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THE TUFTS DAILY
Where You Read It First Est. 1980 TUFTSDAILY.COM
thursday, november 1, 2012
VOLUME LXIV, NUMBER 36
Environmental House Tufts Votes wraps up voter under consideration registration process for next year by James
Pouliot
Daily Editorial Board
by
Melissa Mandelbaum Daily Editorial Board
The Sustainable Action Squad (SAS), a branch of the Tufts Sustainability Collective, is currently working on a proposal for the creation of an Environmental House on campus for the upcoming academic year. The Office of Residential Life and Learning (ORLL) is awaiting the group’s final proposal, at which point ORLL Director Yolanda King will invite SAS members to a session with a small group housing committee, during which a decision will be made, King said. The committee will consist of an ORLL staff member, a Division of Student Affairs staff member and a Tufts Community Union (TCU) senator, King said. Seniors Rose Eilenberg and Danielle Jenkins, both members of SAS, began discussions with the ORLL last fall, and SAS has officially taken on the project this semester. Tufts offers 15 Special Interest Houses or apartment units on campus, such as the Africana House, International House and Arts Haus. The university also owns a number of wood-frame on-campus small group living options, like 12 Dearborn Rd.,
that are unaffiliated with a special interest theme. Eilenberg said that the Environmental House would likely host student group meetings in its common room, screen films and grow a garden and a compost. “I think that the Tufts environmental movement in general needs a space,” Elizabeth Slocum, a freshman who hopes to live in the house, said. King explained that one of the biggest challenges in creating a new Special Interest House is proving that there will be stable student interest year to year. However, Jenkins said she is confident that most students support the introduction of an Environmental House. In an online survey conducted this month, 71 students said that they would live in the house, and 50 said maybe, according to Jenkins. In a separate question, 141 of 148 respondents said they would support the creation of an Environmental House as of Oct. 29. “We have about 35 [environmental studies] majors a year, and we expect that to grow,” Director of the Environmental see ENVIRONMENT, page 2
Art Gallery reaches out to campus with survey, workshops by
Abigail Feldman
Contributing Writer
The Tufts University Art Gallery made its way into students’ email inboxes last week with an online survey meant to gain a better understanding of the gallery’s presence on campus. The survey, led by Art Gallery Education Outreach Coordinator Dorothee Perin and Art Gallery Administrative Associate Hannah Swartz, was intended to give staff at the gallery a sense of the gallery’s reputation, Perin said. “We are trying at the gallery to get a better sense of who our audience is, what they want and how they experience the exhibitions that we have,” Perin said. “All this is ultimately to better serve Tufts students and Tufts faculty.” According to Swartz, the survey is part of a larger-scale self-assessment plan called the Audience Research Plan. The study began in 2007 after the gallery received a grant from the American Alliance of Museums to conduct a selfassessment study.
“Basically it benchmarks our organization against other organizations of similar sizes and similar missions to see how we’re doing and how we hold up in an array of different categories,” Swartz said. To make sure they collected accurate data, the gallery collaborated with the Tufts University Office of Institutional Research and Evaluation. “They’ve done a lot of this work before and they wrote out a basic plan for us,” Swartz said. “They’ve helped us really craft out each of the questions word by word.” The plan and the survey are focused on understanding four main points, including audience composition, visitor reasons for going to the gallery, the quality of visitors’ experiences and the gallery’s image on campus. The sample of about 2,780 students who received the survey were asked to respond to questions such as, “How often do you visit the Tufts University Art Gallery?” and “Please rate the following see GALLERY, page 2
Tufts Votes, a non-partisan, student-run organization, has concluded its voter registration campaign and is moving into the final stages of the get-out-the-vote effort. The group registered over 1,000 students through approximately 50 voting drives in the first seven weeks of the academic year, according to junior Jacob Wessel, who heads Tufts Votes. Tufts Votes acts as an umbrella organization for multiple groups involved in voter registration and information drives, including Tufts Democrats, Tufts Republicans, the Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transgender (LGBT) Center and local leaders for the Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren campaigns. Tufts Votes coordinated the groups’ efforts and ensured that all were following the proper registration procedures. Bronwen Raff, president of Tufts Democrats, said Tufts Votes’ rationale for registering students goes beyond promoting a political agenda. “What’s important to keep in mind is that all that we’re doing is non partisan,” Raff, a senior, said. “I [think] that it’s much more important that our campus is aware, knowledgeable and registered to vote than it is to push for a single candidate.” Though the Tufts Republicans were involved in the registration coalition, their participation was
Caroline Geiling / The Tufts Daily
With Election Day less than a week away, the student organization Tufts Votes has been working to increase the voter turnout among students. limited due to the graduation of much of their leadership and the small size of the group, Institute for Political Citizenship (IPC) President Eric Peckham, a senior, said. The different organizations believe that assisting students with
registering is important because the process is often complicated by obscure rules, according to Wessel. “Voter registration can be quite a tricky process,” he said. “[There see VOTE, page 2
Red Line from Harvard to Alewife to close for four weekends by
Audrey Michael
Daily Editorial Board
The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) is closing the Red Line between Alewife and Harvard Stations on four upcoming weekends, including Thanksgiving weekend, to continue repairs that began in 2011. The Porter Square, Davis Square and Alewife stations will be closed the weekends of Nov. 17, Nov. 24, Dec. 1 and Dec. 8. The repairs are part of the second stage of the Floating Slab Project, an effort by the MBTA to replace concrete slabs, parts of tracks and part of the third rail, as well as fixing leaks, according to MBTA Advisory Board Executive Director Paul Regan. The MBTA will provide shuttle buses between the Alewife and Harvard stations as they did during the repairs last fall and winter. As of now, there is no plan to reinstate the shuttle from Tufts to Harvard that ran during the Davis Square closure last year, according to Director of Facilities Services Bob Burns. “Part of the reason could be that
Inside this issue
we haven’t seen or heard from any students, but the second part is that it’s very costly too, so we would need to weigh the two,” Burns said. “Last year ... [the MBTA] shut down that last leg of the stops on the Red Line for about three months, but if it’s going to be just [a few weekends] over a couple months, we’d really have to think hard before we’d do that.” Burns noted that Facilities will not consider bringing back the Harvard shuttle unless students voice concerns about the closures. “If there is a ground swell of [interest], we’ll need to hear it as of right now,” Burns said. “No one’s gotten a hold of me or ... anyone on the staff, so at this point we have no plans to reinstitute the other shuttle.” According to an October 2012 MBTA outline of the project, “the nearest point of access [for bringing in materials] is a high rail truck pad 2.2 miles from Harvard station near the Longfellow Bridge in Cambridge.” “We’re bringing in a lot of big materials, things that don’t fit easily into the tunnels,” Regan said. “There are only so many spots
where you can access the system with big materials.” Partially for this reason, this stage of the project cannot be completed in the hours when the T closes overnight, Regan explained. “The five hours overnight are dedicated to ongoing maintenance that keeps the system running,” Regan added. Regan explained that completing the project is crucial for both passengers’ and area residents’ safety. “It’s a section of tunnel that goes through a very populated area,” he said. The floating slab system involves a concrete slab resting on rubber disks, which serve to minimize vibrations and wear and tear. “We underestimated the amount of leakage we were going to get,” Regan said. “[The MBTA] hasn’t had the money to do maintenance that would be getting more usage out of the slabs.” Though the project involves closing the section of the Red Line over Thanksgiving weekend, Regan said that it is important to conduct see MBTA, page 2
Today’s sections
Find out where the presidential candidates stand on LGBT issues.
The onstage energy is contagious at the Boston Ballet Fall Program.
see FEATURES, page 4
see WEEKENDER, page 8
News Features Comics Weekender
1 4 6 7
Editorial Op-Ed | Letters Classifieds Sports
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