Fall 2011 - Issue 6

TUFTS OBSERVER DECEMBER 5, 2011

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inside the

Tufts’ changing administration (page 2)

volume CxxIIi / issue 6

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The impending  apocalypse (page 5)

The inset: Tufts gets naked (page 13)

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Catherine Nakajima

featured articles

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FEATURE

Considering changes to Tufts’ Student Life policies Will Vaughan

Molly Mirhashem

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NEWS The dynamics of Occupy and local governments

ARTS & CULTURE

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A multimedia exploration of dancing at the ICA Knar bedian

Gabriela Ros

OPINION Reflections on photography

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OFF CAMPUS Exploring Boston’s vintage book shops

The Observer has been Tufts’ publication of record since 1895. Our dedication to in-depth reporting, journalistic innovation, and honest dialogue has remained intact for over a century. Today, we offer insightful news analysis, cogent and diverse opinion pieces, creative writing, and lively reviews of current arts, entertainment, and culture. Through poignant writing and artistic elegance, we aim to entertain, inform, and above all challenge the Tufts community to effect positive change.

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O Editors

Contents

December 5, 2011 Volume CXXIII, Issue 6 Tufts Observer, Since 1895 Tufts’ Student Magazine www.tuftsobserver.org

editor-in-chief Eliza Mills managing editor Zachary Laub

production director David Schwartz section editors Eric Archibald Anna Burgess Kyle Carnes Molly Mirhashem Cara Paley Nicola Pardy Molly Rubin Katherine Sawyer Natalie Selzer Ariana Siegel Evan Tarantino

photography director Catherine Nakajima photography editor Louise Blavet art editor Becky Plante lead artist Natasha Jessen-Petersen copy editors Kristen Barone Gracie McKenzie Isobel Redelmeier Michael Rogove production assistants Paul Butler Ben Kurland Bernita Ling Angelina Rotman Lenéa Sims web editor Bradley Ooserveld

2 feature The End of an Era, by Kyle Carnes

5 opinion Apocalypse: Some Thoughts on the End of the World, by Eric Archibald 6 tufts Thrifty Jumbos, by Madeline Christensen 8 opinion Life Through the Lens, by Will Vaughan 10 news Education Left Behind, by Anna Burgess & culture 12 arts Dance/Draw: An ICA Exhibit Review, by Molly Mirhashem inset 13 photo Naked 17 opinion NQR Unconsidered, by Jimmy Voorhis 18 news Policing the Protest, by Ariana Siegel & culture 20 arts Sipping at South Pacific, by Luke Pyenson & culture 22 arts All You Need is LOVE, by Angelina Rotman campus 24 off Boston’s Independent Book Scene, by Ellen Mayer & prose 26 poetry Days of the Week, by Flo Wen & prose 27 poetry The Problem with Fucking in Cars, by Douglas Cavers 28 campus Police Blotter, by Becky Plante

business manager Claire McCartney

Contributors Knar Bedian Douglas Cavers Madeline Christensen Amy Connors Ariel Lefland Laura Liddell

Ellen Mayer Amy Shipp Luke Pyenson Will Vaughan Jimmy Voorhis Flo Wen

Cover photo by Laura Liddell.

Since

1895

FE AT UR E

The End o ° dies,° anewpolicyofadministr (as a tradition

by Kyle C

O

n November 15, 2011, every member of the Tufts student body, as well as all of our parents, received an email from the Tufts administration that reiterated the decision by President Emeritus Larry Bacow to ban the infamous Naked Quad Run. The email was an explicit warning—students were reminded of the consequences of participating in NQR—suspension—and parents, many of whom were hearing about the event for the first time, were drawn into undergraduate life on the Hill in a way that many of them have never before experienced.

Sending this email to parents is a new tactic in tackling the NQR prohibition and student life issues more generally; enlisting parents to guilt, cajole, or exhort their children into submission to the new university policy is an unprecedented approach to managing a student body of young adults. The message also made reference to the Committee on Student Life, a body of eight faculty members and two students elected by their peers, empowered to determine the consequences for participating in the now banned NQR. This email seems to be a harbinger of larger changes occurring in the Tufts climate.

Prior to his departure, President Bacow personally met with many students who were TEMS’d to discuss the con-

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sequences of binge drinking. President Bacow, who had long been vocal about his discomfort with NQR, announced near the end of his decade-long tenure that the run would be banned. This decision was met with the full support of incoming president Anthony Monaco. And like Bacow before him, President Monaco, it seems, is continuing the legacy of personal involvement in matters related to alcohol abuse. Students who requested Anthony Monaco as a friend on Facebook and tweeted or posted something about parties or consumption he deemed troubling found themselves reading emails addressed to their Tufts accounts or meeting face-to-face with the new president to discuss their indiscretions. These events indicate increasingly tenuous boundaries between students’ private lives and the proper jurisdiction of the university.

The email titled “Naked Quad Run” sent to the student body by Bruce Reitman, Dean of Student Affairs, cites dangerous drunkenness and concerns about safety as reasons for the event’s cancellation. The message, also addressed to students’ parents, openly states, “any student who is apprehended defying the ban will face a one-semester disciplinary suspension from Tufts, which would make him or her ineli-

E UR AT FE

distrative of an Era ° °lifebegins...) involvement in student

e Carnes

of the decision to email parents because NQR “is important enough, different enough, dramatic enough… that I would rather some people feel that it was heavy handed than other people feel they were not informed and be shocked, surprised, or angry not having any notification and [suspension] just happen.”

Dean Reitman elaborated on the logic behind his views on the NQR cancellation: “Public nudity on campus [back in the 1960s] was not something that typically resulted in suspensions. This is a different kind of activity; this one is absolutely dangerous.” Reitman spoke of “the number of families that I have had to call over the years whose sons or daughters were in comas and we weren’t sure if they would live until morning, I remember every single one of those calls because I had to tell them that. There was no more worrisome night, and it merited some response.”

Dean Reitman—an alum himself, having graduated in the class of 1970—began his working career at Tufts in 1983 as an associate dean of students. In 2001, he became the Dean of Student Affairs. He is responsible for the students of Tufts University and acts as the link between student interests and the myriad university organizations.

Catherine NAkajima

gible to return for the Spring 2012 semester.” This statement carried marked increase in tone and severity from those of previous semesters, which allowed participation and threatened excessive drunkenness with Pro-1 status.

The decision to email our parents is seemingly without precedent. Many of us have gone home to hear complaints from Mom and Dad that they are out of the loop as far as college goes. The university does not email them the ubiquitous safety alerts nor many of the other announcements we find in our inboxes. By law, our parents cannot see our grades or even course schedules without our explicit consent. In a Tufts Daily article from April 2009, Reitman is quoted as saying that unlike other institutions, “coming back to Tufts was not only like coming home, but coming back to a place where you can treat students like colleagues because they’re very special and never will let us get nonchalant, and that’s a great thing.”

Emailing our parents seems inconsistent with the notion of students as colleagues. Perhaps it indicates disingenuousness or a change in Dean Reitman’s opinion of students. Or perhaps, as Reitman suggested in an interview with the Observer, it indicates that, for better or worse, the administration views NQR as a special case. Reitman, said

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°°°

The NQR email, more than previous university decisions, has raised some disquieting questions about how university policy is made. The Committee on Student Life has broad jurisdiction over university policies, and, as the NQR decision highlights, can have deep impact on our lives as students. In response to the NQR email and in reference to this committee, on the night of November 16, a spoof email was sent by an unknown number of Tufts students to a broad swath of undergrads. The email, written pseudonymously by Barry Krakow, designated showering as dangerous and worrisome and joked that “The Super-Secret Student/Faculty Committee on Un-Tuftsy Activities” would consider a ban and impose the same consequences described in Reitman’s email. Although farcical, this email gives voice to a growing discontent among Tufts students about the administration’s increasingly restrictive policies and the less-than-transparent means by which policy impacting the entire student body is determined.

According to Dean Reitman, “The CSL really is the most senior voice who governs this campus in terms of student life. And student members are filled by elections for the open spots each year.” The faculty on the CSL is appointed by the Committee on Committees, an administrative mechanism composed of faculty members that govern all the committees at Tufts. When asked about an overseeing body for the CSL, Reitman discloses that, “there is not one that is discussed in any of the governance documents.” He goes on to lay out the ways in which a student could bring a grievance to the committee, by bringing it before the faculty and emailing the committee president, but he admits that the CSL is “usually the appeal body and the final court kind of thing.”

The administration has always played a significant role in student life, but this particular incident has brought their involvement to light in a different way. In recent weeks, the inboxes of students and administrators alike were inundated with parents’ messages ranging from confused (“Of course you’ve never taken part in this naked run….right?”), to concerned, to comical. But beyond the sometimes awkward Thanksgiving dinner-table conversations that ensued lie broader issues of interest to us all. The unprecedented decision to email parents about NQR, like President Bacow calling in TEMS’d students to Ballou or President Monaco’s personal emails to indiscrete Twitterers and Facebook-status-updaters, raise questions about what Tufts University is. It is both a community and an institution; the two are distinct but not mutually exclusive. Though we’ve come here to study, this is where we live, the center of most of our universes for four years. University policy is filled with ambivalence about whether we are autonomous adults—“colleagues,” to quote Dean Reitman—or wards of the institution. Where can the line be drawn between what is the legitimate jurisdiction of the university over our private lives, and what is an invasion of our privacy and our liberties? What marks the separation between our academic lives and our social lives? O

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nE ioR nTU pAi OFE

(In a year from)

A

little over a year from now, the Mayan calendar will complete its ‘great cycle’ of thirteen, initiating what the Mayans predicted would be the end of days. Other traditions and religious sects have made similarly apocalyptic predictions.

Religious historians and conspiracy theorists have not put forth particularly thorough or plausible predictions for what will happen at the end of next year; however, what their explanations lack, our imaginative minds create. Maybe a fireball will swallow the earth whole. Perhaps a flood, though unoriginal, will do us in. Disease, war and the possibility of Sarah Palin’s presidency are also reasonable guesses. I’m personally hoping it turns out that Michael Bay has been right all along, and that his Transformers films were a misunderstood —albeit dire—warning, instead of just an excuse to blow things up. I’d feel a lot more comfortable with the end of the world if it’s at the hands of giant, sentient machines rather than some stupid, inanimate tidal wave. But that’s just me.

I haven’t had much time to consider the impending Armageddon recently as, like any normal Tufts student, I’ve been buried in the two-month period inaptly referred to as midterms. This got me thinking. I’m going to be pissed if, after threeand-a-half years of hard, diligent work (not to mention the years of internships and key club it took me to get here), I’m going to fall into oblivion with the rest of the world after Chuck Norris roundhouse kicks Atlas in the face and the sheer force knocks us from his shoulders. Seriously.

Pissed.

What will we be missing out on? For most of us, this pesky apocalypse will prevent us from graduating. Few of us will be married, have kids, or enjoy the myriad of other life events that a full life would afford us. At this stage in our lives, we don’t have many options.

What can we do? Clearly, irrefutable evidence leaves us with the conclusion

that we’re all doomed.

Two sem e s ters and s u m m e r.

T h a t ’s what’s left.

Sorry to all you willbe-sophomores who will have just found junior housing.

Take solace in the fact that At your landlord tend every was probably lyapocalypseing about having themed party and nipped that mold probtell the party’s hosts Becky Plante lem in the bud. that I predicted their To make the best of our damnation, party a year before in the Observer.

I have begun developing a f…ahem…

Win an Olympic medal in gymnastics. “buckit” list, compiling all of the things London 2012 is coming up and my floor I’ve just got to try before our untimely routine is off the chain. I’m not holding my demise, schoolwork be damned. Though breath on this one. There are so many polithe whole marriage, children, picket fence tics in these things. I’ll settle for a bronze thing doesn’t sound half bad, I’m not going if I have to. to pressure myself into accomplishing all This is where my list ends for the time that by this time next year. Here’s what I being. I’ll hopefully add to it before some have so far: guy wakes up from his dream and we cease Travel. Luckily my inner conspiracy to exist. theorist must have sensed the end and enAs far as reality is concerned: fine. We rolled me in an abroad program in Spain. might not die. The apocalypse was schedSky dive. Nothing sounds so unintui- uled for last May, and we’re all still here. tive, or epically awesome, as jumping out However, the end of the world might not of a small metal contraption, miles above be the point. The adage “live every day as the ground, with a piece of fabric tied to if it were your last”, despite being clichéd, my back. hits the nail on the head. Why not live the Spend an entire day without speaking. next year as though you only have a year to Could be cool. achieve what you want to? Putting off the Spend an entire day saying everything eccentric or implausible ambitions will only that comes to mind. Probably wouldn’t ensure that they’ll never come to pass. Stay be cool. Other people will not enjoy that. in school. Work hard. Learn things. Also Sorry. factor in some time to jump out of an airFocus on getting better at a completely plane or sit in a tree or watch old episodes useless activity. Rolling a pen through my of Hey Arnold!. Don’t put your real life off fingers is topping the list. Flipping a top for the future. The Decepticons appear inhat onto my head is also a priority. tent on making sure there isn’t one. O DECEMBER 5, 2011

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pus Ca m

THRIFTYJu

by Madeline Christensen

CLOTHING Despite the flurry of ads to the contrary, Black Friday is typically not the most promising time for clothing sales. The endof-November discounts will likely stay low in the next few weeks, and it might be well worth it to wait until right after the holidays to update your wardrobe. Don’t forget to check online, where you can often find discounts and coupons on specific brands that may not be offered in-store.

WINTER APPAREL Unless you’re new to the North and must quickly redefine your definition of “winter coat,” it may be best to wait a few weeks—Those puffy outer layers will be cheaper in January. Also: North Face fleece jackets are a winter staple for many Jumbos. These jackets go up and down in price, but are likely to be cheapest in late spring and summer.

JEWELRY Jewelry is a classic gift for that special someone around the holiday season.

But for that reason, these glitzy items are unlikely to be on sale— Better to wait until a less popular season!

2012 Calendars If getting organized is your New Year’s resolution, it may be best to wait on this one.

You won’t find the cheapest deals on calendars until the end of January or early February.

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Becky Plante

am C pus

umbos

As Tufts students near the final stretch of the semester, many are counting down to some much-needed holiday cheer. But as many of us know, buying gifts for friends and family is not always the easiest for a starving college student. Luckily, some of the year’s best discounts happen right around the holidays. With a little research and good timing, the thrifty Jumbo can snag that dream camera or restock on winter sweaters without breaking the bank. If yoiu didn’t partake in the stampedes of Black Friday shoppers, you may not have missed much. Here are some tips on when to shop:

ELECTRONICS Retailers mark down cheaply-manufactured electronics to be even cheaper on Black Friday, but will wait to discount the more expensive items. Early December is the cheapest time to zero in on your futuristic gadget of choice. Many stores and websites have deals during the week of “Cyber Monday,” (the Monday after Thanksgiving) but many items continue to drop in price throughout December. Still unsure about whether or not to make that purchase? Just ask Decide.com, a website that makes predictions about future prices of coveted gadgets.

TELEVISIONS The best deal on a nice TV for the West quad might be in April. This apparently is because the fiscal year in Japan ends in March. New models come out and old ones go on sale.

VIDEO GAMES While some of the newest games are released right around the holidays, they will often be cheaper in a month or three. Save that cash to buy a new game in the spring.

Laptops Cheaper laptops might go on sale for Black Friday and Cyber Week, but many models are lower in price right before the next school year resumes.

TOYS Have a younger cousin, niece, or sibling in your life? December is when toy prices hit their lowest, as stores rush them off the shelves before the end of the holidays. Beware though: toy prices are likely to rise again the week just before Christmas. O

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Life

THROUGH THE

By Will Vaughan

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LENS

can’t remember a time in my life before I had a camera. I’m sure there was one, but around the time I was able to start forming memories my parents gave me a present that would end up influencing me for years to come: a Fisher Price Perfect Shot. It had large handles on each side for easy gripping and two viewfinders to make it easier for us kids to look through. Molded blue plastic framed the lens and a simple red strap hung loosely by its side.

I don’t know where that camera is today, or any of the pictures I took with it, but that bit of plastic and glass helped shape the way I experienced the world from then on.

Some people are said to have a “photographic” memory; I’m not one of them. My life has often been plagued with friendly conversations that go something like this. Friend/ Family Member: “Hey Will, remember that time we went to that awesome place and did that amazing thing?”. Me: “Um…No.” However, this often changes once I’m there, seeing the place again. All of the memories come flooding back, as if no time has passed at all.

I’ve long wondered at my ability to somehow remember a seemingly unlimited number of song lyrics, while completely forgetting the name of the person I’ve met six times, or the time I unknowingly invented the dance that would come to be known as “The Will” (although certain jungle juice may have been to blame for that missing memory). I think I may have been originally drawn to photography out of necessity. Either that, or

because my parents helped my brain find a shortcut for creating memories at such an early age, I never developed those particular neural pathways. Whatever the reason, I’ve had a camera within an arm’s reach for as long as I can remember.

I’m not proud to admit it, but I’ve often suffered from camera envy. I was hit hard and early, lusting after my cousin’s Sony Digital Mavica before I’d run out of enough fingers to know how old I was. One Thanksgiving he introduced me the miracle of digital photography, presenting the photos he took in the car that very morning on the camera’s tiny LCD screen. He took a picture of me, and there I was, smiling back at myself from this magical device. I was mesmerized, and boy did I want one. If only I knew then where that burning desire for instant gratification would lead.

All Photos by Will Vaughan

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o

han

Two years later, my dreams came true, and my very own Mavica arrived as a joint Christmas/birthday present. I popped in the floppy disk and began firing away with the might of 1.6 megapixels behind me. 10 years later, those first blurry, poorly composed shots are still sitting on my hard drive, marking my entry into the world of digital photography and demonstrating that just because you have a camera doesn’t mean you can take great photos.

Photography is first and foremost a surrogate for my surprisingly lacking personal narrative memory. Family vacations would always trigger a large spike in my photo use, as I would take frequent photographs and tag them with information about the trip. I was never too into arts and crafts, but I suppose this was like my own version of scrapbooking. Slideshows made with Windows Movie Maker would highlighted our trips, and calendars handmade for family Christmas presents summarized the year.

As I got more and more into taking photos, I began to read up on photographic techniques and theory. I experimented with Photoshop, and what had once been a tool to help build memories soon became a way of expressing myself and my view of the world. The Nikon D70 entered my life, and together we explored waterfalls, foreign countries, and the macro world of my backyard. My Flickr stream ballooned, and I even built a website to showcase some of my favorite photos. I

had become a hobbyist and had finally learned why I’d always been so enthralled by photography.

Every day there are so many moments worth remembering, but most get relocated to some dusty corner in the back of our minds, rarely revisited if remembered at all. We pass through our days focused on the task at hand and rarely stop to look around and truly see the world around us. More importantly, each of us views the world through our own experiences, our preconceptions, and our personal history, never quite seeing the same thing as those around us. Photography allows us to share this personal view with others, while also preserving those moments in time that might have otherwise slipped past. We take photos to share with our friends,

to showcase what we find beautiful, and share our story through our own eyes.

For me, photography will never be a profession or a true expression of my artistic vision. My photographs will never be hung in a museum alongside those of Ansel Adams. And that’s how it should be; it’s not why I take them, or why most people are adding to the trillions of existing photographs. The art of photography is not one where we impose our internal views on the world or create something completely from within. Photography is where our inner world and the world we interact with come together. Our photoset of last night’s party; the family portrait we took in front of the Christmas tree the images of protestors clashing with police— these all tell our story of the world as we see it each and every day. O

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Education Left Behind

The persistent problems with No Child Left Behind—and their potential solutions

By Anna Burgess

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ufts senior Marysa Sheren is not an education major, but this hasn’t stopped her from fully committing herself to two years of teaching low-income, underprivileged children. She is a corps member of Teach for America (TFA), as well as the TFA student representative at Tufts, and recently found out that she will spend next year in Miami as an English teacher for underprivileged youth. As someone with limited education experience, Sheren is aware that next year will be challenging, but she is also excited and ready to learn as much as she can during intensive training over the summer. By the time she and the other corps members begin teaching next fall, they will have alternative certification to teach. They intend to make a difference in cities across the US, and they hope that “no child will be left behind.”

Despite a common goal with the No Child Left Behind Act, Teach for America corps members don’t really fit with the provisions of the 2001 act. No Child Left Behind places an emphasis on standardized testing and strict teacher requirements, while Teach for America members focus more on building relationships with students and individual progress. Both education initiatives want to close the achievement gap between high- and low-income students, but they seem at odds on how to do this.

No Child Left Behind has been notoriously unpopular in recent years, seen as a burden to state governments and an inflexible mandate of standardized testing. The Obama administration has been looking for ways to fix problems with the law, and, in September, Obama announced that the Department of Education would accept formal requests to “opt out” of certain NCLB provisions. Opting out would allow state and local governments much more flexibility in using federal funds for education and in deciding proficiency standards for students to meet. According to Reuters, 39 states have expressed interest in applying for NCLB waivers, and 11 states, including Massachusetts, have applied this year. States are overwhelmingly opposed to certain NCLB provisions, and many state governments want to have the freedom to try different approaches.

Teach for America is one such different approach. While No Child Left Behind mandates that teachers must be “highly qualified” and places great emphasis on a bachelor’s or graduate degree in education, TFA corps members rarely have these degrees. Corps mem10

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crease their impact and deepen their understanding of what it takes to close the achievement gap.” As corps members are completing their two years in the classroom, many also pursue a master’s degree in teaching. TFA’s long-term goal for their corps members is to produce well-trained, high quality teachers, and to encourage non-education majors to become leaders in the field. The TFA short-term focus is much less on earning degrees in teaching, however, and more on finding ways for teachers to connect academically and personally with low-income students.

Sheren hopes to be able to connect with students in order to help them to academic success. She thinks that the problem with education in the US today is that, “teachers in high-risk schools need to be held to a special standard of quality— unfortunately that’s not the way things are today. TFA sees that as a travesty. Part of the vision of the organization is to reframe that and shake up that status quo where a child’s zip code really determines their education...it is also about training teach-

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bers have a five-week training session and receive a certification to teach, but the certification is not a substitute for a bachelor’s or a master’s degree. Not everyone feels the training is enough preparation—Tufts graduate Will Ehrenfeld currently works in at a low-income school in Brooklyn and purposely chose not to apply for TFA. He explained, “The major flaw with TFA is that it doesn’t provide adequate training for new teachers. You’re taking the least prepared teachers—only five weeks of formal training—and dropping them in some of the toughest schools in the country.” Ehrenfeld is not alone in this view, and one of the main criticisms of Teach for America is that it doesn’t prepare its corps members well enough. Teach for America is aware of these criticisms, which is perhaps why their website stresses the amount of support the organization gives to its members.

The website explains their methods: “We recruit a diverse group of leaders with a record of achievement...[and] we provide intensive training, support, and career development that helps these leaders in-

ers who engage with families beyond the classroom.” Sheren elaborated that part of Teach for America training is a focus on teaching children as individuals and not “teaching to a test.”

One of the main criticisms of NCLB is that it demands teaching to the test, and that students are losing their individualized learning experience in favor of boosting test scores. As an antidote to this, Teach for America corps members are learning to measure success in a variety of ways, including but not limited to standardized test scores. High school retention rates are also an important measure for TFA corps members, as well as strength of teacher-student relationships.

So, is Teach for America the ultimate solution to America’s education inequity problem? Can this program do what NCLB has not been able to? Ehrenfeld does not seem to think so. In his opinion, “Lots of evidence suggests that teachers don’t really hit their stride until after at least three years in the classroom, but most corps members jet after two [years]. And having no control over what school you’re working in can frustrate even the most even-keeled newbie teacher. It’s a really rough situation, for teachers and students alike.” Sheren doesn’t deny that TFA is far from a cureall to our nation’s education inequity. She stresses that she does not see herself or TFA as the answer, and that “everyone [with TFA] is completely humbled by the veteran teachers in the schools. This is not the one solution, this is a paramedic response to an urgent problem.” Many agree about the urgency of this problem, including President Obama, who declared in September that students couldn’t wait for Congress to pass a new version of NCLB—something needed to be done sooner. The consensus is that not enough is being done, yet.

But that “yet” is important, and people are working hard to change things. Sheren explains, “Most people who were in the corps want to use their degree and their life experiences to affect social change.” In fact, two-thirds of Teach for America corps members stay with education for the rest of their lives. Whether by amending NCLB, raising awareness of education inequity, or continuing to teach, they still have a common goal—to turn an urgent problem into an issue already solved. O DECEMBER 5, 2011

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Arts

Dance Draw an ICA Exhibit Review

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hrough January 16, Boston’s Institute of Contemporary Art is running an exhibit entitled “Dance/Draw.” Spanning the past several decades and arriving at the present, the exhibit explores an ever-changing relationship between dancing, drawing, and the artist. “Dance/Draw” encompasses the work of many different artists in all sorts of styles and mediums, and the ICA describes it as “a landmark exhibition exploring the dynamic exchange taking place between visual art and dance today.”

By Molly Mirhashem The exhibit is separated into four individual rooms that each represents a distinct concept. Labeled “Hand,” “Line,” “Dancing,” and “Drawing,” each seeks to redefine its respective facet of art. In the “Hand” room, different works of art are used to demonstrate the part that body parts other than the hand can play in the process of creating art. One striking example was David Hammons’ “Body Print,” a piece in which the artist covered his face and upper body in grease, imprinted them upon the page, and then used colored powder to accentuate different areas of his impression.

In a similar vein, the three other rooms push the boundaries of line, drawing, and dance. In the “Line” room, there is a piece by artist Paul Chan entitled “Lights” that is comprised entirely of tiny black scraps of paper that are carefully placed upon musical scores to create musical notes and other shapes. The “Dance” room houses an interesting experiment in role-reversal, in which dancers have created drawings of artists dancing.

There is a plethora of multimedia works of art in both the “Dancing” and “Drawing” rooms. The walls are plastered with screens showing experimental dance videos. In one video an artist filmed a dancer while improvising, then edited the clip and re-ordered the sequence of movements, then asked the dancer to re-perform the dance in the edited sequence. Bits and pieces of dance history are scattered throughout the exhibit—incorporated into the artwork, written on the walls, and explained in brief abstracts. The 1960s and ’70s “revolution in dance” is referenced many times, and the art around the rooms is a powerful representation of the transformations dance has undergone.

The entire exhibit is diverse and captivating, and the range of artists and art forms presented prevents the viewer from becoming bored or unappreciative. At the same time, the curators have struck a perfect balance that keeps the audience from becoming overwhelmed by the wide spread of material contained within the exhibition.

In the final room of the exhibit—the “drawing” room— one artist is credited with a quotation that sums up the entire display quite well. The artist, Helena Almeida, incorporates various combinations of drawing and photography into a style that is arguably an elaborate journey into her own self-portrait. Of her art, she said, “I turn myself into a drawing. My body, as a drawing. Myself as my own work.” O sse

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Photographs contributed by Amy Connors, Amy Shipp, Ariel Lefland, Laura Liddell, and Louise Blavet.

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and after a thorough chewing out by Judge Joseph Walker and conversations between the Trustees, Bacow, and various offices, the decision was made. Bacow gave the word. NQR was cancelled. No one I spoke to really knew what was going to happen.

In fact, I doubt anyone really knew what was going to happen. Students wanted to keep the excitement of the event alive.

We showed our support of NQR by creating Facebook groups, writing Op-Eds, and running in the buff. After an initial buzz of activity, conversations grew sparse, the summer came, and NQR grew far from our minds. The Committee on Student Life had the job of drafting a response to the cancellation of NQR. Ultimately, the administration felt responsible for our safety, our reputations, and by association their own reputations. I believe that their concerns were valid.

Their response, however, was terrible.

In the middle of November, an email was sent to the student body, detailing an aggressive Ban on NQR promising semesterlong suspensions for those who defied two fundamental rules: no public nudity and no public intoxication. Concurrently, they sent an email to our parents. I saw this as a low blow. The administration recognizes that many of us are still dependent on our parents, even though they encourage us to be independent. The letter home seemed an attempt to infantilize us, to punish unruly children. The Ban itself is written in unclear language, making it so that we don’t really know what we can do and when or where we can do it. For example, is the Ban effective in dorms? If it is, we should be concerned about how RA’s might play a role in supporting the Ban, for their sakes and ours. And, if public intoxication

n

L

ast year, receiving the decision to cancel NQR was difficult for a lot of students. I remember arriving to class late, a friend plopping the Daily in front of me, and immediately hurrying away so I could read the paper cover to cover. I sat in the Lane Hall bathroom and read every article three times, returning to class only after it had ended. When my professor asked what was wrong, I simply replied, “I don’t feel well.”

I realize there are plenty of people who didn’t share my reaction, and even some who were happy about the decision, but I truly did feel awful. I anticipate that night more than any other campus event.

At Fall Ball and Winter Bash, we get down, at Spring Fling, we get rowdy, but at NQR, we got naked. Boy, did we get naked: over a thousand college students, running buck in a frenzied, screaming horde in the dead of a winter’s night. We ran, we felt free, and we had fun in a nonsexual context. Those are three rare things in the hypersexual bustle of college life. If not for the sketchy onlookers snapping photos on the fringes, what could be wrong with NQR? A lot, it turns out. But the things that were wrong with NQR, from the administration’s perspective, were not the things that I (and many others) loved about it. As President Bacow pointed out in the now infamous Op-Ed, “NQR Reconsidered,” the run grew from a “modest size” since the university sanctioned it in 2003. People drank to a point requiring hospitalization, police confrontations intensified and led to an arrest (I heard murmurs of police aggression), and legal controversies piled up.

All of these issues were legitimate concerns,

Unconsidered

pi

By Jimmy Voorhis

O

NQR

really justifies suspension, make sure you stop at Moe’s before you jump in the paddy wagon the next time you’re down on Pro Row. Worst of all, although touted as a new Tufts tradition “not meant to replace NQR,” WinterFest has been appended to the end of every email we’ve received about NQR’s cancellation, preceded by several paragraphs of negative prose. WinterFest is clearly meant to be a replacement for NQR, but undoubtedly it will fall short of its predecessor. and it Of course, NQR will never find a replacement. I applaud those alumni who started the tradition because they took it upon themselves to channel their pent-up energy, exhaustion, stress, or whatever else you might call it, into an act that became Tufts legend. Sure, they didn’t face a ban, but I bet they didn’t know what the repercussions of their actions would be. We find ourselves in a similar position. What’s going to happen on the night of NQR? Once again, no one knows.

Tufts sometimes feels devoid of spirit. Some say alumni claim they don’t feel a strong connection to the university because of this. As my days as an alumnus are fast-approaching, I’m confident I will remain strongly connected to the school because if NQR instilled one thing in me, it was Jumbo Pride. For many of us, past and current students alike, running with the winter wind around our nethers has made us proud to be together. It was a funny pride, perhaps even a weird pride, but it was pride nonetheless, and it was enabled by 50 Jumbos, then hundreds, then thousands more. Come NQR night, we owe it to them and to ourselves to refresh Tufts’ spirit. I encourage you to do so, however you see fit. O DECEMBER 5, 2011

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FEN AeT wU sRE

Josh

Sava

la

Policing th

Emerging dynamics between the O

The emerging d

By Ariana Siegel

I

n the early morning hours of Tuesday, November 15, the New York City Police Department descended upon Zucotti Park, the symbolic birthplace of the original Occupy Wall Street movement.

The raid was conducted with intentional secrecy; police began taking down tents before the sun rose, and reporters were not allowed inside the park.

This move by New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg was part of an increasingly visible backlash by the governments of cities where the movement has taken root.

Whereas most cities have tolerated nonviolent protesters in public spaces in the past weeks, recently, government crackdowns have become increasingly widespread.

Professor Matthew Williams, who teaches a course at Tufts on social movements, explained the motivation behind governments’ responses. “The Occupy movement represents a loss of control of public space, which governments generally find very threatening, since govern-

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ments see it as their job to maintain control of public space,” he said. “Ceding it to a movement challenging them represents a major loss of face.”

At first glance, the actions of individual cities’ police forces seem like unique responses, calibrated to local needs. But the oddly coordinated crackdowns led to investigations that discovered calculated cooperation between various cities’ governments. The Guardian cited reports that the Department of Homeland Security participated in an 18-city conference call to advise city leaders on “how to suppress” Occupy protests.

The first, most controversial crackdown came on October 25 in Oakland, California, when police violently removed protesters from their encampment, spurring Occupy responses across the country.

Public outcry caused the raids to backfire, forcing the mayor to apologize and allow the Oakland occupiers to return to the site.

The Oakland raid inspired solidarity not only among protesters but also among antagonized cities. Encampments in Bur-

lington, Vermont and Portland, Oregon were dismantled just before the second Oakland raid on November 14, and police raided Zuccotti Park soon afterward. Police responses in these evictions has been controversial—police have used teargas, pepper spray, and mass arrests, as well as infamous beatings of individuals such as a former New York State Supreme Court Justice, the poet Robert Hass, and an Iraq war veteran.

Still, Williams notes that, as a whole, responses have been relatively tempered.

In light of the fact that the movement is airing grievances common to a wide base of Americans, governments want to be cautious not to appear overly oppressive.

“If you compare it to the way the government handled the last major wave of protests around economic justice—those targeted the WTO, IMF/World Bank, and other elite meetings in 1999 and the early 2000s—the response has been more controlled, in the sense that there’s been less brutality on the government’s part, although they still use tactics like illegal mass arrests.”

sRE wU AeT FEN

he Protest

e Occupy Movement and city officials

g dynamics between the Occupy movement and cit y officials

As the name “Occupy” suggests, reclaiming control over public space has been a key strategy of this nascent movement. Loss of public space would therefore appear to be a crucial blow. Yet Dale Bryan, the assistant director of the Peace and Justice Studies Department at Tufts and a veteran of American social movements believes that perceiving a single Occupy strategy would be misleading— that in fact tactics vary by site. As such, he posits that the resilient movement will be able to respond in a number of different ways.

“On one hand, as the activists are no longer tied to their camps, they are trying new tactics and identifying new targets for making their claims,” Bryan said.

“Every movement needs to be innovative to keep participants energized, opponents uncertain, and the larger public curious and interested. Unleashing creative responses should give Occupy adherents a boost of confidence and courage.”

Bryan acknowledged, however, that for some members of the movement, the

camps remain an instrumental symbol of Occupy’s message. “On the other hand,” he said, “some activists will struggle to maintain the camps. Some are devoted to the sense of community and bottomup democracy, and their command of the space to embody both practice and culture will be paramount.”

As the battle for control of physical space rages on, another battle has emerged—over media space. Media in all of its forms has played a crucial role in the development of the movement, and thus cities and protesters fight for control over imagery and dialogue. City crackdowns have often targeted journalists; The New York Times noted that NYPD has asked reporters to identify themselves and prove their credentials, only to then forcefully remove them from scenes of unrest with violence and arrest threats. The National Union of Journalists and the Committee to Protect Journalists have since issued a Freedom of Information Act request to investigate possible federal involvement with this targeted policing.

Yet in the age of social media, blocking journalists cannot suppress documentation of events. Blog posts and YouTube videos of police aggression have become instantly viral and often the subject of outrage. Meanwhile, city agents attempt to document their own perspectives. Fox News has reported the use of cell-phone cameras by police, and such footage can prove essential not only to public perception but also to legal investigations.

In some ways, however, any news is good news for the Occupy movement— the crackdowns and media coverage sustain the occupy conversation. “To have families, co-workers, teachers and students, and all manner of people in daily social relations continuing to discuss Occupy’s grievances about political and social inequalities is to deepen [the movement’s] significant impact on political agendas and policy concerns,” Bryan said. “Their message must continue to find expression in all that Occupy undertakes, regardless of the space they find themselves in.” O DECEMBER 5, 2011

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19

Food

S

Sipping at South Pacific Luke Pyenson revisits the time-tested restaurant of his youth

T

his past week, I reached an important milestone in my life.

I finally turned 21 on the day before Thanksgiving. I had decided a few weeks earlier that I wanted to have my “first legal drink” with my older brother. The night of, we brainstormed on the way to dinner about where to go when the clock struck midnight.

Part of me wanted to go to Drink, Barbara Lynch’s ultra-cool, much-lauded bar in Fort Point. Part of me wanted to go to The Hawthorne, a brand new (opened days earlier) speakeasy-style bar in Kenmore Square that is partly owned by Jackson Cannon, one of Boston’s most prominent “mixologists,” as they like to be called. Then it hit my brother and me at the same time. There was only one place to go: South Pacific.

South Pacific is a Chinese restaurant in a strip mall in Newton called “Four Corners,” and it’s been there since at least the 1950s. It has not changed since then. The neon that once embellished the stars, palm trees, and word “COCKTAILS” on the iconic sign, which rises high above the one-story strip mall, has been gradually fading over my lifetime, and is now completely dim. One “I” in “Pacific” is askew these days. Very. The inside is a study in mid 20th century pseudo-Asian kitsch. The “tiki room” is adorned with totem poles and wall-length murals of Polynesian scenes. The menu is a time capsule; there are 13 kinds of chop suey and only three options under “vegetables”: Saute Broccole [sic] in Oyster Sauce, Saute String Bean, and Pasta Vegetable Stir Fry. There is also something called Chicago Chow Mein.

Along with many Newton natives, I have a long history with South Pacific. My mom grew up going there when it was decidedly more in style. My dad got South Pacific takeout for himself and my brother while my mom rested in the hospital

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after giving birth to me. My youth was filled with trips to South Pacific with my usually very discriminating great-aunt and uncle, though I think they’ve since moved on to better Chinese options (shout out to Golden Temple in Brookline). Between mouthfuls of candy-red lacquered pork strips (“pahk strips” in the local accent) and greasy egg foo yung, I would try to peek at the shady goingson in the adjacent-yet-hidden “cocktail lounge.” On the eve of my 21st birthday, it was this part of the restaurant that I would finally infiltrate.

On the big day, I walked in with my brother and his best childhood friend to see four people: a couple sitting at a table chatting, an old, overweight man drinking a Budweiser on ice, and the stolid yet functional bar man. It was about 11:55 p.m. At midnight, after checking out the menu, we ordered a round of “Samoan Fog-Cutters,” described only as a “blend of rums, liqueurs, and fruit juices” and also as “a bartender’s worst nightmare.” Our man seemed to be handling it all right. He produced a few tiki cups from under the bar, which caused our friend with the iced Budweiser to stir and grumble to nobody in particular, “Are those fog cutters?”

Ahhhh, my first legal sip of alcohol. It tasted like canned pineapple juice and rum. It was awful, and I was in possibly the most depressing room in Newton (or all of metro-Boston), but I couldn’t have been happier. Places like South Pacific are disappearing with every passing year, and before long I fear that the man at the bar is going to have to find somewhere else to hang out. I encourage everybody to find the time-tested, fossilized restaurants of their youths and their neighborhoods, and stop in. Or take the Green Line to Newton and check out South Pacific. Get the Samoan Fog-Cutter. Or a Budweiser on ice. O

food

SOUTH PACIFIC’S SAMOAN FOG-CUTTER This is my interpretation of what I drank that night. Figure on this serving about 6 people. Quadruple it or whatever for your pre-NQR party. I mean…

Enjoy with 21+ friends and drink responsibly.

1 1 ½ 1

Quart shitty rum + a few dashes of other rums Pint of juice from a can of dole canned pineapple chunks Pint orange juice (Dole, maybe, for brand continuity)

Handful crushed ice

Mix everything together. Ladle into tiki mugs. If you don’t have tiki mugs, use solo cups or mason jars.

Creative Commons

DECEMBER 5, 2011

TUFTS OBSERVER

21

FE AArts TU R

E

all you need is

By Angelin a Rot m an

F

Photos Courtesy of Cirque du Soleil

rom the moment you step foot into the theater of Cirque du Soleil’s new show, the Beatles’ LOVE, you know you’re in for something completely new and different. Plaques on the restrooms read “Lads” and “Lasses.” The enormous arena is quartered by large, curtain-like screens. Ushers dressed as palace guards and ’60s-era police help navigate audience members to their seats.

Based in Montreal, Cirque du Soleil currently runs 23 different shows, each a spectacle with its own themes and motifs.

The 27-year-old circus prides itself on its avant-garde, 21st century approach to circus arts. So what distinguishes Cirque du Soleil from circuses of the past?

“The most banal answer that everyone gives is that we don’t feature animals,” Shevchenko said. “But there’s more to it.

In the 80s, this company took commedia dell’arte elements, applied it to the physical craft of the circus, added modern music and extravagant make-up and costumes, and this is the basic explanation that can be given for the creation of what is now known as the Cirque du Soleil style.”

LOVE is a stunning example of what distinguishes Cirque du Soleil from other circuses.

When the lights dim on the LOVE audience, the languid melody of the Beatles’ “Because” accompanies the dancers as they shiver their way onto stage, soon to be replaced by an up-tempo beat and the first strains of “Get Back.” From there, the show is breathtaking and thrilling by turns, each act set to a well-known Beatles song. But Shevchenko, a self-proclaimed fan of the Beatles, says there is more to the show than its music.

“Many people think the show is just set to the Beatles’ music, but it’s much more complicated than that.”

Beatles producer Sir George Martin and his son Giles Martin created the show’s

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RE TU AArts FE

LOVE T he O bserver run s away w ith an ac ro b at

[to cirque du soleil] soundscape using the master tapes from Abbey Road Studios. Garnering praise from living Beatles Sir Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr, the father and son approached the band’s music in a unique way, experimenting with and remixing some of the most famous songs of the twentieth century.

“The drumbeat that leads into ‘Get Back’ isn’t from ‘Get Back,’” Shevchenko said. “The song that in actuality contains the opening drum solo is called ‘The End.’ So they combined two different songs into one, because it works greatly with the concept of the show.”

Along with an interest in music and cinematography, Shevchenko is a jack-of-all-trades when it comes to the circus arts. He is an acrobat and an aerialist, a strongman and an actor. In a show like LOVE, it’s difficult to give his job a label.

“People ask me if I do aerial work. For the most part, I perform in the air, but I’m not a stereotypical trapeze flyer. In addition, I do back-up work for other acts that perform on the ground, as well.

You can’t just do one thing,” he said.

Like many circus performers, Shevchenko’s road to the circus and to Cirque du Soleil began with familial roots. Shevchenko says his father, currently a performer in Cirque du Soleil’s KÀ, was instrumental in building his career toward Cirque du Soleil.

“My father raised me, or maybe trained would be a better word, the way most people involved in the circus grow up,” Shevchenko said. “I learned acrobatic tricks growing up. When I worked in a bank, I would get bored and just do hand stands when there were no customers. My co-workers would look at me like I was insane, and I realized I needed to do something, work somewhere where I could get that energy out.”

Ultimately, Shevchenko says, it was family ties that brought him into the business.

“I made my audition tape, but I really think they saw the last name and that decided them. There was definitely pressure,” Shevchenko said. “I had to be especially good, because if I wasn’t, it’d be an embarrassment to the family.”

Now on his eighth year with Cirque du Soleil, Shevchenko has been in LOVE long enough to feel like a part of the show’s creation.

“When you’re working on a movie, you film it, you release it, it’s done,” Shevchenko said. “But with a show like this, it’s a living organism. You see the idea, its creation, how it slowly gets on its feet, and then how it slowly changes through the years. You see the show once, but the next time you see it, it may already be different in some way.”

While the show may be different from what it was at its opening in 2006, LOVE remains a brilliant synthesis of the most exciting aspects of circus, theater, and, of course, the Beatles.O

DECEMBER 5, 2011

TUFTS OBSERVER

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ca off m pus

BOSTON’S INDEPEN

I

In Nora Ephron’s classic ’90s chick flick You’ve Got Mail, Meg Ryan plays the owner of a small children’s bookstore on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

Just around the corner, a new Fox Books (a stand-in for Barnes and Noble) opens up and puts her out of business. Even as Meg Ryan finds herself falling in love with the CEO of Fox Books (Tom Hanks, of course), the movie continues to present the argument for the independent bookstore where community is paramount, where the booksellers know their customers and their books, and where a book does not cost so much, it is worth so much.

Over a decade later, journalists and industry experts alike continue to predict the demise of the independent bookstore, or even just the bookstore, and the publishing industry as we know it. Children don’t read anymore, they insist. The e-reader is destroying print media, they cry.

Meanwhile, the reality, as it plays out in Boston and across the United States, is less cut and dry. In 2008, McIntyre and Moore, a beloved used and rare bookstore in Davis Square, closed its doors. In 2010, Raven Used Books actually expanded from one musty storefront in Harvard Square to two stores—the new one with a fancier location on Newbury Street. This year, Borders, a national chain, filed for bankruptcy and liquidated all stores.

I could not tell you why Borders failed and Barnes and Noble flourishes, but I am 24

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DECEMBER 5, 2011

a local bookstore junkie, and I can unpack a bit of the mystery surrounding those of the flourishing Boston booksellers who, unlike McIntyre and Moore, seem to have hit upon a formula for success.

Right in the heart of the Porter Square Shopping Center, Porter Square Books is one of the closest bookstores to Tufts, independent or not. PSB is such a fixture of the community that it is hard to believe the bookstore was founded just seven years ago, during Amazon’s ascent to dominance. Jane Dawson, one of the four co-owners, remains unconcerned by recent changes in the book industry and the media’s proclamations of doomsday. “We always believed, or we do, that an independent bookstore that has people who know books and can actually sell books and talk books is still something that people value.”

This was Meg Ryan’s sentiment in You’ve Got Mail, but the difference is that Dawson actually sees it play out in her store every day. You just can’t argue with the fact that Porter Books is always busy.

Dawson emphasizes the importance of this particular neighborhood to the success of PSB. “We did a lot of research to find out where to go because with bookstores it’s a little problematic. [Porter Square] had a lot of things that we were looking for: i. t was in a busy area and the neighborhood wanted an independent bookstore.” PSB actively works to engage with the community through author events, book clubs, and a weekly story hour for children.

What’s more, PSB continues the timetested tradition of combining coffee shop and bookseller. Zing Café, which occupies the front of the store, is what first attracted

off p am c us

NDENT BOOK SCENE

by Ellen Mayer

me to PSB, with the promise of hot chocolate, a pastry, and a place to work. I soon discovered that PSB is also a top-flight bookstore with a wonderful selection, an emphasis on independently published books, and a friendly and knowledgeable staff. The café, though, is what solidifies the bookstore’s atmosphere as a community meeting space.

Peter Loftus, the director of Lorem Ipsum books in Inman Square, also emphasizes the importance of community. “We’ve always felt like Inman was where we fit in best,” he told me. Devoid of any chains and far from any T-stop, Inman does seem to be the place for an offbeat used bookstore whose sign over the door still reads, “Cambridge Refrigeration Specialists.” And, as he put it, more prosaically, “Here we’re right in the nexus of both bar and coffee traffic.”

Unlike most used bookstores in the area, Lorem Ipsum is fully digitized.

“When the owner got it started, one of the ideas was that Lorem Ipsum was striving at being the bookstore of the future,” Loftus explained, “We were trying to reevaluate the idea of what a used bookstore could mean to a more and more digitally inclined market.” Every book in the store is logged into a computer database that you can search on the website. So, as at Barnes and Noble, you can check if a book is in the shop before coming in. Lorem Ipsum also sells its books through a handful of online retailers. In fact, at times, Lorem Ipsum does about 80% of its sales online. So why not just pack it in and become an entirely online bookseller like the Boston-based Swamp Rabbit Books? “The experience of a bookstore,” Loftus told me, “has become almost more important than I think the book itself.”

So Lorem Ipsum, like PSB, has become a community space, but in a very different way. Instead of hosting speakers and book clubs, Lorem Ipsum displays local artists’ work on the walls, throws release parties for local magazines, and hosts concerts, film screenings, and poetry readings. In addition, the bookstore is now hosting Papercut Zine Library within its walls. Zines are locally distributed DIY magazines, and

Loftus thinks Papercut is possibly the largest collection of them in the world. The library officially re-opened within Lorem Ipsum in November, allowing the two entities to pool community groups. “It’s only been a month,” he said, “and I think we’ve already seen the potential for collaboration in ways that I’m not even sure we totally expected.” If this is all starting to sound like a hipster community center, you aren’t far off the mark.

THE experience of a bookstore haS become almost more important than the book itself.

Lorem Ipsum thinks of itself as a “useful” bookstore, touting a collection of critical theory, legal studies, and other academic reading. While their collection is impressive, it pales in comparison to the selection at Raven Used Books. I have been a regular browser at the tiny, dimly lit, and musty storefront in Harvard Square since the beginning of my freshman year. Neither the Harvard location, nor the newer and much more pleasant venue on Newbury, do much to create a community space. The Newbury location holds occa-

sional talks with authors and intellectuals, but otherwise Raven just sells books. But what books? The Newbury location has a wall devoted to philosophy, an additional bookshelf for Eastern philosophy, and a hefty section solely devoted to anarchism.

And they sell all this without the aid of a digital database. When I walked into the Newbury location and asked for Annie Dillard, the shopkeeper just knew that one of her books was filed under “nature” and the other under “biography.” Raven continues to be successful in both locations and is poised to expand more.

Before I saw You’ve Got Mail, I don’t think I really understood the value of the independent business, nor did I recognize the threats they faced from corporate giants. Nevertheless, I always frequented my local bookstore. After You’ve Got Mail I just had the vocabulary to explain why. Today, choosing local is a political statement and a lifestyle: farmers markets over supermarkets, Diesel over Starbucks. But not everyone who shops at a local bookstore is necessarily a locavore like myself. Some may seek out the community that is available to them at shops like Lorem Ipsum or Porter Square Books, but others, it seems, just like books.

Dawson points to her busy children’s section and the extremely popular book clubs at PSB as evidence of that fact. “People say to me, ‘Oh, well, kids aren’t reading anymore,’ and I say, ‘There are so many people here in their 20s and 30s who are in book clubs and buy books. You’re wrong. They are reading.’” O

photos by Anya Klepacki

DECEMBER 5, 2011

TUFTS OBSERVER

25

y

Poetr

If ever I could walk away And leave her on her own, I’d plan the perfect leaving day – But one that I’d postpone.

by Flo Wen

Days of the Week For Monday’s when we lie in bed Before the week’s restart – Between us: those three words unsaid – And dread our days apart.

On Tuesday nights we’re reading things, The weekend left behind.

Our supper’s what delivery brings, The place she ‘doesn’t mind’.

By Wednesday we have mastered roles Of boring parts to play.

She pours the milk, I lay the bowls, And breakfast starts the day.

And Thursday’s time for restlessness That manifests itself: Complaints and faults we can’t suppress Or keeping to ourselves.

But restless turns to passion when We see the light ahead; Friday brings her smile again And those three words are said.

They linger through to Saturday, When going out’s a ‘must’.

It’s fine by me; content she’ll stay And passion turns to lust.

Yet Sunday’s been our stay-in night, Her tired eyes don’t shine: Their Easter-blue and yellow white, The opposite of mine.

You see, there’s really not a chance, Amidst all that, to go.

I’d miss what people call romance; The pattern’s all I know.

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Louise Blavet

y

Poetr

The moonlight shone upon your naked shoulders, And ran like quicksilver down your back; Your back curved like a crescent shore, My hands as waves would flow upon it.

Our little space, the backseat, this metal frame, Is greater than a kingdom’s span. Fingers Fly as couriers to every realm, Our bodies’ every hill and valley; Returning word of pleasures foreign, Shivers new; trembling, palpitating messages.

We flutter like sails in trade winds Wrapped within each other, blowing far To shores we’ve never traveled to.

We’re lifted on the wind of our desire; No names; no time but this time.

O, that I could say that it’ll be long And not like the passing headlights in the East!

But come tomorrow, you will be gone, Driving miles and miles to the unknown West.

But that’s the problem with fucking in cars.

Nothing so hot can burn beyond a minute— We are two strangers passing on the street; Our love, a star that shoots across the sky; Our love, a drunken smile bathed in tears; Our love, a child conceived But never born.

The Problem with Fucking in Cars

by Douglas Cavers

Louise Blavet

DECEMBER 5, 2011

TUFTS OBSERVER

27

POLICEBLOTTER ’Twas the night before finals, and all round the hill between cops and students, ’twas nought but ill will the pipes were all packed and the joints had been rolled Black Friday for dealers, their stocks now all sold but one sneaky jumbo who got his weed shipped picked up at mail service, in box nondescript found to his dismay that addressed with no name his box had been searched; he was now full of shame.

five ounces of dope, the cops found within, the Jumbo played dumb, to save his own skin

a mysterious gift from anonymous sender the jumbo swore he did not know the vendor

it came with an email, with web tracking code

it said happy birthday and gifts did forebode

but his pleading the 5th this time served him well,

for he's now off the hook, and not in a cell.

let this be a lesson for sophomores in wren

who were not so prudent with their smoking den

when TUPD came to knock on their door

they gave up their paraphernalia galore

two grinders, a vape, and a jar full of pot

they said "we were smoking" and gave up the lot!

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they just should have learned from the reefer express

to keep their mouths closed instead of confess.

FE E UR AT Natasha Jessen-Petersen

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