Rain 52/47
THE TUFTS DAILY
TUFTSDAILY.COM
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 2010
VOLUME LX, NUMBER 39
Where You Read It First Est. 1980
Sandel: We must confront moral dilemmas in public sphere Michael Sandel, the Anne T. and Robert M. Bass Professor of Government at Harvard University, yesterday evening entertained an over-capacity Tufts crowd with a discussion of the meaning of justice in society. Sandel, the author of “Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do?” (2009), also teaches Justice, one of the most popular courses at Harvard. He delivered this semester’s Richard E. Snyder President’s Lecture at the Cabot Auditorium. University President Lawrence Bacow, in introducing Sandel before the lecture, called him “one of the pre-eminent political philosophers of our time.” “He asks us to think really, really critically about really, really deep questions,” Bacow said. “Humanistic principles and values are central to who we are as a society and how we think about public policy, and to be an informed citizen, we must deeply engage in these issues.” In the one-hour lecture, Sandel challenged the conventional wisdom that the public sphere must remain neutral and free from the influence of personal convictions. “I think that diagnosis is mistaken,” Sandel said. “I think the opposite is true — that our public discourse is impoverished because we don’t engage
directly enough and explicitly enough … with the deepest and the biggest moral and spiritual questions.” Sandel discussed the Aristotelian conception of justice, which he said “means giving people what they deserve.” Engaging his audience frequently for input and discussion, Sandel examined two debates on the correct form of justice — the story of disabled PGA Tour golfer Casey Martin, who took his fight to use a golf cart at tour events to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the political debate over gay marriage. He connected those stories to a broader discussion of moral issues. “The conventional wisdom in liberal societies like ours is that, given the facts of disagreement, often deep disagreement, about moral and spiritual questions, we should try to decide questions of justice and rights and law in a way that is neutral or avoids underlying moral contradictions,” Sandel said. But those underlying moral questions are unavoidable and must be dealt with in any kind of discourse, he said. “We need to develop the habit of engaging with rather than ignoring … moral and spiritual ideas,” Sandel said. —by Matt Repka
OLIVER PORTER/TUFTS DAILY
A Tufts University Police Department vehicle leaves the Mayer Campus Center. The university, like other schools, has changed the way it interprets crimes as burglaries as compared to thefts.
Its standards reinterpreted, Harvard ‘burglaries’ fall by over 90 percent BY
MICHAEL DEL MORO Daily Editorial Board
A change in the application of the term “burglary” is affecting the way colleges and universities nationwide report crime statistics, which has broad implications for the accuracy of school’s safety rankings. The change, which went into effect at Tufts last year, does not require campus police to report
Experimental College class examines use of plastic bottles BY
incidents of theft as burglaries unless there is proof of unlawful entry. If there is no proof of trespassing, the crime can be classified as larceny, which does not need to be reported. Although the impact of the change was not as pronounced at Tufts, Harvard University’s reported number of burglaries between 2008 and 2009 fell by over 90 percent, according to the Harvard Crimson.
MICHAEL MARKS
Daily Editorial Board
Contributing Writer
Environmental Action: Shifting from Saying to Doing, the Experimental College course that brought trayless dining and double-sided printing to Tufts, is now taking aim at plastic water bottles on campus. Students in the class decided to focus on reducing plastic bottle usage after weighing other possible goals earlier in the semester. The campaign targets water bottle usage by Tufts undergraduates, according to sophomore Kaiying Lau, a member of the class. “They’re the ones who buy the majority of the plastic water bottles,” Lau said. Office of Sustainability Program Director Tina Woolston has taught the course, now in its third semester, since its inception. She said an integral part of the class is a social marketing campaign that allows students to put into practice various techniques that they have learned throughout the semester. “To me, it’s not that important what the project is,” Woolston,
At a time when philanthropic efforts have suffered as a result of harder economic times, a team of Tufts students has launched a video contest to promote non-profits that assist children, youth and families by raising awareness of those organizations. Professor of Child Development Fred Rothbaum originally created the initiative, called “501c3.” He said the project’s greater goal is to develop a comprehensive website through which people can discover non-profits geared toward children and families. “What we would be creating is a site where people who are interested in non-profits, in either volunteering or contributing funds, could go to see the kind of non-profit they might want to get involved in and would have very short video materials to look over to get a better sense of the nonprofit,” Rothbaum said. The contest aims to spotlight the work of non-profits that
see EXCOLLEGE, page 2
LANE FLORSHEIM/TUFTS DAILY
A wall of water in disposable plastic bottles awaits Hodgdon customers. Environmental Action class members are trying to encourage the use of reusable bottles instead.
Inside this issue
see BURGLARY, page 2
Video contest aims to support non-profits BY
DAPHNE KOLIOS
Tufts reported 29 burglaries in 2009, as compared to 43 the previous year when the old guidelines were in effect, Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler said in an e-mail to the Daily. “Such figures do tend to go up and down to some degree,” Thurler said. In 2007, there were 32 reported burglaries. The reporting guidelines
work with children and families, groups that Kimberley Liao, a student at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, called “really underappreciated.” “They are kind of like bastard children of the NGO world,” Liao, who is one of the graduate student coordinators of the program, said. 501c3 is a part of the Child & Family WebGuide, a website created by the EliotPearson Department of Child Development, dedicated to providing information on parenting, education and child development to parents and professionals. “The WebGuide’s original mission was to promote the work of nonprofits serving children and families, so now with the 501c3 project, we have come full cycle back to the WebGuide’s original mission,” Rothbaum said. Three students — two graduate and one undergraduate — coordinate 501c3’s day-today operations, according to Rothbaum. see CONTEST, page 2
Today’s Sections
Unlike many other countries, the United States has difficulty recruiting top talent for teaching jobs.
Electronic music has used its advantages well to adapt to the Internet age.
see FEATURES, page 3
see WEEKENDER, page 5
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