The Tufts Daily - Monday, December 2, 2019

Sociology lecturer Fahlberg discusses Brazil, police brutality see FEATURES / PAGE 3

MEN’S BASKETBALL

Jumbos start season undefeated

Editorial: Tufts should ring in the New Year with these 4 resolutions see OPINION / PAGE 6

SEE SPORTS / BACK PAGE

THE

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T HE T UFTS DAILY

VOLUME LXXVIII, ISSUE 55

Monday, December 2, 2019

MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.

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Citing surging housing costs, Somerville, state politicians advocate for rent control

by Alexander Thompson News Editor

As politicians try to grapple with the ongoing housing crisis in the Boston area, some, including many from Somerville, are calling for the repeal of Massachusetts’ decades-old prohibition on rent control through a new bill, H.3924.

The bill’s two sponsors are Reps. Mike Connolly, who represents East Somerville and Union Square, and Nika C. Elugardo, who represents Massachusetts’ 15th district. Mayor of Somerville Joe Curtatone was the commonwealth’s first mayor to back the bill, and Somerville City Councilors J.T. Scott and Ben Ewen-Campen have declared their support.

At an Oct. 29 rally in support of the bill, Connolly, Elugardo and Curtatone all voiced their support for the bill as residents took the stage to explain how price increases have affected them.

Ruby Sosa, a great-grandmother on a fixed income, spoke at the rally as someone

who has experienced a sudden rise in rents.

Earlier this year, a real estate investment company bought her building, she says, raising rents far past what many residents could afford.

“I can’t afford to pay you $700,” Sosa told her landlord. “I’m on a fixed income, where am I going to get $700 from?”

Supporters of the bill, like those from Somerville, say that rent control is the only way to curb the region’s surging rents and help tenants like Sosa, but economists and property owners warn that rent control could worsen the region’s housing crisis.

According to Rent Jungle, a rental listing search engine, and Bureau of Labor Statistics figures, average monthly rent for all apartments in Boston has risen 12.5% over inflation since 2011. In Somerville, the increase has been steeper still with rents rising 28.76% over inflation.

Two-thirds of Somerville residents are renters, the median of whom spend 26% of their income on rent, according to a WBGH

analysis of U.S. Census Bureau data. The analysis also found that rent burden falls heaviest on low-income tenants.

The housing crunch is largely due to metro Boston’s booming economy. Since 2008, the region has added 2.5 jobs for every new unit of housing, the Boston Globe reported this summer.

The supply shortage is especially acute near Tufts, where the lack of on-campus student housing has students competing with residents. A February Daily survey found the average student paying just under $900 per month for rent, utilities and WiFi, even while splitting the bill with roommates.

Advocates say rent control and Connolly’s bill would help local lawmakers get a hold of the crisis by allowing them to cap annual rent hikes and take pressure off tenants.

The bill, H.3924, would repeal the statewide prohibition on rent control passed by a razor-thin margin by Massachusetts voters in a 1994 referendum. However, by 1994, only three municipalities in the

entire commonwealth still had rent control: Boston, Brookline and Cambridge. Voters in those cities all rejected the prohibition.

Connolly is adamant that his bill would not automatically reinstitute rent control, it would simply give local communities the option. He also stresses that this is just one component of a larger package of housing measures the commonwealth needs to implement, from building more units to granting more rights to tenants.

Somerville leaders are ready to move forward on rent control if the legislature gives them the chance.

At the rally, Curtatone said he would propose a rent control policy that goes after price- gouging property owners. To do that, he wants to cap annual rent increases just above inflation. He added that he would simultaneously continue working on expanding the city’s housing stock to solve the root causes of the problem.

see RENT, page 2

Red Line shuttle buses cause delays, confusion for students

by Stephanie Rifkin Staff Writer

The Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority (MBTA) began weekend repairs on the Red Line starting on Nov. 15, forcing riders to instead ride shuttle buses between Kendall/ MIT and Broadway stations.

The weekend closure means the five stations between Kendall/MIT and Broadway, including ones frequented by traveling Tufts students such as Park Street and South Station, will not see weekend operation until the week after Dec. 15.

In a press release, the MBTA said that the repairs focus on “station improvements and track replacements at Park Street and Downtown Crossing Stations. The MBTA will replace and add new signage, clean, paint, and repair stairs/tile within the stations.”

According to the release, the MBTA will work to replace around 1,800 feet of track at both Park Street and Downtown Crossing.

The press release says that, as a result of these closures, the repairs to Park Street will take place four months earlier than previously planned, while Downtown Crossing repairs happen a year earlier.

“The broad limits between Broadway and Kendall/MIT are necessary as these areas are ‘portal’ access points for work crews to

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load in construction equipment and materials into the underground portions of the Red Line. The broad closure limits also give the MBTA a valuable work window to perform work that would otherwise require additional service shutdowns,” the release said.

While these repairs are taking place, students have found it difficult to maneuver around the shuttle bus service. Isabella Getgey takes the Red Line every Sunday to work at the SMFA. “With the new shuttle buses at Kendall station, it was really inconvenient. As soon as I walked out of the station, I was confused on where to go, and then I was on the bus for a really long time. I had to add like an extra 30 minutes to my commute, which means I got to work late,” Getgey, a sophomore, said.

Getgey emphasized that she found the new repairs to lead to confusion.

“On my way back from work, I was trying to get on the shuttles at the Downtown Crossing station. Downtown Crossing is already in a pretty confusing place, and I had to walk five blocks to go find the shuttles from this station. By then it was nighttime, it was in the cold and I was alone,” she said. see MBTA, page 2

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Several passengers pass through the ticketing station in Davis Square Station on March 15, 2017.

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THE TUFTS DAILY | News | Monday, December 2, 2019

THE TUFTS DAILY Jessica Blough Editor in Chief

EDITORIAL Ryan Eggers Justin Yu

Managing Editors Mykhaylo Chumak Austin Clementi Alejandra Carrillo Connor Dale Abbie Gruskin Liza Harris Robert Kaplan Elie Levine Natasha Mayor Alexander Thompson Daniel Weinstein Andres Borjas Bella Maharaj Matthew McGovern Sara Renkert Noah Richter Jilly Rolnick Anton Shenk

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Red Line repairs speed up as students grapple with delays MBTA

continued from page 1 Getgey continued that the inconvenience may deter students from trying to go into Boston on the weekends if they don’t absolutely have to.

“Getting into Boston … already takes about an hour. Adding an extra 30 minutes to accommodate the shuttle buses is frustrating because getting there and back is a three-hour commute. It’s almost not worth it,” she said.

Lisa Battiston, deputy press secretary of the MBTA, acknowledged that the shuttle buses may run on a slower schedule than the Red Line due to traffic congestion.

“As these Red Line shuttle buses are operating in regular street traffic, customers should budget some additional commuting time. While the shuttles are designed to account for some traffic and

BUSINESS Executive Business Director

congestion, the time between shuttle buses can certainly be subject to changes and fluctuations due to the large size of the diversion between Broadway and Kendall/ MIT, the volume of buses involved, traffic, and other circumstances,” Battiston said.

Meg Guliford, a Ph.D. student at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, also had a hard time finding the shuttle buses between the Davis station and Kendall/MIT station, even though riders were only notified about closures between the Kendall/ MIT station and Broadway station.

“There was nobody there to tell me exactly what to do. [The sign] just said ‘shuttle bus,’ but there was nothing on the signage that said where those buses going towards Harvard Square would actually be picking us up. We all went to where the buses normally are at the bus terminal on

College Avenue. I just sat there and waited with other people. Nobody told us it was across the street,” she said.

Guliford added that it would have made the change easier to navigate if there were people at the station directing riders to where the shuttle buses were located, saying that several people gave up on finding the shuttle buses and instead called an Uber or Lyft.

Guliford added that although the shuttle bus program is annoying, it is not a significant obstacle for riders.

“It was inconvenient, but it wasn’t insurmountable. I’d rather you get it fixed now than when winter comes, when it’s icy out and conditions are more tenuous, and people are having to stand outside and wait for a bus to get somewhere. Get it fixed, just let me know where I’m supposed to be,” she said.

Rent control bill faces uphill climb in legislature RENT

continued from page 1 “This is a battle to protect and maintain the fabric, the soul of our community,” the mayor said. “We need our state leaders and the governor to understand it is a crisis and act like it’s a crisis.”

Curtatone added that he understands the economic concerns about rent control, but he argues that rents that eat more than 30% of income and force longtime residents out of their communities is far worse. Additionally, he said that people should not fear the return of oldschool rent control, pointing to recently implemented policies in Oregon that he says allow more flexibility.

Still, the effects of the rent control of the ’70s and ’80s are a central point of contention in the debate, and long-time Somerville residents may still remember when the city last had rent control in the ’70s.

Steve Bremis, a local real estate agent, does.

“I saw rent control … and it was not good, in fact it was horrible,” he said.

“Everybody seems to forget the code word for Somerville was Slumerville. There was a reason for that.”

Somerville implemented rent control in 1970, which ended in 1979. Under that law, the rents of some 10,000 units were frozen at 1969 prices and landlords had to petition a special commission for rent increases, according to a 1979 Harvard Crimson article.

It all came to an end in December 1978 at one of the most raucous meetings of the Board of Aldermen in the city’s history, the Globe reported at the time.

Residents packed the chamber, giving impassioned speeches for and against the measure, which eventually passed 6 to 4.

Bremis, who got his start in real estate two years later, now chairs the Somerville Property Owners Coalition, a group of more than 250 residents that formed to oppose the city’s condominium conversion ordinance this summer and plans to oppose rent control.

He says rent control limited the profits that landlords could make but did nothing to reduce the cost of purchasing or renovating an apartment.

So many landlords, he said, took their apartments off the market or converted them to other uses because they were no longer profitable, while others stopped doing renovations. It will be the same-old story if rent control makes a comeback, Bremis argues.

“Why would I spend $20,000 putting on a new roof, or buy a property and spend all this money to fix it up if I’m going to get pennies on the dollar back from rent?” Bremis said.

David Sims, an economist at Brigham Young University, conducted an analysis that shows that rent-controlled units were less likely to undergo renovation or large scale maintenance and that landlords tended to forgo small repairs as well, reducing property values both in cities with rent control and those that surround them.

Furthermore, Sims found that because rent control increases demand for apartments but reduces supply, it gives landlords more choice over who they accept as tenants, and they tend to pick wealthier people who are seen as more likely to pay rent on time.

“You actually get more people who are poor and lower income living in Cambridge after rent control ends than you do before,” he said in an interview

with the Daily. “If you can’t compete on price, you compete on whatever the landlord’s prejudices or desires are.”

Sims also cautioned that some evidence shows that when rent control reduces rents in one community, it tends to increase them in the neighboring communities. This is especially relevant for Tufts, which straddles two cities and where rent control in one could increase rents in the other.

Michelle Wu, a Boston city councilor, dismissed warnings like Sims’ and of her own former professors at the Oct. 29 rally.

“I’m an economics major from college. I’m told all these things about how ‘don’t worry, supply and demand will reach that equilibrium,’” Wu, a Harvard graduate, said. “We know from decades of experience, and even just from the five, six years that I’ve been in office, that hasn’t worked.”

Despite the rally and support from Wu, Curtatone and 17 co-sponsors in the legislature, the bill has gotten a chilly reception on Beacon Hill since it was filed this January.

Connolly says he and Elugardo plan to keep building public pressure in favor of their proposal and hope to get a public hearing before the Joint Committee on Housing prior to the end of the year.

However, Committee Chair Rep. Kevin Honan, a Boston Democrat, told WGBH his priority is the governor’s bill.

Wherever the bill ends up, Sosa, the tenant, says she is staying put in her apartment. After finding out about the rent increase, she went to a tenant organization that is helping her fight eviction.

“No, no, no,” she said. “You’re not going to get $700 from me.”

Events on the Hill — Week of Dec. 1

by Austin Clementi

Executive News Editor

MONDAY “Civic Life Lunch — Political Communications in the Trump Era” Details: Philippe Reines, a spokesman and advisor to Hillary Clinton who is famous for being Donald Trump’s placeholder during debate preparations, will be joining the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life in the Civic Life Lunch series.

Where and when: Rabb Room, LincolnFilene Hall; 12–1 p.m.

Outreach Coordinators

Jonah Zwillinger

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TUESDAY “Robert Black Plays Philip Glass: Insomniac Dos and Don’ts” Details: Robert Black, a double bass virtuoso, will be playing Philip Glass’ “The

Not-Doings of an Insomniac” (2015), which Black commissioned and features compositions by Glass and poetry readings.

Where and when: Distler Performance Hall; 8–10 p.m.

WEDNESDAY “The Jonathan Moore Memorial Lecture ‘The Education of an Idealist: What I Have Learned Inside and Outside Government’ with Amb. Samantha Power” Details: In its inaugural Jonathan Moore Memorial Lecture on Ethics and Global Leadership, the Institute for Global Leadership will host Ambassador Samantha Power, who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations from 2013 to 2017. The event will be followed by a book signing of her memoir, “The Education of an Idealist” (2019).

Where and when: ASEAN Auditorium, Cabot Intercultural Center; 6–7 p.m.

“Jumbo Knish Factory’s Fall Dance Party” Details: Jewish music group Jumbo Knish Factory will host a dance party showcasing what they’ve learned this semester with the help of Malka Benjamin.

Where and when: Perry and Marty Granoff Music Center; 8–10 p.m.

FRIDAY “Tufts Goes to the December 6th Climate Strike!”

Details: A contingent from Sunrise Movement Tufts will gather outside Sophia Gordon Hall to make their way to Boston to join other activists in the next global climate strike.

Where and when: Sophia Gordon Hall; 10 a.m.–2 p.m.

tuftsdaily.com

Features

Q&A: Professor Fahlberg talks police brutality in Brazil’s favelas

by Madeleine Aitken Staff Writer

Anjuli Fahlberg, a full-time lecturer in the sociology department, published an opinion piece in the Washington Post in September. She wrote about police brutality in Rio de Janeiro’s “favelas” — low-income, urban neighborhoods — which has been on the rise since Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and Rio de Janeiro’s Governor Wilson Witzel took office in January.

Fahlberg met with the Daily to discuss how her background and research led to the writing and publication of this piece.

Tufts Daily (TD): Just to get a little background, what kind of sociology are you focused on and what classes do you teach?

Anjuli Fahlberg (AF): I’m a full-time lecturer, so I teach six different courses, and then I’ll be teaching a seventh one next semester. So last year, I taught intimate relations — sociology and family essentially — and I don’t teach that anymore, but my regular rotation is political sociology, urban sociology, Latin American society, medical sociology, a seminar on intimate violence and I’ll be teaching social theory in the spring.

TD: How did you become interested in or learn about the conflicts in Rio de Janeiro, and how did you come to start writing the piece?

AF: So I actually grew up in Rio. I moved to this country when I was 12. For about three years, I lost my language and my fluency; I was living in an English-speaking community. And then I started working at Dunkin’ Donuts when I was 15. Everybody was Brazilian, and it became clear to me that my Brazilian roots were really important to my identity. And after that, I spent a lot of time volunteering at immigrant organizations, making really close friends with a Brazilian community here … After I graduated, I decided that I wanted to continue working with the immigrant population and I was also very involved in feminist issues, so I ended up spending five years working in domestic violence and sexual assault issues, particularly with Latina and Brazilian immigrants … I ended up already spending a lot of time working on issues of violence, of inequality, of really systemic problems … We actually spent a lot of time talking about welfare and discrimination in the workplace, their lack of access to transportation, housing, immigration court, criminal court, and I realized that all of these issues are interwoven and that individual experiences of violence also fit within these broader problems and structural inequality.

When I got to graduate school, I was really interested in studying violence. I really wanted to understand why people would

commit domestic and sexual assault. And sociology gave me a lot of the tools to do that. But I also wanted to continue to do what I had always done, which was work in a community.

I was also very committed to what’s called Participatory Action Research (PAR).

And PAR, what we would call it, advocates for including your participants in decisions about “what do you study,” which begins with the question of what matters to you, and what stories do you want the world to know? … I asked people what stories they wanted the world to know … People said to me, everybody who comes here comes to study poverty and violence, and we want the world to hear the stories of the good things that people are doing … So my research was really dedicated to documenting the various forms of community organizing, social work, our culture and all of the ways in which people are using these to really try to improve the neighborhood and advocate for improvements in social development and social change more broadly.

And that has been an incredible project.

By the time this op-ed came out, I had had this very long history of really close ties to favelas in Rio … Both the municipal and state levels of government have always tried to address violence through their policing apparatuses. And for the last 40 or 50 years, in large part informed by the War on Drugs, which is a global issue, really spearheaded by Ronald Reagan, the belief among policymakers is that the way that we handle drug, gang violence is through extreme militarized policing … What we end up seeing is both sides becoming increasingly militarized, and the consequences are bullets flying, schools shut down, businesses shut down, the bus routes that normally go through favelas get deviated, and so people can’t get to work …

A lot of really heart-wrenching stories were coming out of Rio’s favelas. And it was right around the time that all of the fires were burning in the Amazon and that had all of the world’s attention. And so I remember that I had seen another one of these really sad videos that I talked about in the op-ed, and I just thought, “there is another fire burning in Brazil,” and this needs to get some attention.

TD: What was the writing process like for the article?

AF: Honestly, I wrote it in half an hour … I rewrote it after that. I actually worked with the Scholar Strategy Network, which is a national nonprofit organization that pairs scholars with the media … My experience with the Washington Post was really great. They required citations for almost every single word, but there’s something really valuable about having to go and find the sources and make sure that you’ve said

everything exactly correctly. It actually has really restored my faith in at least some media outlets, that they’re very, very thorough about ensuring that what they’re putting out there, even though it’s an opinion, it still has to be factually based.

TD: What do you hope people will get from the piece?

AF: I can tell you what my participants hope, which is that we rethink the assumptions that we have about gang territories.

There is a fascination globally with drug gangs. And I think that that also has to do with a general fascination for violence …

Because we are so fascinated with violence, we completely overlook everybody else …

For my participants, the most important message is that even in these areas that have a lot of armed conflict and other types of local violence, the vast majority of residents are ordinary people who care deeply about their families and their community and who are trying very, very hard to survive.

The second message is that even though we do need to combat drug gangs in some way, this is not the way to do it. I am not opposed to government interventions that genuinely are trying to create a more safe and equitable society. But if that’s what we’re looking for, then we need to do that, and the way that we do that is by providing children who might someday enter gangs with alternatives. Children don’t want to be in a gang, right? But they want to be able to provide for their families. They want to feel like they matter to society. They want to feel a sense of belonging. And if we don’t provide alternative spaces, then the gang is there … The point is that all of this is connected, and that we have to resist the tendency to see them as the other, the dangerous, the violent, the impoverished other.

We are all connected, we all play some role in perpetuating the problem, and we can all play some role in actually addressing the problem by putting out there different types of images about these places, by forging connections with activists or other types of community organizations that are trying to address this, by supporting feminist organizations that are trying to fight against violence. Those are the ways that we’re actually going to create the kind of change that we want.

TD: What do you think students can do?

AF: What students might do is write an op-ed themselves. I think that students, like the rest of us, have become very accustomed to sharing our opinions on social media, and that’s something, but students, particularly at Tufts, are very, very good writers, and they know how to do research, and they’re very passionate about issues … So I would encourage students to think about using this as a medium for advocating for whatever issues are important to them.

When life throws you a financial challenge, you’ve proven you have what it takes to ace it.

Now it’s time to tackle your retirement savings at AceYourRetirement.org

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Monday, December 2, 2019

Ryan Gell JumboCash

How to think about money

F

or the finale of JumboCash, I want to return to the root of what money is all about. Throughout the semester, I have discussed financial jargon, investing strategies and statistics related to money. However, I skipped over the most important component of investing: how to think about money. Inevitably, we tend to compare how much money we have to how much others have, and we often try to live such that we maximize how much money we have. At the end of the day, having the most money should not be your ultimate goal. Happiness is the ultimate goal, and money is a tool to get you there.

If your goal is to have more money, you will be stuck chasing that goal forever because you will never have enough money. There’s no firm, tangible, achievable goal in place.

But what about things that make you happy? What are your most important goals? Money is a tool to help you achieve these things; it is not an end in it of itself. Money buys the bus ticket home so you can see your family. Money buys your coffee from the Rez because it’s your morning ritual. Money buys your new camera because photography is your biggest passion.

We tend to think, “Well, if I had $1 million more, it would be a lot easier to achieve my goals! And I would be so much happier!” Well, research at Stanford University shows that we experience more pleasure from the anticipation of gaining money than when we actually obtain money in the present.

Our brains are wired to constantly think about the future, which can lead us astray with money. Because the anticipation of gaining money in the future feels so good, we’re programmed to be greedy, even though it won’t make us as happy as we expected.

Comparing yourself to others tends to leave us unhappy, and this holds particularly true with money. In fact, a recent survey revealed that only 13% of American millionaires consider themselves wealthy. Why don’t these high-earners feel rich? It’s likely by comparing themselves to others, probably those making more than a million dollars. If having a lot of money is your goal, you will only feel happy if your income is larger than that of whoever you compare yourself to.

Ultimately, smart money management means having enough money to achieve your goals — not the most money.

To anyone who has read my column this year, those who have personally reached out to me, those who have shared the column and those who have engaged with my writing: I thank you all so much — you have impacted me more than words can express. As Irish poet William Butler Yeats said, “Education is not the filling of a pail but the lighting of a fire.”

My only hope is that I have sparked a fire in some of you — a spark to learn financial terminology, to research investing strategies and to empower yourself through investing knowledge.

Ryan Gell is a senior studying economics and history. Ryan can be reached at ryan. gell@tufts.edu.

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ARTS&LIVING

Sammy Park Bangers and Bops

tuftsdaily.com

FILM REVIEW

‘Knives Out’ hits every murder mystery beat with

The birth of Jesus aplomb (and Mariah

by Tommy Gillespie Carey’s impact)

VIA IMDB

A promotional poster for ‘Knives Out’ (2019) is pictured. their publishing house. Richard could have offed Harlan for his threats to expose his extramarital affairs to Linda. The discovery that Harlan had recently altered his will, electing to leave the bulk of his estate to Marta, along with the anonymous tip that summoned Blanc to investigate, further oils the whodunnit’s gears.

This self-aware treading of all the genre’s usual tropes affords an endearing factor to “Knives Out,” making the audience feel as if they are helping to write the story themselves. Special recognition is in order for Evans, who lends a beautifully fratty misanthropy to Ransom, and Collette, who steals all of her scenes with a truly gorgeous blend of obliviousness and indignation as Joni.

The funhouse in which “Knives Out” takes place similarly embodies the genre’s cliches with love; production designer David Crank crafts a finely-tuned melding of the Bates Motel and the Haunted Mansion, replete with false windows, hidden passages and looming portraits.

“Knives Out” breaks exactly no new ground in cinema. What it does do is serve up a tremendously entertaining ride.

Johnson and his cast and crew lean delicately onto the illustrious history of mystery, and while some critics may dismiss their film for it, it’s impossible to find fault in “Knives Out” when it gets all those tropes so right.

ION OF STA IAT TE OC

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Sammy Park is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. Sammy can be reached at samantha.park@tufts.edu.

The greatest strength of “Knives Out” (2019) is its lack of originality. Director Rian Johnson, fresh off his “Star Wars: The Last Jedi” (2017) glory, seems to have brought from that venerable series a certain “there are only seven stories” wisdom to his star-studded romp of a whodunnit.

That awareness is critical to the success of “Knives Out;” where lesser filmmakers would look far and wide to conceal their employment of well-worn mystery ticks, Johnson and “Knives Out” display each familiar beat front and center. A good old-fashioned murder mystery should make its audience feel as if they were playing a game of Clue, and on this front, “Knives Out” delivers exactly what we’re all looking for: a deliciously convoluted caper that’s just too fun to dislike.

Every good mystery needs its macabre mansions and maladjusted murder suspects, and “Knives Out” satisfies both of these cravings. Mystery novelist Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) has gathered his family members, a who’s who of smarminess, in his sylvan New England mansion for his 85th birthday. When he is discovered having seemingly slit his own throat, two detectives (Lakeith Stanfield and Noah Segan) and drawly private investigator Benoit Blanc (a delightfully hammy Daniel Craig) arrive at the mansion to piece together the truth behind the intrigue.

Mark Kermode of The Guardian observed that the film’s set of usual suspects stays “just on the right side of caricature.” We have high-powered anointed successor daughter Linda (Jamie Lee Curtis), who, of course, got her real estate empire going with a $1 million loan from her father. There’s Linda’s philandering malcontent of a husband, Richard (Don Johnson), who immediately chomps down on every baiting question from the investigators. Chris Evans channels his Johnny Storm days as Ransom, the family’s perpetually jobless playboy. Also circling around the crime scene are Marta (Ana de Armas); Harlan’s caretaker and friend who can’t lie without vomiting; daughter-inlaw Joni (Toni Collette), a barely conscious, self-styled influencer; and Walt (Michael Shannon), Harlan’s milquetoast son.

Johnson wrote the script, and he cleverly avoids trying to be too coy early on. “Knives Out” is nothing if not cheekily meta, and Johnson places himself at Harlan’s writing desk, laying out a cocktail of motives and scenarios that keeps fingers pointing at any and all of the cast. We learn early on that Harlan had threatened to cut off his financial support of Joni and Ransom and that he had been preparing to fire Walt from

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ranscontinental flights were too much to justify going home for Thanksgiving break. But spending Nov. 28 on campus feeling like a woman about to inherit a large sum of money (it was actually just $68 in JumboCash) whilst all of my family FaceTimed me wasn’t as lonely as it may have seemed to an outsider.

Thanksgiving is perhaps the only American holiday that never excited me. It doesn’t have the glamour that Halloween has nor the drama of New Year’s Eve. Thanksgiving was always a lackluster opening act to the headliner: Christmas.

I understand that the ubiquitousness of the holiday and the subsequent closing of public schools, businesses and federal buildings while other major religions’ holidays remain functionally unrecognized is a product of America’s universalization of Christianity. Yet when Christmas trees start being erected and I hear the resonant vocals of Mariah Carey in shopping malls and dining halls, I can’t help but be excited.

Christmas is a time of and for gift-giving as well as a break from classes. But the worth of the holiday lies in more than the Lush bath bomb or lotion I will probably receive from my mother. There’s no other holiday that has the ability to inspire the level of nostalgia that Christmas can. Every track off of Justin Bieber’s album “Under the Mistletoe” (2011) catalyzes long-forgotten cherished memories of fifth grade, while his song “Away in a Manger” reminds me of being a painfully awkward middle schooler performing in front of hundreds of church members during a Christmas Eve service.

Despite the common criticism of commercializing the holiday into a vaguely secular tradition, the products of this corporate misinterpretation always make me happy. In the midst of studying for finals, seeing a cartoon Santa Claus on a chocolate bar and being inundated with vibrant reds and greens reminds me of a tangible event that I can positively anticipate. When I am dreading a certain due date for a paper or an exam, I schedule an event that I know will cheer me up after the test or paper.

In the case of spending Thanksgiving on campus, I knew I had to self-isolate in order to successfully study, so I allotted $80 to spend on Uniqlo’s Black Friday sales. After reading about 100 pages of my textbook on Thanksgiving day, I went to bed and in the morning, opened my laptop to buy three turtlenecks and a pair of jeans. Despite the issue of conflating self-care with capitalist consumption, preemptively deciding to buy clothing, all of which are necessary due to the crushing coldness of Massachusetts winter, helped me to focus.

The absolute breadth of Christmas music serves to fuel my ability to power through these last few weeks of the semester. When I am overly caffeinated in the middle of an indecipherable paragraph about the importance of a certain clay that a jar was made out of or writing a paper about early 20th century perspectives about the temperance movement, I am glad that I can put this pain into perspective by simply listening to Mariah Carey’s “O Holy Night” (1994).

Arts Editor

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Monday, December 2, 2019 | FUN & GAMES | THE TUFTS DAILY

F &G FUN & GAMES

5

LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY Ryan: “The ampersand looks like a dude eating a banana.”

SUDOKU

LINDA C. BLACK ASTROLOGY

Sagitarius (Nov. 22–Dec. 21)

Your financial luck takes a positive turn.

Practical efforts reap cash rewards with Jupiter entering Capricorn for a year. Take advantage to squirrel nuts away.

CORRECTION

Difficulty Level: Being happy that Eaton Hall is now open 24/7.

Tuesday’s Solutions

A previous version of the Nov. 26 article “Stern presents Sackler report to Board of Trustees” said Harry Kong presented to the Trustees as a TCU senator. He actually presented to the Trustees in his role as the student director of Tufts Student Giving. The article has also been updated to include Siobhan Shamlian, another student who presented to the Trustees. The Daily regrets these errors.

CROSSWORD

Opinion

6 Monday, December 2, 2019

tuftsdaily.com

EDITORIAL

New Year’s resolutions for Tufts, part 1 The semester is coming to a close, with only one week of classes remaining. This change in scenery comes as a reset button that provides an opportunity for reflection, change and improvement in the form of New Year’s resolutions. Whatever your personal resolutions may be, the Daily would like to put forth a different kind of resolution. We spent the semester covering many important issues at Tufts, ranging from hate on campus to the wage gap, so today and tomorrow we’ll propose New Year’s resolutions we hope Tufts University will adopt to improve our campus in 2020 and beyond.

Increase Health Service and CMHS hours to protect student health Tufts Health Service and Counseling and Mental Health Services (CMHS) are essential resources on campus, working to improve students’ physical and mental health. Unfortunately, the hours of these important services are extremely limited and fail to sufficiently accommodate student needs. During the academic year, Health Service remains open, at best, until 6 p.m. On Saturdays, Health Service is open for a mere four hours, and it is completely closed Sundays. CMHS hours are

also insufficient, as they are open Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Since students are busy with classes during these hours, many only find the free time necessary after closing or during the weekend. Students that become ill on weekends lack access to immediate treatment, which disrupts schoolwork and overall wellness.

Tufts must extend both Health Service and CMHS hours during the week and open their doors on the weekends in order to provide truly comprehensive service.

remaining meal swipes at the end of each semester. As a consequence, some students must scramble to make swipes last, and others feel as if they wasted their meal plan at the semester’s end. Tufts should reconfigure the meal-swipe system to allow swipe transfers to the following semester and expand swipe use to all Tufts Dining-operated locations. Through these improvements, Tufts can improve its dining services to better serve employees and students with respect and fairness.

tation aid available. Because its primary work concerns campus security, TUPD is inconsistent and can take a long time to arrive. In order to promote physical inclusivity on campus, Tufts must add ramps, elevators and adjustable tables to buildings and make transportation methods beyond TUPD available. SAS must provide better accommodations, including accessible dorm rooms with space to hold medical equipment. Tufts cannot claim to value equal opportunity until it fills this void.

Improve working conditions at Tufts Dining and revamp the meal-swipe system Clear issues remain with Tufts Dining from prohibitive cost to employee treatment. While a new contract intended to improve working conditions was signed this past spring, Tufts Dining workers have filed multiple grievances about continued harassment and mistreatment by managers. Tufts must substantially improve Tufts Dining working conditions so as to value employee’s’ quality of life and commit to reforming management in response to workplace grievances.

Further, few campus locations accept meal swipes, and Tufts Dining pockets

Make Tufts accessible to the physically disabled Tufts’ topography renders campus quite inaccessible to the physically disabled, and the university lacks the necessary solutions to this problem. Many academic and residential buildings do not have ramps or elevators. One would think that disabled students simply would not be given rooms in inaccessible halls, but Student Accessibility Services (SAS) lacks the timeliness to provide appropriate accommodations. Additionally, physically disabled students have difficulty traveling across campus, as the Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) is the only transpor-

Fix damaged facilities and appliances on campus A common source of student complaints are the many broken, old or damaged appliances on campus. In many residential buildings, washing machines, dryers, toilets and sinks do not work properly. Furniture in dorms are worn out, and various buildings lack ceiling tiles. Dysfunctional living spaces simply make it more difficult to study, complete routine tasks and enjoy on-campus housing. Tufts must fix these broken systems around campus to make students feel safe and comfortable in their living environments.

CARTOON

New Year’s Resolutions

BY CARYS KONG

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

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

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

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

ADVERTISING All advertising copy is subject to the approval of the Managing Board and Executive Business Director.

Sports

Monday, December 2, 2019 | ADVERTISEMENT | THE TUFTS DAILY

Annual Holiday Concert Tufts University Chaplaincy

Wednesday, December 4, 2019 4:30 p.m., Goddard Chapel

Join us for warm cider, tea and cookies, and a carol singalong.

No tickets necessary.

All are welcome.

Featuring:

· Tufts Concert Choir

directed by Jamie Kirsch · Music Director and Organist Thomas Dawkins · Alumni, student, faculty, and staff musicians

For more information, please contact chaplaincy@tufts.edu.

7

Sports

8 tuftsdaily.com

Jeremy Goldstein Schmuck of the Week

Boomer watch

H

ere we have a tale ripe for the current “OK Boomer” moment we find ourselves in.

An old, surly and impatient chairman demands his team to go on a weeklong retreat in the team’s practice facility to improve performance. An archaic practice in Italian football known as ritiro, this practice calls for players to remain entrapped in the team’s practice facility for a week with no outside media presence to boost team performance. This chairman has a business interest in the club, but he knows little of football: He’s spent his life as a film director.

But the players, the human beings that they are, refused and were subsequently fined a tally that cumulatively totals over 2.5 million euros, the maximum possible amount.

So who are the actors? The players of S.S.C. Napoli, languishing in 7th place in the Italian Serie A and without a win in their previous five league games, against overlord and club chairman Aurelio De Laurentiis, the proponent of the ritiro. But why would De Laurentiis be driven to this as an ultimatum?

In all fairness to him, Napoli should have won Serie A at some point under its current Insigne-Mertens-Koulibaly generation. Per expected goals data, which factor in a team’s likely goal tally per the quality of a team’s shots, Napoli has had a higher expected points tally than evil-empire Juventus (league winner eight times in a row) in three of the past four seasons, yet for what? Napoli has no Scudetto (the Italian’s winner medal), no Supercoppa Italia trophy (or even a finals appearance) and got humbled by Real Madrid in its only appearance out of the Champions League Group Stage. When, De Laurentiis, who might be Vito Corleone in disguise, must ponder, is this team going to achieve anything tangible?

It certainly cannot be easy for the players when there’s an ambitious chairman itching for the current crop of players he’s heavily invested in to translate performance into trophies. But when Juventus spends 219 million euros on its wage bill compared to Napoli’s figure of 94, perhaps the scale of expectations should properly reflect such an imbalance.

Sure, Napoli has been well off of its usual standard this season, sitting 17 points off the top through just 14 matches. Expected points paint a rosier picture, having them under six points behind leaders Inter and Juventus.

But De Laurentiis cares not for your analytics but simply carrying out winning in his way. Ritiros are surprisingly more common than one would expect in Italian football, but when even Napoli’s decorated and former Champions-League-winning coach Carlo Ancelotti is expressing a tepidness toward the decision, it becomes more puzzling.

“It’s a chance for the team to get to know each other better,” De Laurentiis said, thinking he knows what he’s doing. “We have kept hitting the woodworks,” Ancelotti contorts (Napoli’s 10 crossbars lead the league), likely having a tighter grasp than the chairman. All of the players are upset, especially midfielder Eljif Elmas, who was reprimanded for speaking to the media in his native Macedonia when he was away on international duty.

It’s the same story you keep hearing on the news: boomer thinks they know how to handle something they’re not qualified to handle, while everyone else in the organization thinks differently. To De Laurentiis, I contort: OK Boomer, you schmuck.

Jeremy Goldstein is a junior studying political science and film and media studies.

Jeremy can be reached at jeremy.goldstein@tufts.edu.

Monday, December 2, 2019

Men’s basketball improves to 5–0 with 10-point win over MIT

EVAN SAYLES / THE TUFTS DAILY ARCHIVES

Junior center Luke Rogers swats down a shot in Tufts’ 76–71 win against Trinity on Feb. 11, 2018.

by Julia Atkins

Assistant Sports Editor

The 5­–0 men’s basketball team picked up a 73­ –63 win over the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) on Tuesday, Nov. 26 in Cousens Gym. Coming off of three home victories and senior guard and co-captain Eric Savage’s 1,000th career point, the Jumbos are in high spirits and working well together.

“Being 5–0 feels great,” Savage said. “It’s nice to come out to a hot start, and we are working every day to ensure that we continue the winning trend.”

The Jumbos took to the board first with a 3-point shot from junior guard Brennan Morris to set the tone. The teams went back and forth for a few minutes before Savage put the Jumbos ahead by five, 11­–6, with a jump shot and quick layup. The Engineers responded with a set of 3s from Alex Cho and Ian Hinkley, giving them a 12­–11 lead.

The remainder of the half proved to be a back-and-forth, with each team keeping pace with the other. The game was all tied up at 24 with just over three minutes remaining in the half when Dan Pilsbury drew a 3-point play for the Engineers. After a foul on his successful layup, Pilsbury made the free throw and put the Engineers in the lead. Sophomore guard Carson Cohen responded with a layup. Savage made two

free throw shots, putting the Jumbos ahead by one at 28­–27.

With less than two minutes to go in the half, Cho put the Engineers back up with a jumper, but Savage tied things up again with a free throw. In the final minute of the half, both teams made two free throws and a layup, going into the second half tied at 33­–33.

“In the first half we got a little stagnant offensively, and we weren’t moving the ball the way we usually do,” Savage said. “Once we got back to being unselfish offensively in the second half, our offense started to gel.”

Sophomore guard Tyler Aronson made a quick jumper to start off the second half, to which the Engineers responded with a layup from Pilsbury to keep the score tied up.

Aronson came right back, draining a 3 and giving the Jumbos a lead that they would maintain for the remainder of the game.

The score nearly evened out a couple minutes into the half as Hinkley put up a jumper for the Engineers, bringing the score within one point of the Jumbos.

Following the play, Aronson and Cohen put up a set of layups to increase the lead to 5. Junior center Luke Rogers then put up one of his own off of a rebound to keep the Jumbos steadily ahead at 44­–37.

The Engineers came within one point of the Jumbos yet again off of a 3 and a free throw from Hinkley and a layup from Christien Williams. The score stayed close

as the two teams continued to trade baskets in the middle minutes of the half. The Jumbos then made seven consecutive free throws, and Rogers added another layup to take a 10-point lead of 55­–45. With just over eight minutes to go, the Jumbos kept up their comfortable lead for the remainder of the game, leading them to a 73­–63 victory over the Engineers.

“I think against a well-coached team like MIT, we had to really execute our offense and match their physicality defensively,” junior guard and co-captain Will Brady said. “They wanted to slow the game down, so we had to get out and run and play in transition.”

Aronson led the team with 19 points, two rebounds and two assists. Savage was close behind him with 17 points, eight rebounds and four assists. Rogers had an impressive 12 rebounds and five blocks, and Cohen also scored 12 points with four rebounds and two steals.

The Jumbos are on the road for their next game, taking on Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) on Tuesday. The game is slated to begin at 7 p.m.

“WPI is a very good team,” Savage said. “They are currently ranked No. 25 in the country and have a number of solid players. It’s going to be a tough, hardfought game, and we are looking forward to competing and hopefully coming away with a win.”