THE
VOLUME LXXX, ISSUE 54
INDEPENDENT
STUDENT
N E W S PA P E R
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TUFTS
UNIVERSITY
E S T. 1 9 8 0
T HE T UFTS DAILY
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.
tuftsdaily.com
Tuesday, December 8, 2020
Tufts sees decrease in mental health-related calls during COVID-19 pandemic
ANN MARIE BURKE / THE TUFTS DAILY
Tufts Counseling and Mental Health Services is pictured on Aug. 28. by Jack Maniaci
Contributing writer
Counseling and Mental Health Services has seen a decrease in mental health-related calls from on-campus students, despite the COVID19 pandemic and restrictions imposed to ensure the health and safety of students.
Julie Ross, director of Counseling and Mental Health Services, described how the decrease in calls differed from CMHS’ expectations. “Nationally, we are seeing reports of increased mental health-related distress and somewhat decreased use of campus mental health services since the start of the pandemic,”
Ross wrote in an email to the Daily. “Although the phones are busy and we are working with many students, we had expected a significant uptick in calls but have seen a slight decrease instead.” This trend is associated with the fewer number of students residing on campus, according to Ross.
“The decrease correlates with the lower percentage of students on campus, as remote learning makes it possible for students living at home to continue with their care providers there rather than transitioning to on-campus care,” Ross said. Despite the decrease in calls to CMHS, the pandemic has still affected students’ mental
health. Michelle Bowdler, executive director of health and wellness services, explained some of the ways in which the COVID19 pandemic has impacted students’ lives. “This pandemic has led to fewer traditional social options and many clubs and activities see DECREASE, page 2
Harvard Professor Benjamin Wilson discusses elite scientists, nuclear weapons by Michael Weiskopf Contributing Writer
Tufts’ Science, Technology and Society program hosted Benjamin Wilson, assistant professor of the history of science at Harvard University, on Dec. 4 as part of its Lunch Seminar Series. Wilson’s lecture, “The Scientific Power Elite in the Age of Nuclear Weapons,” focused on the relationship between anti-nuclear scientists and the military-industrial complex during the Cold War. Wilson began the event by discussing C. Wright Mills’ 1956 book “The Power Elite,”
which includes an analysis of the military-industrial complex and network of military, corporate and political interests that have a strong influence on U.S. policy, at the expense of American citizens. He said that the notion of nuclear stability during the Cold War was shaped not by science or by theories of international relations, but rather by the interests of the military-industrial complex. Wilson also discussed a case study involving Hans Bethe, a German American physicist who worked on the Manhattan Project during World War II and
later became an anti-nuclear voice during the Cold War. He said that unknown to many Americans at the time, Bethe served as a science adviser to the federal government while also working as a private consultant for the Avco Corporation, which sought to deploy anti-ballistic missile systems in suburbs of major U.S. cities. Wilson said Bethe’s story is representative of the relationship between the scientific elite and the military-industrial complex. “[The elite] is a closed group that protects itself from outside accountability,” Wilson said.
Wilson later discussed how scientists who were a part of what Mills called the “power elite” influenced nuclear policy in favor of the military-industrial complex, despite publicly opposing it. “Stability tells us more about the lives and social positions of the people who formulate it than it does about a world with nuclear weapons,” Wilson said. He expanded on these ideas in a later email to the Daily. “It suggest[s] that our understanding of the structures that drove the nuclear arms race, and our narratives about scientists in the nuclear
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age, had been far too simple,” Wilson wrote. He added that scientific elites’ conflicts of interest led to distractions from the greater, underlying issues at play. “Of course, they did criticize nuclear policy and the arms race. But what they tended not to criticize were the powerful set of social and economic relations that made continuous weapons development possible,” Wilson said. “This turned the Cold War nuclear debate, at times, into a kind of political theater.” see NUCLEAR , page 2 NEWS
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