MEN’S HOCKEY
Governor hopeful Jay Gonzalez talks vision see NEWS / PAGE 2
Jumbos narrowly clinch spot in NESCAC tournament
MGMT reignites fan base with ‘Little Dark Age’ see ARTS&LIVING / PAGE 6
SEE SPORTS / BACK PAGE
THE
VOLUME LXXV, ISSUE 18
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 tuftsdaily.com
Wednesday, February 21, 2018
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.
Provost David Harris to become Jumbos repeat as New England president of Union College Div. III champions by Ethan Zaharoni Contributing Writer
SEOHYUN SHIM / THE TUFTS DAILY
Former Provost and Senior Vice President David Harris poses for a portrait on Thursday, Sept. 14, 2017. by Ani Hopkins
Contributing Writer
Tufts University Provost and Senior Vice President David Harris announced today that he will be leaving Tufts to become the president of Union College in July 2018. The announcement came Tuesday afternoon via the Union College and Tufts University Twitter accounts, a Union College press conference live stream on Facebook and an email sent by the Office of the President to the Tufts community. According to this email, Deborah Kochevar, dean and Henry and Lois Foster professor at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine, will fill Harris’s role as provost while the university seeks a permanent replacement. At the press conference at Union College, Harris gave a speech in which he thanked Union’s search committee, community and faculty. His remarks included reflections on his experiences as a first-generation college student, his work on increasing academic diversity and his family life. Harris also commented on the role that Union can play in reaffirming the importance of knowledge and a liberal arts education in the current political climate. “I believe that Union College has to be part of a renewed commitment to knowledge and expertise in this country and this world,” he said near the end of the press conference. “Knowledge and expertise have been under assault by a troubling confluence of postmodernist theory, opportunism and disillusionment. It’s what’s given us fake news.” Harris is ending a six-year tenure at Tufts, during which time he introduced the T10 Strategic Plan 2013–2023, Tufts’ first university-wide strategic plan, according to the emailed message. The plan created new institutions at the university, including the 1+4 Bridge-Year Service Learning Program and multiple Bridge Professorships, bringing
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together fields from multiple schools of the university. The T10 plan also called for greater diversity and inclusivity on Tufts campus, which included creating the position of Chief Diversity Officer and the Bridging Differences initiative. In the email sent to the Tufts community, University President Anthony Monaco highlighted Harris’s leadership role in the incorporation of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) into the university. “David also shepherded the transition of [the SMFA] to Tufts, expanding the 70-year relationship between the SMFA and the university, creating a distinctive school of fine arts within a major research university while maintaining a close relationship with the internationally acclaimed Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,” Monaco said. Dean of Student Affairs Mary Pat McMahon lauded Harris’s work at Tufts. “In my nearly four years working with David Harris at Tufts, he has consistently demonstrated a keen understanding of and commitment to fostering and supporting transformational experiences for both AS&E undergraduate students and graduate students across the University’s ten schools,” she told the Daily in an email. Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences James Glaser also highlighted Harris’s development initiatives. “The [T10] plan, of course, was a community effort, but it required a strong leader to bring it all together,” Glaser told the Daily in an email. “Personally, I will miss him, but I also know he’s going to be a very effective president at Union College.” Jianmin Qu, dean of the School of Engineering, shared these sentiments. “Tufts will be missing a passionate advocate for students and their learning experience. More importantly, we will be missing a leader who cares deeply about equity, fairness, diversity and inclusion at every level,” he said.
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The Tufts men’s track and field team traveled to Middlebury, Vt. over the weekend for the New England Div. III Indoor Championships, where it brought home its second consecutive title. The Jumbos posted an overall score of 110 points to beat out the second-place MIT Engineers (97 points). The result marked Tufts’ sixth New England indoor championship in its history and the first time it has won in back-to-back years. The Jumbos’ successful campaign was buoyed by victories in four events, along with three second place finishes and two third-place results. The team also managed to break three facility records at Middlebury’s Virtue Field House. Trailing Tufts and MIT in the overall standings were Williams (92.5 points), Middlebury (83) and WPI (72.5). Senior co-captain Drew DiMaiti, the returning New England Div. III 600meter champion, was one of the four Jumbos to win an event over the weekend. The Medford native again won the 600 meters, setting both a personal-best time and a facility record with a mark of 1:20.60. DiMaiti deflected praise for his individual success at the meet to the Jumbos’ effort as a team, stressing the odds that they were up against.
“Repeating our victory at the New England meet was very special,” DiMaiti said. “I think this year’s win was particularly sweet because of the uphill battle we faced in getting there. We were not expected to win the championship, and it took breakout performances to get us there.” The 600-meter race was the Jumbo’s highest scoring event, as they came away with 17 points in all. Junior Nico Agosti finished fourth (five points) with a personal-best time of 1:23.43, and sophomore Jackson Mihm finished in seventh (two points) with a time of 1:24.83. A pair of other Tufts victories came via juniors Hiroto Watanabe and Josh Etkind. Watanabe won the 800 meters for the second consecutive year, breaking the facility record in a time of 1:54.81. Etkind took victory in the 60-meter hurdles, finishing two-thousandths of a second faster than WPI first-year Oliver Thomas, with a time of 8.233 seconds, which ties him for fourteenth on the Div. III leaderboard. The final individual victory for the Jumbos came from junior Anthony Kardonsky, who won the 200-meter dash in a new facility record of 22.26 seconds. The Tenafly, N.J. native also finished fourth in the 60 meters with a time of 6.96 seconds, matching his career best. Like DiMaiti, Kardonsky was pleased with his see MEN'S TRACK AND FIELD, page 11
MADELEINE OLIVER / TUFTS TRACK AND FIELD
Junior James Gregoire clears the high jump bar at the Branwen Smith-King Invitational on Jan 27.
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