowman sometime in the future. In either case, run!

scenarios distinct in time and space in one composition. As disorienting as the “whirl” part of the scenario might seem, the painting’s immaculately precise outlines create an overall sense of order.

Many paintings throughout the Japanese art history consistently make fine lines their dominant visual elements. The Heianperiod “The Burning Cauldron,” displayed at the Murakami exhibition, is a prime example of traditional Japanese artists’ penchant for lines. This quintessential language of Japanese art literally and figuratively confines the disorder in Murakami’s painting,

reducing the painting from a representation of real danger to a simulation of it. In this way, Murakami’s “Transcendent Attacking a Whirlwind” mirrors its inspiration’s humorous treatment of reality.

Using similarly colorful and flat forms, Warhol and Lichtenstein mockingly parodied their contemporaries, yet Murakami venerates the old. The collaborated exhibition at the MFA cautions us against telling contemporary art in a unifying master narrative that features a set range of cultural, political and aesthetic concerns, despite the world’s increasingly globalized landscape.

Murakami's 'Transcendent Attacking a Whirlwind' reinterprets Japanese tradition MURAKAMI

continued from page 6 Ancient Chinese and Japanese artists illustrated history on handscrolls. The 13th-century “Night Attack on the Sanjo Palace,” displayed in this exhibition exemplifies a standard handscroll. Read from right to left, it starts with a text introduction, features a long illustration of a set of progressing events in the middle, and ends with a text conclusion. Adopting such traditional narrative format, Murakami’s painting leaves its audience overwhelmed by the juxtaposition of four

This House Believe That:

BREXIT IS A HOUSE OF CARDS AND THREATENS THE STABILITY OF THE WORLD ORDER Wednesday, October 25th @ 5:30pm ASEAN Auditorium, The Fletcher School Reserve Your Spot Now! http://bit.ly/FRTNdobbs a debate with

Michael Dobbs, F73, FG77, Best-Selling Author and Politician, Executive Producer of the Netflix show House of Cards & Amar Bhide, Thomas Schmidheiny Professor of International Business, The Fletcher School

7

Nikki Margaretos Is This Thing On?

Is This Thing On? Music on the brain

W

ith the advent of the internet, we are living a huge portion of our lives online.

As a result, our personal information is being tracked and recorded everywhere, all the time. If you subscribe to a music streaming service, this is especially true. Now, you might choose not to publish what you’re playing to your friends (private session for those guilty pleasures), but you are always providing this information to the streaming platform. That’s a crazy amount of data!

It’s not only what you listen to, but how you listen to it. Do you find a new song and listen to it on repeat for three hours? Which songs do you skip over on shuffle, and which will you stop and rewind? Are you more likely to leave your playlist untouched, or do you obsessively curate the queue?

We can learn a lot about a person from this data, and can predict an astonishingly accurate picture of traits such as hobbies, lifestyle choices, buying habits and even personality.

Admittedly, these analytics feel a little intrusive, but we can leverage this data to do some pretty cool things. Let’s take Spotify’s research initiative in what they call “Understanding People Through Music,” and their new platform Spotify for Brands. The concept is simple: analyze music listening habits to create stronger marketing towards customers.

When I ask people what kind of music they listen to, the most common response I get is, “a little of everything.”

These days, it seems that tastes have become more diversified with the ability to pick and choose singles from our favorite artists. Speaking of artists, that’s another good point — if someone asked you who your “favorite singers” are, how would you answer? See, maybe I absolutely love a couple of songs by Halsey, but does that really make me a true fan? Is there any artist of which you know every song and every album?

My point is this: merely asking a person about this information may not yield the most accurate results. But if we were to look instead at the data, the numbers don’t lie. Music intelligence can tell us how likely we are to listen to songs with a certain tempo, or how loyal you are to a given genre. The possibilities are endless.

To give us a taste for the intelligence in store, Spotify for Brands is offering a website, spotify.me, which allows users to see some of their listening trends and preferences. Just navigate to the site and allow it access to your Spotify profile. I discovered on my own spotify. me that my most played song ever is “Only Time” (2000) by Enya … because whenever I have a headache, listening to this helps me feel soothed … yikes.

I also learned that 61 percent of the time I’m listening to highly “danceable” music, and that I listen to an hour and a half every day.

So, how does your taste in music relate to your own personality? Check out your own trends and you might be surprised, or like me, realize you are much less cool than you thought!

Nikki Margaretos is a senior majoring in economics. Nikki can be reached at nikoletta.margaretos@tufts.edu.

8

THE TUFTS DAILY | Comics | Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Comics

tuftsdaily.com LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY Joe: “You’re less of a people person, and more of a person person.”

Comics

SUDOKU

GARFIELD

BY JIM DAVIS

NON SEQUITUR

BY WILEY MILLER

Difficulty Level: Having the Joey leave Davis just as you get off the T.

LINDA C. BLACK ASTROLOGY

Monday’s Solution

Scorpio (Oct. 23-Nov. 21)

Create a work of art. You’re inspired, all warmed up and ready to go. Learn, play and express passionately today and tomorrow. Discover unexpected rewards.

FOR RELEASE OCTOBER 24, 2017

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Lewis CROSSWORD ACROSS 1 eBay sale condition 5 Nasal spray, e.g.

9 Guiding values of a group 14 Funnyman Jay 15 Actress Falco of “Law & Order True Crime: The Menendez Murders” 16 Bench-clearing fight 17 Indonesian resort island 18 Big commotion 20 Assists with a felony 22 River near the Egyptian pyramids 23 Podcast interruptions 24 Taxable profit 26 Julep ingredient 28 It has only two possible answers 33 Enjoy a pizza, say 34 Summer shades 35 Hosp. diagnostic chamber 36 Performs like Drake 39 Have a bug 40 Pedal pushers 41 Lifeboat mover 42 Like cellars, typically 44 “The Blacklist” government agcy.

46 Start of a teaching moment from grandpa 52 Australian isl. state 53 Chose from a menu 54 Refuse to share 55 Imitated 58 Hindu sage 59 Showing embarrassment ... or what the circles in three puzzle answers are literally doing 62 Not much 63 Thorny plant 64 Like eyesores 65 Snippet of poetry 66 Platform for a play 67 Get ready for a selfie 68 __-back: relaxed

By C.C. Burnikel

DOWN 1 Hudson River capital 2 Naval construction worker 3 Shoreline recesses 4 “C’est la vie” 5 “I’m not impressed” 6 “Beats me” 7 iPad voiceactivated app 8 Reveal 9 Fade away 10 One playing hooky 11 Difficulty, with “a” 12 Birds that can rotate their heads about 270 degrees 13 Sneaky 19 Red Sea republic 21 Lee of desserts 25 QB’s flub 27 Magazine unit: Abbr.

29 Ear cleaners 30 Carrier whose largest hub is O’Hare: Abbr.

31 Mine extraction 32 Petty peeve 36 Information on a Broadway ticket

10/24/17

Monday’s Solution Monday’s Puzzle Solved

©2017 Tribune Content Agency, LLC

37 Satisfied sigh 38 University of South Africa city 39 Org. for docs 40 Computer network security system 42 Bad-mouth 43 “Oh, drat!”

44 Word on a gift tag 45 Future blossoms 47 “Get off my back!”

48 Alpine songs 49 “Lawrence of __”

10/24/17

50 The Twins of the Zodiac 51 Worked on text 54 Injured 56 PC key used for scrolling 57 “Logically, ... ” 59 Channel formerly called “Superstation” 60 Fury 61 Just For Men product

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Opinion

9 tuftsdaily.com

OP-ED

Let’s make a statement in Virginia!

by Jack Barral Nov. 8, 2016 was a moment of reckoning for me, as it must have been for many others. I watched, slack-jawed and dumbfounded, as Donald Trump was elected to the highest office in American politics. Instantly, the world seemed to be a much darker and less promising place than the one I had known only a few moments prior.

While it is not surprising that this momentous defeat left many people feeling demoralized and pessimistic about the future, time has shown that this state of affairs was nothing if not fleeting. Proof of this came in January, when the presidential inauguration brought out a wave of political activism and showed the American spirit to have been undimmed by the events of the preceding few months. The outpouring of protest and civic engagement surrounding the event was heartening, not only because it showed a deep displeasure with the outcome of the election, but also because it demonstrated the willingness of the general public to take political action in response to the challenges and outrages of the Trump administration.

The healthcare fight that has dominated politics for the past few months has proven the efficacy of public pro-

test as a means of affecting policy.

However, there is only so much that protesting and calling members of Congress can accomplish. If Democrats want to put a stop to Trump’s agenda and regain control of the government, they need to contest and win elections on a large scale.

Much of the attention paid to politics has been cannibalized by the ridiculous antics and machinations of the president and his White House. It can, therefore, be extremely tempting to look ahead to the 2020 presidential election and the opportunity to unseat him.

However, we will have the opportunity to make a major impact on the political landscape and send an unequivocal message to the White House long before 2020, and even well before the 2018 midterm elections. Next month, voters in New Jersey and Virginia will go to the polls to elect new governors and state legislatures. Though in a post-Trump world political certainties are largely nonexistent, the gubernatorial race in Virginia is expected to be by far the closer of the two.

Though polls are currently showing Democrat Ralph Northam leading Republican Ed Gillespie by a margin in the mid-single digits, the race is expected to be extremely close.

This race is not just expected to be

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exceptionally close, but it will also be extremely consequential. Over the last four years, Virginia has made exceptional progress under the leadership of Democratic Governor Terry McAuliffe.

Over the course of his administration, the state expanded access to affordable healthcare, thousands of Virginians had their voting rights restored and discrimination against state employees on the basis of sexual orientation and identity was prohibited. Much of this progress would be lost by electing an extremely conservative Republican candidate, who has not only supported the policies of the Trump administration on a wide variety of issues, but has also adopted Trump’s hateful rhetoric on immigration and stated that he would like to see abortion banned.

The office of governor is not the only position up for election. The state’s Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General will also be elected on the same day, as will all of the members of the state legislature. The composition of the next legislature will likely be just as important as who occupies the Governor’s Mansion. Despite the accomplishments of the last four years, the McAuliffe administration was often stymied by the large Republican majority that they faced in the House of Delegates (the lower house in the

state legislature) which blocked a variety of reforms including a full Medicaid expansion. Although Democrats hold all three statewide offices and won the state in the past three presidential elections, they only hold approximately one third of the seats in the House of Delegates, and Republicans are therefore able to block progressive reforms.

By winning the three statewide races and making a strong showing in the legislature, we can send a strong message to the Trump administration, while also continuing to enact progressive reform in the state of Virginia. These elections will have national implications and luckily there are a large number of opportunities to get involved in the races and help make sure that Democrats win in Virginia.

Tufts Democrats will be holding phone banks and other campaign events to support Democrats up and down the ballot in the state from Ralph Northam to candidates for the state legislature. We have an exceptional opportunity in Virginia and we cannot afford to squander it.

Jack Barral is a senior majoring in political science and anthropology. Jack can be reached at Jack.Barral@tufts.edu.

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10

THE TUFTS DAILY | Opinion | Tuesday, October 24, 2017

Shantel Bartolome and Conor Friedmann Bored & Confused

tuftsdaily.com

CARTOON

Am I an elitist?

A

t Tufts, students seem to despise the wealthy classes, striking down anything that represents power, aristocracy or elitism.

Tufts students think of themselves as above the elitist nature one would find at, say, Harvard. We’re down to earth. We don’t sell out to Wall Street. We’re quirky.

However, Tufts is elitist, too.

When asking the question “Am I an elitist?”, Tufts students rebuke, claiming to fight for the crucial social and political issues ailing the working classes.

Tufts students do, in fact, support these issues and are politically active.

However, we are elitist simply by attending a school like Tufts. Our social encounters are nowhere close to that of the average Boston resident and even less so for the average American. We can (and should) work to help the underprivileged. What escapes the minds of many of us so-called “social justice warriors” is the ability to genuinely relate to and converse with the people we fight for. William Deresiewicz, author of “Excellent Sheep” (2014), recognizes this paradox that exists mainly at elite schools. He says, “because these schools tend to cultivate liberal attitudes, they leave their students in the paradoxical position of wanting to advocate on behalf of the working class while being unable to hold a simple conversation with anyone in it.”

Elite universities were founded under the Protestant values that people with good prospects should recognize their privilege and the mechanisms that got them there. Today, we are constantly preaching inclusivity, diversity and acceptance. Yet, we fail to recognize one major factor: our definition of inclusivity has not included, to any significant extent, the inclusion of lower social classes. Thus, many students at schools like Tufts lack the ability to communicate with anybody who has not received an elite education.

Deresiewicz puts it bluntly when recounting an experience with a plumber, “A handful of Ivy League degrees, and there I was, stiff and stupid, struck dumb by my own dumbness. I could carry on conversations with people from other countries, in other languages, but I couldn’t talk to the man who was standing in my own house.” We are learning to become incredible global citizens, working to help people around the world. However, when it comes to those struggling at home, many elite students have no idea where to begin.

So, are you an elitist? Probably. Nearly half of Tufts students attended a private high school. Our student body is the eighth richest elite university in the country in terms of median parent income. Simply put, our interactions don’t include people outside of our own elite social circles. While some students do call for a greater push for socioeconomic diversity in admissions, it cannot be only on the administration. It’s on us. It’s on us to not see a less-educated, less-talented person as beneath us.

It’s on us to measure value not only in grades, SAT scores or prestigious jobs or internships. So yes, you are probably an elitist. But we all can do more to fix that.

Shantel Bartolome is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. Shantel can be reached at natasha.bartolome@tufts. edu. Conor Friedmann is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. Conor can be reached at conor.friedmann@tufts.edu.

BY MARIA FONG

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.

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Sports

Tuesday, October 24, 2017 | Sports | THE TUFTS DAILY

Jumbos record two road wins in three days FIELD HOCKEY

continued from back two ways to extend their postseason are either to win the NESCAC championship or to own a stellar record.

“Our motto is, ‘This next game is the most important of our season,'” Travers said. “That’s what we say before every game to keep us hyped and focused, no matter who we’re competing against. Our team has all

of the skill and heart it takes to win the NESCAC.” The two wins against Wellesley and Williams improved the team’s record to 10–4 and clinched sole possession of second place in the NESCAC, a slot behind No. 2 Middlebury, which boasts a 12–2 record. Tufts plans to have another gritty performance as it closes out the regular season by hosting Bowdoin on Wednesday.

“We’re going to practice our corners a lot; those are really difficult to win against great defensive teams like Bowdoin, and we need to take advantage of the opportunities we get because they’ll be far and few between,” Patton said. “At this point, it’s about trying to simplify our game and optimize our scoring.

The NESCAC is super competitive, and we’re fortunate enough to be able to play in it as it prepares us for postseason. It’s definitely challenging, but we love the challenge.”

TRASHING ONE EGG WASTES 55 GALLONS OF WATER

11

Arlo Moore-Bloom The Equalizer

What we can learn from Belgium

I

n September of 2006, Michel Sablon, Belgian soccer’s newly appointed technical director, was putting the finishing touches on his blueprint for Belgium soccer’s revolution. Only eight years later, at the 2014 World Cup, Belgium was positioned as the fifth-best team going into the tournament, according to FIFA. Not only that, but Belgium had produced a golden generation of players: Eden Hazard, Romelu Lukaku and Thibaut Courtois are only some of the world class players produced by Belgium in the late 2000s. So how did a relatively unsuccessful small country of 11.35 million achieve such success? And if Belgium can do it in such a short time, why can’t the United States?

Belgium’s emergence as a global superpower is no miracle. It is the outcome of a structured system where resources and money were put into a comprehensive plan.

Sablon’s first step was to invest a chunk of Belgium’s Euro 2000’s profits into youth development. After the Belgian Soccer Federation made entry-level coaching courses free, participation rapidly increased. By comparison, in the United States, a top youth coaching license is around $4,000.

Sablon’s team also asked the University of Louvain in Brussels to carry out an extensive study of youth soccer in Belgium, involving the filming 1,500 matches across different age groups. The study supported Sablon’s theory that there is too much focus on winning and not enough on development; it also suggested focusing on two vs. two, five vs. five, and eight vs. eight small-sided games to optimize touches and the learning of diagonal passing.

Anderlecht, the top club team in Belgium, also instituted the “Purple Talents” project, which seeks to improve the technical ability of their players through three local one-hour sessions per week. Simply put, more hours practicing translates to higher levels of play.

A common complaint from American families is that pursuing soccer professionally means not getting a good education.

But in Belgium, academies are instructed to suspend players from training if their grades drop off. Communication between schools and academies is difficult, but not impossible if it’s made a priority.

Belgian youth academies were also vastly improved with the implementation of Double PASS, a soccer academy auditing service.

Double PASS uses an accreditation system to “grade” soccer academies on eight factors. The combined score corresponds with different levels of play and funding from the country’s soccer federation. The higher the grade, the higher level of funding and competition for the youth club.

This neutral auditing system supports and cultivates competition between academies, driving investment. In 2015, Double PASS announced a partnership with U.S. Soccer. Does that mean we’ll have our own Thomas Mueller in ten years? Probably not.

More realistically, coaching, training regimens and club philosophy at youth academies will improve before we see progress in the players themselves.

Belgium’s transition from a mediocre national team to a global superpower was made possible by a total, top-down belief in and adherence to the Federation’s plan. The success of a similar plan implemented in the United States is just as dependent on every member involved trusting the process as it is on the quality of the plan itself.

Arlo Moore-Bloom is a first-year who has not yet declared a major. Arlo can be reached at arlo.moore_bloom@tufts.edu.

12 tuftsdaily.com

Sports

Tuesday, October 24, 2017

EVAN SAYLES FOR TUFTS UNIVERSITY

Senior forward Mary Travers battles for possession in the homecoming game against the Middlebury Panthers on Oct. 7.

Gritty play pushes field hockey past Wellesley, Williams

by Haley Rich Staff Writer

After a tough 1–0 loss to Bates on Oct. 14, the No. 6 Tufts field hockey team bounced back with two promising wins over Wellesley and No. 7 Williams on Thursday and Saturday, respectively. Visiting Wellesley’s home turf for the first time since a 1–0 loss two years ago, the team put together a dominant 4–0 victory.

“Bates was a huge loss for us, and we were pretty upset,” senior forward Mary Travers said. “We certainly had our chances, but we just weren’t able to capitalize on them and finish the play.

As a forward, that was pretty frustrating. Bates showed us that we had all the pieces, but there was just one thing that was missing.”

In preparation for the game against Wellesley, the team focused on returning to basics, with lots of shooting practice and working out any final kinks. The Jumbos’ hard work was on full display against the Wellesley Blue on Thursday, as the Jumbos tallied their third-most goals in a game this season, trailing only a 7–0 win over the Gordon College on Oct. 11 and a 5–0 victory against Conn. College in September. Junior forward Gigi Tutoni opened the scoring just 3:36 into the game.

“Because we scored early, we could [substitute] in almost all our team, so everyone could get a little time,” Travers said. “Usually in closer games, it’s harder to get a lot of subs in.

Wellesley gave us the chance to put everyone from [first-years] to seniors on the field.”

Senior co-captain Mary Kate Patton, who plays both midfield and forward

for the Jumbos, scored two impressive goals, improving her season total to three. With 3:32 left before halftime, Patton received solid passes from Tutoni and junior forward Hanaa Malik and managed to work past Wellesley’s junior goalkeeper, Maggie Connelly, for the second score of the game. Patton had another opportunity at the end of the half, but Connelly made her ninth save to hold the deficit at two.

“I missed an opportunity in a stroke, and that’s my job, so I was really bummed about not following through with that goal,” Patton said.

Just minutes into the second half, however, Travers and senior midfielder Erin Sanders successfully attacked the right side of the field and played a ball behind defenders, allowing Patton to tip it into the cage. Sophomore forward Rachel Hamilton redirected a Sanders shot past Connelly to add the Jumbos’ fourth goal at the 51:15 mark.

The team’s defense is also making strides in its performance, shutting out both Wellesley and Williams, thanks to improved communication. “[Against] Wellesley, there was only one shot on goal, and that’s a testament to the work of [junior] Issy Del Priore and [senior co-captain] Ellexa Thomas,” junior goalkeeper Emily Polinksi said.

For Wellesley’s lone shot on goal, Del Priore pressured the ball and ensured that, when the shot was released, it would be something that Polinksi could easily handle.

“When the defenders work cohesively and communicate, it makes my job a lot easier,” Polinksi said.

Wellesley’s field is made of a field turf material, while the Jumbos practice

on AstroTurf. The transition between the two surfaces can be very challenging, as the ball tends to bounce more, so the team looked to make something out of scrappy plays.

“We had the right mentality, and we executed a great performance,” Travers said.

“It was definitely a fun game to play and a great way to bounce back from Bates.”

Even more challenging, Tufts had just one day between its match against Wellesley and another crucial road game at Williams. Tufts coach Tina Mattera, who captained Boston University’s 1999 squad, understands how draining back-to-back games can be, and has the team participate in roll-out and stretching sessions between matches.

“On Friday, we had a shorter and lighter practice that was more of a film-watching chalk-talk because we were all exhausted after the game,” Travers said.

The Ephs entered Saturday’s game with an 11–2 record, tied for second in the NESCAC standings with the Jumbos and ranked higher than the visitors in the NCAA’s regional rankings (despite being lower in the coaches’ poll). Tufts and Williams went head to head twice last season and, although the Jumbos prevailed both times, the games began uneasily.

To emphasize how seriously Tufts took the game, Travers rolled up her sleeve to display the word “GRITTY” graffitied on her arm in black marker.

“We have a word for every game, and we write it on our wrists beforehand,” Travers said. “It was really a game of grit and hustle, and it came down to who wanted it more.”

The Jumbos certainly played with grit, as the first half saw a lot of back-

and-forth battling for possession. With the offense applying pressure, the team was able to win a corner, which it had focused on in practice. Mattera drew up a set play in the huddle, and the Jumbos executed it perfectly, resulting in a goal by Hamilton off a pass by Travers at 25:47.

“Although we were excited about the first goal, we knew we needed to score another as soon as possible because Williams was receiving some opportunities as well, and we needed some insurance,” Travers said.

The team accomplished just that at exactly the 40 minute mark, with Travers sliding a shot past Williams’ sophomore goalkeeper Abby Lloyd.

“We always say to score in the first minutes of a half because the starting play really controls the tempo for that half,” Travers said. “It wasn’t the prettiest shot, but it went in. In my mind, I was just thinking about taking as many shots as I could — pretty or not — because at the end of the day, a goal is a goal.”

The defense worked tirelessly to defend against Williams’ many aerial balls and forced the hosts to play the ball to the outside instead of straight down the middle.

“The five of us on defense played really cohesively and were able to stop all of their offensive corners,” Polinski said.

With the postseason approaching and two NESCAC losses already, the players stayed competitive under pressure. Over the course of the season, Mattera has reminded them that the see FIELD HOCKEY, page 11