Issue 2 Fall 2021

TUFTS OBSERVER

ISSUE 2 VOL CXLIII

CYCLES.

TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 HUNG UP ON HOUSING FEATURE • BY EMARA SAEZ AND LIANI ASTACIO

6 RECOGNITION AND RESPECT

19 DAYBREAK

POETRY • BY JULIA STEINER

20 STRIKE UP THE BAND

NEWS • BY AROHA MACKAY

ARTS & CULTURE •

BY ELLA FASCIANO

8 FALLING THROUGH THE CRACKS

22 TOUGH TRANSITIONS

10 ROCKY HORROR AND AUDIENCE PARTICI...PATION

24 DELIRIUM FROM THE UNINCORPORATED US TERRITORY

OPINION • BY EMILY MCMULLEN

ARTS & CULTURE • BY LEE ROMAKER

12 RHYTHM OF THE RIPTIDE POETRY • BY ANONYMOUS

14 CREATIVE INSET

CREATIVE INSET • BY EVELYN ABRAMOWITZ

16 AN EXTENDED OVERREACTION TO A TORN EDGE VOICES • BY JULIETTE WU

2 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

CAMPUS • BY YUMEI LIN

VOICES • BY MARIANA JANER AGRELOT

26 ANTI-CAPITALISM IS NOT A METAPHOR OPINION •

BY AMANDA WESTLAKE

STAFF EDITOR IN CHIEF: Josie Wagner

LEAD ARTIST: Madeleine Oh

MANAGING EDITOR: Amanda Westlake

LEAD COPY EDITOR: Grace Abe

EDITOR EMERITUS: Akbota Saudabayeva

MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR: Unnathy Nellutla

CREATIVE DIRECTORS: Brenna Trollinger Sofia Pretell

PODCAST DIRECTORS: Caitlin Duffy Suhasini Mehra

FEATURE EDITORS: Rabiya Ismail Juanita Asapokhai

PUBLICITY DIRECTOR: Janie Ingrassia

NEWS EDITORS: Chloe Malley Sabah Lokhandwala ARTS & CULTURE EDITORS: Melanie Litwin Sabrina Cabarcos OPINION EDITORS: Claudia Aibel Edith Philip CAMPUS EDITORS: Aroha Mackay Mira Dwyer

STAFF WRITERS: Lee Romaker Eleanor Fucetola Gracie Theobald-Williams Silvia Wang Anica Zulch Emara Saez Audrey Ledbetter PUBLICITY TEAM: Paola Ruiz Millie Todd Sophie Fishman

STAFF ARTISTS: Brigid Cawley Aidan Chang Anna Cornish Christina Ma D Gateño Emmeline Meyers Misha Mehta DESIGNERS: Carino Lo Julia Steiner Kate Bowers Tara Steckler Emma Davis Bao Lu Joanna Kleszczewski COPY EDITORS: Marco Pretell Hannah Schulman Shira Ben-Ami Eden Weissman William Zhuang Meghan Smith

MULTIMEDIA TEAM: Linda Kebichi Jasmine Chang PODCAST TEAM: Hanna Bregman Jaden Shemesh Jillian Yum Alexis Enderle Silvia Wang Grace Masiello Browyn Legg Noah DeYoung Gayatri Kalra Julio Dominguez CONTRIBUTORS: Emara Saez Liani Astacio Emily McMullen Juliette Wu Ella Fasciano Yumei Lin Mariana Janer Agrelot Karen Ruiz Avril Lynch Izzy Larsen Anne Hu

POETRY & PROSE EDITOR: Isabelle Charles VOICES EDITORS: Rachel Dong Ryan Kim CREATIVE INSET EDITOR: Evelyn Abramowitz ART DIRECTORS: Kate Bowers Kelly Tan

twisting, turning, up and down. good days, bad days, sunrise, sunset. new leaves, new seasons, another week, another email. tomorrow we’ll wake up and do it all again

DESIGN BY AND JOHN PHOTOS DOE,BY ART SOFIA

BY JANE PRETELL; DOE FRONT AND BACK COVER DESIGN BY BRENNA TROLLINGER

SEPTEMBER 28, 2020 TUFTS OBSERVER 3

FEATURE

By Emara Saez with reporting conributions by Liani Astacio

S

ince the completion of Sophia Gordon Hall in 2006, Tufts University has not expanded its on-campus residence hall options, instead focusing on maximizing current residential spaces. However, with an ever-increasing student population, the failure of the Tufts administration to create new housing space has contributed to a worsening housing crisis that has had detrimental impacts on not only the student body, but also the surrounding Medford and Somerville communities.

The Class of 2025, the largest group of students ever to enroll at Tufts University, arrived on campus this Fall to face a slew of issues associated with housing. As incoming first-years were preparing to arrive on campus, the Office of Residential Life and Learning notified 100 students that they would be living at the Hyatt Place hotel in Medford Square, a 30 minute walk from campus. This type of crisis is not a new phenomenon.

2 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 25, 2021

In 2007, the ORLL turned to a similar solution due to a larger-than-expected incoming class. However, that year, the Hyatt was offered as an option to rising sophomores rather than an obligation for randomly selected incoming first-years.

The program failed to launch in 2007 because of a lack of interest amongst students who wanted to remain connected to campus. 14 years later, these concerns have reappeared. Although first-year students currently living at the Hyatt have access to hotel accommodations and amenities, many feel that not enough is being done to facilitate interaction between them and the Medford campus.

In a written statement, Lizzie Strehle, a first-year living at the Hyatt, noted that her first few weeks as a Tufts student were especially challenging. “I had no close friends on campus, I never had an insight as to what was happening on the weekends,” she said, adding that it made her feel like she was “missing out at times.”

Furthermore, according to Strehle, the housing situation for first-years at Hyatt “has stunted their social growth at Tufts.”

Aside from assigning students to nearby hotels, Tufts has sought out alternate solutions to address the lack of housing, two of which are on campus.

The first was their decision to purchase and convert some of Medford’s wood-frame houses to cre-

ate Community Housing (CoHo) in 2018 and 2019. To address lack of housing for first-years specifically, they decided to convert West Hall into first-year housing for the 2021-2022 school year. However, this decision was announced in April 2021, hours before sophomores were supposed to submit their housing preferences for the upcoming school year and it left many of them scrambling to adjust their plans.

Throughout the implementation of these changes, Tufts has practiced “bed optimization,” the process of forcing two students into a single and forcing three students into a double, in an effort to fit as many students as possible into existing dorms. With this practice, Tufts maximizes current housing resources rather than constructing new residential spaces.

In 2021, the ORLL’s ongoing project of bed optimization led to many first-years living in forced triples in rooms originally intended to be doubles, creating challenges that on-campus students feel are just as prevalent as difficulties for students placed in the Hyatt.

According to a first-year student living in a forced triple in Hodgdon, they were shocked after receiving their housing assignment. “I thought that [forced triples] were really rare at Tufts… I was utterly panicking about it a few days before movein, like maybe it will ruin my whole college experience,” they said.

Due to these types of housing assignments on campus, some students at the Hyatt prefer their living arrangement to forced triples. “Personally, I would rather be in the Hyatt than in a cramped dorm

FEATURE

that’s only used in cases of over-enrollment and has less than ideal conditions,” said Strehle.

Furthermore, because Tufts only guarantees housing for first- and second-years, many students have to rely on finding offcampus housing for their last two years.

Though juniors and seniors are eligible to live in various on-campus buildings, many upperclassmen are pushed off-campus due to the lack of beds and the difficulty of acquiring a lottery number. As a result, students are forced to navigate the unpredictable housing market in the surrounding Medford and Somerville communities.

This comes with a plethora of issues, such as dealing with landlords who often take advantage of students, lack of resources to help navigate the housing market, and uncomfortable living conditions.

For residents of Medford and Somerville, the on-campus housing scarcity contributes to gentrification that makes living in their own neighborhoods unaffordable. Dylan Oesch-Emmel, a senior living off-campus, is concerned with how Tufts students are encroaching on the neighborhoods of Medford. “We aren’t building relationships with our neighbors, and we’ve really seen the sprawl of students out into the community,” said Oesch-Emmel.

According to Medford City Councilor Zac Bears, Tufts’ failure to provide sufficient housing for students on campus​​ “displace[s] residents who are currently living in an apartment if rents go up, and a landlord wants to bring in Tufts students.”

In addition to concerns about Tufts students contributing to the gentrification of the Medford and Somerville communities, students are also displeased with the uncomfortable living conditions, hidden costs, and landlord difficulties that come with off-campus housing. Leila Skinner, a senior currently living off-campus, said, “I sought out off-campus housing mostly because it was the norm for what my friends and peers were doing. We’ve had some slight issues with some parts of the housing like our fire alarms going off—and our landlord won’t change them—and some issues with flies.” She also elaborated on the financial burden the housing market puts on college students. “For me, finding the money for the initial down payment and security deposit was a hefty cost,” she said.

DESIGN BY CARINA LO, ART BY KELLY TAN

For students dealing with off-campus housing issues, Josh Hartman, senior director of the ORLL, said they have a housing website that has support resources and listings in an email to the Tufts Observer.

The website also has resources regarding tenant rights, but according to current upperclassmen, they are either unaware of these resources or feel that they are not helpful. “I would have appreciated it if Tufts had provided more resources or cohesive mechanisms for housing to be passed down and if Tufts didn’t have to push students off campus in the way that they do,” said Skinner.

Though Skinner has dealt with undesirable conditions at her off-campus house, she was still fortunate to know someone with connections to her landlord to obtain housing near campus. Because underclassmen rely on upperclassmen to pass on their lease once they have graduated, many students who entered Tufts after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic do not have the same good fortune. Given the remote nature of classes and student organizations, underclassmen have had less opportunities to interact with their upperclassmen peers, making the housing process especially hard for members of the classes of 2023 and 2024. According to Priscilla Mach, a sophomore,

fall 2018, James Glaser, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, announced that the university was planning to expand enrollment over the following years. Since Glaser’s announcement, the university has added 450 beds to campus, while the undergraduate population has swelled to 6,114 by the fall of 2020.

In an email to the Observer, Patrick Collins, executive director of media relations, explained that the university has added “[these 450] beds to campus over the last 5 years through bed optimization, major renovations, and CoHo,” adding that Tufts continues to “look for opportunities to add more beds through these types of projects, such as 114 Professors Row and 123 Packard Ave,” which will add another 50 beds when completed next summer.

However, despite the previous and planned bed increases, the ORLL has consistently heard complaints from students who are unable to obtain campus housing for their junior and senior years. According to Hartman, “The remaining bed spaces are often 300-400 less than our demand from juniors and seniors, and in that situation, those 300-400 folks are placed on a wait- list.” This year, those students did not receive housing. “Due to the larger than expected incoming class

the loss of connection is detrimental. “We haven’t had time to get close to the upperclassmen that could pass us their lease, and most of the people we know our age who have been successful either have a realtor or got lucky by passing a paper sign on a lamppost,” she said.

A significant reason for the housing crisis—including shortage of beds and offcampus housing itself—is that the size of incoming classes continues to increase. In OCTOBER 25, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 3

FEATURE

and a lower than expected ‘melt’ among continuing students, we were not able to accommodate them,” Hartman said. “Melt” refers to the number of students accepted by the university that do not matriculate in the fall. Due to students’ decision to return from their gap years and Tufts’ decision to go test-optional for the fall 2020 college application cycle, the projected melt was much lower than the actual number, which contributed to the large size of the class of 2025.

Furthermore, with the expansion of the Green Line into Medford expected to be complete in 2022, the desirability of the area surrounding Tufts’ campus is likely to increase, prompting a further rise in rent for off-campus housing. Nyomi White, a Medford resident, sees the expansion as a possible “factor in raising [rent] prices because there’s going to be more access [to Boston].” The combination of the overflow of Tufts students into the surrounding housing market in conjunction with the expanding Green Line will likely exacerbate gentrification and rising rent costs in the greater Medford and Somerville area. According to Oesch-Emmel, “The inflation of rent is crazy and not sustainable for members of the community.” He added, “We are

4 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 25, 2021

not really members of the [Medford] community, yet we are renting property.”

White, who lives in an apartment advertised as student housing, has seen the price of their rent increase since moving to the area last year: “[My rent is] $2300 split between three people. That’s what we started on, and then they just added $150 to our rent for the next nine months. Having a nine month rent period and having it go up $150 every nine months is not going to be ideal.”

Furthermore, the changes brought by the expansion of the Green Line could complicate housing in the future for incoming students. Cheyanne Atole, a firstyear, expressed concern that the expansion of the Green Line and increasing competition in the surrounding market will affect the housing prospects of underclassmen in the future. “I’m really worried about my housing for the next few years,” said Atole.

Students are not the only ones concerned with how the expansion will impact living options. “[The Green Line extension] really could be an issue for students, for Medford residents—really everyone who is looking for affordable housing in the neighborhood,” said Bears.

If Tufts finds a permanent solution to the housing crisis, it would alleviate the concerns of both parties. “Having the college experience be combined with the campus [by creating on-campus housing] is better for the future of Tufts, as that is going to ease relationships with Medford [and Somerville] residents,” said Oesch-Emmel.

Though students are quick to point out the tense relationship that off-campus housing creates for Medford and Somerville with Tufts as an institution, the administration believes Tufts has a close-knit relationship with its host communities.

Rocco DiRico, executive director of government and community relations, said in an email that “Tufts works very closely with our host communities on a variety of

issues, including housing, and we support our communities in many ways. Tufts University pays more than a million dollars a year in property taxes and more than 1.4 million dollars in PILOT payments each year,” referring to the “payment in lieu of taxation,” or tax-exemption program, between Tufts and the cities of Medford and Somerville. “Tufts also provides more than 12 million dollars in community benefits to our host communities each year,” DiRico stated.

However, the PILOT program does not directly address the immediate concerns of some Medford and Somerville residents. Edward Beuchert, a West Somerville Neighborhood Association member, drew attention to how Tufts students who are forced to find housing—and accept local landlord’s costly demands—in residential neighborhoods cause the price of rent and property taxes to increase. As Beuchert stated, the high profitability of renting housing to students causes the value of properties to rise, which benefits landlords but harms local community residents. “One reasonable, easy number to use for the annual rent around here for students is $10,000. And [landlords are] able to look at that and say, ‘Well, I can get $120,000 a year in revenue from that.’ And that ends up bidding up the prices of the houses near Tufts to what’s a very bad level,” said Beuchert.

All of these compounding elements of the housing crisis beg the question: If the situation is so dire, what can be done to improve the housing situation on campus? Oesch-Emmel feels that the way to fix the solution, “is [by simply] having more oncampus housing.”

Student advocacy for more on-campus housing was previously led by Tufts Housing League, a student organization specifically created for this purpose. However, since the dissolution of THL in 2019 due to issues of sexual assault and bystander violence, an organized group dedicated to addressing housing issues on campus has not existed.

HOUSING STUDENTS ON CAMPUS SHOULD BE THE PRIORITY, NOT JUST ACCEPTING THEM.

FEATURE

One of THL’s main demands when they existed was for Tufts to build a new dorm. In late April of 2021, Tufts secured $250 million in bonds which, among a slew of other projects, is intended to be used for the construction of a high density, on-campus residence hall for students on the Medford and Somerville campus. According to Collins, the construction of the residence hall is “part of the university’s efforts to increase the percentage of students living on campus, which is currently in the high 60 percent range.”

In regards to the timeline, Collins explained that “[the] work is ongoing.”

Specifically, he noted that the university is “looking at potential locations, the ideal number of residents, the style of units, amenities, and other requirements, all of which will drive the project’s projected cost and dictate potential timelines.”

In an effort to better understand Tufts future expansions, the cities of Medford and Somerville requested that Tufts give them an institutional master plan for future building endeavors. However, this request has been stalled at the State House for a few years. According to Bears, Tufts “students and the community have a lot of shared interests and can work together to hold Tufts accountable to being a responsible partner and responsible institution in our community,” especially when it comes to transparency regarding Tufts’ institutional master plan of future building endeavors. “This is not about Medford versus the students…it would be great if Tufts would actually advocate for institutional master plan legislation and [make] it clear that they want Medford to know what they’re doing,” he added.

In response to sharing future plans with the Medford and Somerville communities, Collins said, “Any new project that the University proposes must go through a rigorous review by the appropriate building department, elected officials and our neighbors. For these reasons, Tufts University opposes any proposal that would weaken our ability to make sound campus planning decisions to carry out our mission,” he said. Still, he mentioned the importance of the community, saying, “Soliciting feedback from our neighbors is an important part of any project that we develop at Tufts.”

DESIGN BY CARINA LO, ART BY KELLY TAN

As concerns surrounding transparency rise, Tufts continues to work on plans for the new residence hall. Although building one dorm will address student concerns and alleviate some of the housing insecurity created by the ever-increasing size of incoming classes, its construction could also take several years. For current students, there is no time to wait.

“No student can function without a room—Tufts will not educate a single addition to the student body if it is not also willing to house them. Housing students on campus should be the priority, not just accepting them,” said first-year Edward Hans.

For years, Tufts has failed to provide large-scale housing solutions, which has led to the current crisis. Shane Woolley (A‘19), a former member of THL, expressed his frustration with this ongoing disregard. “The administration still needs

to be pushed to prioritize a sustainable plan for student housing. In a decadeslong quest for elite university status, Tufts has been putting off needed investments in student quality-of-life infrastructure for a long time,” he said in a written statement. His concerns and desires to see improvement are echoed by current students.

“Housing should be more of an [active] priority for Tufts. The university cannot afford to run the risk of having a single houseless student so long as they claim to operate in the interest of anything worthwhile,” said Hans.

OCTOBER 25, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 5

NEWS

RECOGNITION AND RESPECT:

NATIVE AMERICAN LEGACIES AT TUFTS

By Aroha Mackay Content Warning: Anti-Indigenous racism, defilement of burial sites, genocide.

O

n October 11, Tufts celebrated Indigenous Peoples’ Day (IPD) for the fifth time since the university officially renamed the holiday on Tufts academic calendars in 2016. Starting with commemorating IPD, students and faculty have pushed the university to acknowledge its ties to Indigenous communities, advance scholarship on indigeneity, and draw more Indigenous faculty and students.

This university has been tied to Indigenous people since its founding. Tufts was built in 1852 on the Massachusett, Nipmuc, and Wampanoag tribes’ territories.

The hill Tufts is built on was not an empty plot.

While constructing the reservoir in 1879, previously located on the residential quad, excavators found nine Indigenous people’s skeletons and several artifacts in a burial mound. According to the Concise Encyclopedia of Tufts History, “students scavenged the site for items which were used by many to decorate their dorm rooms.”

Cyrus Kirby, a senior and founding member of the Indigenous Students’ Organization at Tufts , believes celebrating IPD serves as a reminder of this land and the people that lived on it. “At the root of 6 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 25, 2021

the issue is that [IPD alongside land acknowledgment] combats erasure. It combats the history of indigenous peoples being forgotten,” Kirby said.

For the past seven years, students and faculty have worked to change the policy and narrative around Indigenous issues to ensure that IPD celebrations could take place.

In 2014, the Indigenous Peoples’ Day Movement, which had both student and faculty members, pushed Tufts to rename Columbus Day. The Indigenous Peoples’ Day Movement organized several panels, rallies, and petitions leading up to the faculty vote that would determine the name change.

Benya Kraus, a sophomore at the time, told the Tufts Daily, “What we’re trying to do is disrupt that narrative that says that we as a society, as an institution, want to celebrate a history of genocide, pillaging, rape and thievery, and instead disrupt that and replace it with the narrative of the resistance and dignity and culture of indigenous peoples.”

Initially, faculty voted down the 2014 Tufts Community Union resolution to rename the day. Two years later, in 2016, with the support of over 50 student groups and 1200 signatures on their petition, faculty members voted in favor.

Five years later, the 2021 IPD celebration featured four speakers and a performance by The Nettukkusqk Singers, who were present at Tufts’ first IPD event as well. The event was organized by ISOT, and Kirby said that the group was very happy with the event’s success.

Kirby noted that he would like to see more support from the administration in the future. “Tufts hasn’t organized an Indigenous Peoples’ Day event—I feel confident in saying—ever,” Kirby said.

“Going forward, we would like the administration to institutionalize the celebration, so that [it] doesn’t set the burden of

NEWS

organizing the whole event on [Indigenous] students.”

Another important step in recognizing and celebrating Indigenous communities at Tufts was expanding curricular options, allowing students to educate themselves on indigeneity. In 2019, riding on the momentum to get IPD instituted, students and faculty successfully created the Native American and Indigenous Studies minor.

Initially, one of the main obstacles in establishing the minor was the apathy on behalf of the administration and student body towards Indigenous issues on campus. In a 2005 Tufts Daily article, regarding the lack of classes on Native American Studies, James Glaser, the current dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, said “I don’t see it as a big problem… I haven’t heard anyone complain about it.” Glaser said that “resource limitations” hamper the University’s ability to offer “anything and everything.”

Despite pushback by students and professors, this apathy prevailed for many years. In an email to the Tufts Observer, Professor Amahl Bishara, director of Native American and Indigenous Studies, explained that “it took two student petitions over a few years that made clear that this was a pressing priority for students.”

After a 2019 faculty vote approved the minor, students, faculty, and an outside faculty expert worked together to craft a NAIS minor at Tufts.

Darren Lone Fight, a former lecturer at Tufts and member of the Three Affiliated Tribes—comprised of the Mandan, Hidatsa, and Arikara Nations—said the process involved “taking stock of what Indigenous and Indigenous-related knowledge the institution possesses, what it can offer, and how it can make those two categories more robust for the students.”

Bishara said creating a minor is critical because critical Indigenous studies can inspire activism and provide ways of reimagining how we do politics.

“It is urgent to imagine other ways of doing politics first and foremost because Indigenous people have been struggling for centuries for survival and rights, for land on which to thrive,” Bishara said.

“This is a moment where gains in Indigenous rights and recognition are possible.”

The same year the minor was instituted, the TCU Senate unanimously passed a resolution calling on the administration to make an official land acknowledgment.

Though the administration has yet to make an official land acknowledgment, it has since established the land acknowledgment working group.

According to Kirby, acknowledging that people in the US occupy Indigenous land serves as a reminder that these tribes still exist. “People are not aware of these Indigenous issues happening right now. There are still millions of Indigenous people in the US and it’s important to remind people that they are still around, they still have issues, they still have a voice,” Kirby said.

Beyond the Medford campus, the Tufts-owned Loj, operated by the Tufts Mountain Club, is located in the New Hampshire homeland of the Abenaki People. Currently, TMC is working on its own land acknowledgment and intends to reach out to the Abenaki community to support them through direct advocacy and outreach.

In an email to the Observer, Ella Do, the vice president of TMC said, “Just as proximity to people of color doesn’t make you an ally to BIPOC, continuing to recreate in the comfort of a written land statement doesn’t make you an ally to Indigenous communities. While we’re approaching final revisions to our long overdue land acknowledgment, we recognize this is only a first step towards actively reshaping the space we occupy at the Loj in New Hampshire and on-campus.”

The Tufts land acknowledgment group is currently working with Indigenous communities on a land acknowledgment and the creation of an Indigenous Center. The working group is made up of two Indigenous students, including Kirby; administration officials from all four of Tufts’ campuses; and admissions staff.

Regarding why the group has not yet published its land acknowledgment, Kirby said, “the group figured out quickly that for [the land acknowledgment to] not be performative you’d also have to make connections with local Indigenous communities [and] think of policies to help incoming Indigenous students and students on campus. One of those policies

DESIGN BY JOANNA KLESZCZEWSKI, ART BY ANNE HU

would be an Indigenous Center and an Indigenous staff member.”

According to Joseph “JT” Duck, the dean of admissions and enrollment management, the Center for Indigenous and Native Students—which will join the other six identity centers—is in the works, and a job posting for a joint Student Affairs/Admissions staff position was posted October 1.

“The person in this new position will lead the Center AND [sic] play a role in Admissions through building relationships with Native and Indigenous prospective students, with tribal communities, and with Native-serving schools and college access organizations in support of higher education broadly, and Tufts specifically,” Duck said in an official statement to the Observer.

Optimistically, Kirby hopes the group will be able to release a land acknowledgment at the end of the school year.

While he said he is pleased with the current progress, Kirby wants to see more resources for Indigenous students, such as Indigenous-specific mental health counselors, tutors, and help for transitioning into college life in a city like Boston. “If you’re from a reservation and you’re not really used to this type of environment, it can be really jarring,” Kirby said.

Though Tufts has made some progress on Indigenous issues, faculty, administration officials, and Indigenous students all note that more can be done.

“People always ask me what’s the biggest way you can actually help, and I think the easiest way is to learn about what kind of tribes are around back where your home is,” Kirby said. “Try to learn about Indigenous issues happening currently.

Just don’t forget that Indigenous students are around, try to acknowledge them and learn about what they’re going through.”

For more information, please visit @tufts.isot on Instagram

OCTOBER 25, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 7

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FALL

H G U O R H T G IN

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n the midst of a global pandemic, Tufts University has decided to limit students’ access to medical notes while simultaneously mandating them. According to a new policy introduced on October 1, 2021, “neither Health Services nor Counseling and Mental Health Services will provide notes to excuse ill students from midterms or final exams.” Unless Tufts removes its requirement for medical notes, this new policy will only serve to harm chronically ill and low-income students.

The administration has encouraged students to abide by class and department policies regarding missed classes and exams. In addition, they advise sick students to complete the Student Illness Notification form located on SIS. However, the October 1 email notes in bold that “the illness form does not excuse students’ absence, missed coursework, deadlines or exams.” In a period of time where we have seen firsthand how illnesses affect others, 8 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 25, 2021

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Tufts has chosen to take away the guarantee that illness will not impact students’ class performance. Faculty are encouraged—but not required—to request doctor’s notes or medical documentation. The administration seems to rely solely on the good graces of professors and students’ self-advocacy instead of providing tangible ways to ensure that students can get excused from class without academic repercussions.

Michelle Bowdler, executive director of Health and Wellness Services, said in an email that “the [new] policy does not change any practices related to Health Service’s current treatment models, with [the Dean of Student Affairs], the advising deans and others to help students with chronic or extended illness, disability, bereavement, or ongoing mental health concerns.” Instead, the policy allegedly serves to alleviate the stress on Health Services to deal with heightened numbers of students in waiting rooms

OPINION

n and requesting appointments to meet with a clinician. Bowdler stresses that “the needs of ill students are extreme right now and volume and acuity are high.” This is a pressing issue. Given the current climate, Tufts should put money into expanding Health Services, instead of downgrading the services it provides to students.

The new policy emphasizes a “trust-based process,” according to Bowdler, and puts the decision-making between the professor and student, supposedly making room for them to devise a solution together. This solution should work for most students with kind and lenient professors. However, not every professor will abide by this new vague set of guidelines. This becomes especially worrisome when considering that certain professors could become wary of students abusing a “trust-based process.” In the end, some students will fall through the cracks—namely chronically ill and low-income students.

As a chronically ill and immunocompromised student with ulcerative colitis, an autoimmune disorder that impacts my large intestine, this new policy is especially distressing. In order to keep my faulty immune system at bay, I take medicine that suppresses my immune response. In layman’s terms, I get sick—a lot. Along with fellow students struggling with similar diseases, I require more sick days than the average student. But most professors’ absence policies do not provide enough sick days for immunocompromised students. While the Student Accessibility and Academic Resources (StAAR) Center does provide some academic accommodations for students with disabilities, medical notes have always served as a concrete exemption from class. They are a trump card: they take away the worry and pressure of missed coursework and exams while chronically ill students deal with serious medical issues.

While I appreciate that the administration has taken steps to advocate for a “trust-based system,” this sounds like instead of focusing on my health and well-being, I will end up overwhelmed thinking about missed classes and make-up exams. Undergraduate Studies Dean Carmen Lowe explained in an email to the Tufts Observer that “even with the support of an advising dean, the student needs to be involved and take an active role when it comes to planning a strategy for keeping up with academic work.” This puts all the pressure on me to communicate with advising deans and professors about my illness, resulting in increased stress and anxiety that my concerns may still get dismissed. For many chronically ill students, stress both provokes and exacerbates symptoms. In response to students who may be too ill to deal with coordinating with their professors, Dean Lowe suggested discussing other options, such as a medical leave. But for chronically ill students, taking a medical leave every time our symptoms flare is not feasible.

The administration has made it clear that it falls upon students to stand up for themselves, and the last thing any chronically ill person needs is to focus on grappling for extensions while we deal with, frankly, more life-threatening matters.

Low-income students encounter different, but equally important, concerns with this new policy. Many of these students rely on Student Health Services as their primary care option. Limiting these services only further marginalizes a student populaDESIGN BY BAO LU, ART BY KAREN RUIZ

tion that Tufts historically has not assisted. A low-income student who prefers to stay anonymous stated “the logic of refusing to provide [medical] notes in the midst of a pandemic is unclear, especially when in-person activities are back.” They highlight an important point­­­­—Tufts should not look to limit Health Services as they strive to reopen campus. The administration cannot create a safe campus environment without also providing safety nets for students that will inevitably fall ill, whether it be from COVID-19 or another issue.

The student continued by saying, “as a first-generation student, I am still trying to navigate how to use healthcare on campus… With this policy, if I were to need a [medical] note, I would have to go to an off-campus medical office, which is frankly confusing and inconvenient, especially when one considers the transportation logistics and costs.” The administration might assume that professors will stop requiring medical notes but most students encounter at least one or two incredibly strict professors over the course of their education. It should not fall onto lowincome students to have to explain to a professor that going out of their way to get a medical note in order to prove their illness is unreasonable. At the end of the day, any policy that makes something more difficult for some students over others has no place at Tufts. For an institution that prides itself on being progressive, this policy seems antithetical to Tufts’ goals.

Chronically ill and low-income students should hold prominent positions in discussions regarding Student Health Services— not get left behind to fall through the cracks. With that being said, Health Service workers should not have to overextend themselves in order to treat the entire student population. Instead of cutting back, Tufts administration should look into expanding Health Services. Either the administration could hire more staff members or look at how other schools are managing the increase in student medical needs. Many colleges have taken advantage of the turn to telehealth in the pandemic and established partnerships with online mental and physical health platforms. This outsourcing allows schools to continue to provide quality care to students without sacrificing important responsibilities, like providing medical notes. More nurses and providers would allow for more students to both get treated and receive medical notes. If Tufts cares about student health as much as their unending stream of emails suggests, maybe they should try investing in it.

OCTOBER 25, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 9

ARTS & CULTURE

ROCKY HORROR AND AUDIENCE PA R T I C I .. .P A T I O N

By Lee Romaker

I

t’s midnight, and every seat in the movie theater is filled—but this is no midnight premiere. In fact, the film that is about to play has been shown in near-constant release for over four decades, is the longest running theatrical release in history, and has been shown on six continents. The crowd vibrates with antici… pation, despite some having seen the film hundreds of times. The seats are teeming with attendees in black lingerie, fishnets, wigs, and corsets; some are dressed up as the film’s characters while others crossdress; more are simply dressed as their authentic selves.

The lights dim, and a hush falls over the crowd, although not for long. A cast of actors dressed as the film’s characters line up on a stage in front of the screen. A slow bass line plays, and a pair of ruby red lips appears before the audience.

This is a typical scene for a midnight viewing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show, described by the BBC as the first and biggest cult classic film. Based on the 1973 musical production The Rocky Horror Show, the film version made its American premiere at the Westwood Theatre in Los Angeles in 1975. Initially considered a box office failure and shelved, the film was revived in 1976 as a weekly viewing party at Waverly Theatre in New York. What started as playing the movie’s soundtrack before the beginning of the film to generate audience excitement evolved into yelling lines back at the characters, throwing props at the screen, dancing and singing along to the songs, dressing as the characters, and the incorporation of a shadow cast, a cast of actors that act out the film while it is playing. All of these elements transform a movie

10 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 25, 2021

viewing into a celebratory community experience. What started as a box office failure spread across the US and the globe, with weekly showings becoming community gathering spaces for, according to BBC film critic Laruska Ivan-Zadeh, “outcasts, weirdoes, and rejects.”

While Rocky Horror is certainly not famous for its riveting plot, the film does tell a story that underscores many of the ideals of the communities that watch it. The film follows the “hopelessly square” Brad and Janet, a newly engaged couple, as they find themselves stranded in the woods and seeking help in a castle filled with an eccentric cast of aliens. They meet Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a self-described “transvestite” mad scientist who is attempting to create the perfect man, Rocky Horror, for him to sleep with. Musical numbers, chase scenes, a murder, cannibalism, sexy escapades, several transformations, and alternate endings follow. Most notably, the film positions Brad and Janet—a white, American, cisgender, heterosexual couple—as the outsiders and weirdos, while the foreign, sexually fluid castle residents are considered normal.

Rocky Horror follows Brad and Janet as they are sexually liberated (or corrupted, depending how one interprets it) from their strict conformity to gender roles and the expectation of waiting until marriage. While Rocky Horror parodies elements of science fiction and horror movies from the 1930s to the 1960s, it also parodies and defies the gender roles of this period, positioning gender conformity and chastity as restrictions from which to be liberated.

ARTS & CULTURE

The appeal of Rocky Horror, however, hinges more upon its creation of community spaces than its plot. Long time Rocky Horror fan and junior Mich Lewis said, “It’s more about the vibes. I fully did not know the plot of [Rocky Horror] until the third or fourth time going [to live viewings]. It was more about the viewing being an experience and having a space that celebrated Tim Curry [who plays Dr. Frank-N-Furter] and his gender nonconformity.” Frank-N-Furter, the film’s antagonist turned sympathetic antihero, is iconic for his glittering lingerie, tall curly hair, and drag-inspired makeup. Rocky Horror’s celebration of tacky glamour and its characters’ gender nonconformity creates a space for attendees to dress as outrageously as they please or in a way that resists gender norms. This space has been life-saving for some queer people.

Despite parodying black-and-white sci-fi films, Rocky Horror is filled with bright colors and theatrical elements. There are multiple larger-than-life musical numbers, elaborate yet extremely tacky sets, and characters with personalities that fill the entire theater. Rocky Horror’s most famous musical numbers involve either proud proclamations of queer identity (“Sweet Transvestite”) and sexuality (“Touch-A, Touch-A, Touch Me”), or large group numbers that encourage audience participation and merrymaking (“Time Warp”). Viewers not only feel safe to fully express themselves, but are called to sing and dance along and to become a part of grand musical numbers that encourage proud proclamations of sexual nonconformity. Die-hard fan and sophomore Jenna Kaplan said, “Rocky Horror shows dominant sexual norms of American and British society being subverted…

Being in theaters and shadowcasting provides a place for those who participate in those subversions to find a place of belonging and acceptance.”

Most notable about Rocky Horror’s style is its utilization of camp, a style of taste or aesthetic that to define or talk about “is… to betray it,” according to foundational camp scholar Susan Sontag. For the average viewer’s sake, camp is an aesthetic style that is characterized as over-the-top, exaggerated seriousness that fails, marked by high ambition and unsuccessful execution. Jo Michael Rezes, a Tufts PhD candidate and professor of the ExCollege class Camp: Bad Taste, Humor, and Cult Classics, played Frankn-Furter in The Rocky Horror Show at Entropy Theatre in 2019.

They said, “[Rocky Horror] plays with sci-fi and punk rock and excess and filth in a way that makes it camp… Playing Frank-nFurter was one of the greatest joys of my life and I would do it again in a heartbeat.” According to camp scholar Ann Pellegrini,

camp is a form of queer resistance, “asking the audience to take up its share of the pain—and pleasure, too.” Rocky Horror, despite being a thoroughly silly film, tackles infidelity, sexual shame, violence, and even murder. Yet these themes are expressed in such an over-the-top manner that even if audience members emotionally connect with them, they also cannot help but laugh alongside others at the film’s ridiculous nature—therefore experiencing both pain and pleasure.

Perhaps what sets the Rocky Horror experience most apart from other cult classic films is its element of audience participation, specifically the act of audience members yelling callback lines to the screen. The official Rocky Horror audience participation script features over 1000 possible audience callback lines, most of which are punny, dirty, or straight up disrespectful—exactly in the spirit of the show. The raunchy, obnoxious, yet progressive values of a Rocky Horror viewing community are most on display when audience members are yelling callback lines.

In a room full of “outcasts, weirdoes, and rejects,” queer people and outsiders are the ones heckling and causing noise.

These lines may include homophobic slurs, transphobic remarks, or sex-shaming teasing, depending on the local theater.

Whether these offensive lines hold up in a modern context is unclear, but often, these lines are coming out of the mouths of people who have been shamed themselves by these exact words. However, Rezes noted, “When I was doing [The Rocky Horror Show], it was mostly straight white men who were yelling the loudest… I can be embodying this trans character on stage and feel so good about how I’m portraying myself, but the callback lines will be like, ‘What’s in your pants?’ and there’s violence there.” Yelling at the screen and shadow cast may be empowering for the audience or violent in its rhetoric; it may very well be both. Whether this adds or subtracts from the community aspect of Rocky Horror will vary based on the people watching together.

Collective viewership is the crux of the Rocky Horror experience. Kaplan said, “I think what’s special about Rocky Horror is its ability to bring people together. Seeing it live in a theater with other people… really brings the magic of Rocky Horror to life.”

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Rocky Horror’s decadeslong streak was interrupted as theaters around the world were shuttered. Now, as vaccination rates are high in Massachusetts, live viewings and performances of Rocky Horror have been opening up again. After a long period of isolation, the “outcasts, weirdos, and rejects” of the world can finally gather together to do the Time Warp, again!

IN A ROOM FULL OF “OUTCASTS, WEIRDOES, AND REJECTS,” QUEER PEOPLE AND OUTSIDERS ARE THE ONES HECKLING AND CAUSING NOISE.

DESIGN BY JULIA STEINER, ART BY ANNA CORNISH

OCTOBER 25, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 11

POETRY

RHYTHM OF THE RIPTIDE

Anonymous

The waves beat back against my shores, relentless and unforgiving.

Please, not again.

A monotonous metronome of self-destruction.

Eat. Starve. Eat. Starve.

The beat never ceases, a rhythm only rivaled by that of my subconscious: Give. Up. Give. Up. Feel it? Hear it?

It echoes through the chambers of my heart, congealing with every breath, every beat. Pumping in and out, a foe in my core, corrupting my innocence.

The waves never dry, forever heavy and dripping with my guilt.

Oh, how I wish I could part the sea and cease the waves perpetually pouring down my shoulders, forcing me to my knees. My knees that are too weak to stand, too weak to say no. The relentless tide leaves me limp and hollow, with nothing left to give and no will to fight.

The winds are changing.

Happily, sadly, no matter. It’s begun. It started with a seed. A glimpse of the truth. Correction—it truly began with an action, but we dare not utter those words out loud, let alone write them. Like I said, it’s begun. It hasn’t been fixed.

A whisper followed suit, forcing my acceptance. A whisper turned into a conversation. A conversation turned into help. A journey with each step and stride pushing me forward and pulling me back, becoming saturated with tears until my feet are too drenched, too heavy, too unwilling to move another step.

The tears dry, leaving only the salt. Salted silhouettes of evidence, a graveyard of torment, piling higher and higher with each lie that I tell myself. Unprotected by the cliffs, it only takes one blow from the waves, one gust of resentment and hatred for it all to come crumbling down, expelling the stale air from my lungs.

The salt, as dispersed and scattered as my willpower, is left to only be swept up by the cascades, absorbing, demolishing, and refueling the waves. The waves that beat back, a cycle never to be escaped.

Help me escape.

Do you dare?

The sea is treacherous. It’s grim and gray and no place for Little Miss Sunshine. Yet here I stand, balanced precariously on a glass bottle, futilely chasing an elusive fantasy.

It always comes back to the dandelions.

The dandelions and the necklace clasp and the shooting stars and the clock that shows 11:11. It always comes back to the precious wishes, made in vain, a strained wail into the chasm, hoping for an echo back. Hoping the request isn’t engulfed in the darkness. Hoping the flame of pain extinguishes, and with it my despair and desperation.

I listen.

I hear it.

Do you?

I hear my voice bounce back, back, back, but it’s not what I want to hear. It never is.

12 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 25, 2021

POETRY

Regret. That’s what the voice is riddled with. My voice.

I feign fineness, dousing the skepticism in sugar and bad habits. With each day, each thought, the current becomes stronger, pulling me further and further out, adrift and alone.

Did you notice?

Do you?

Will you?

Only time will tell. Time with his own cycles, cruelly defining our lives without consent, forever taking and never giving.

I say I convince myself.

Not true.

I am a fantastic liar. Not good enough. Never good enough. Not for myself.

They still don’t know, do they? They don’t know that when they do, it’s because I let them. Only because I want them to. Because I’m in control. I’m too crazed to relinquish it.

The waves continue to crash. With each landing, more erosion. With each crash and each spray, I helplessly watch as more of myself fractures. Sore stomach and throbbing heart, I don’t know how much more I can withstand. Eyes wide with trepidation, I dread the force of the oncoming tide.

Crash. Splinter. Crash. Fracture. Crash. Shatter. Crash. Goodbye.

I watch, immobile and withdrawn, as I collapse into the water. One part after the other.

Crash.

I glance down. My hands, shaking and tingling, forever betraying my senses, my trust. How dare they?

How dare you?

The tears are ever-flowing. A reservoir never to be depleted, forever fulfilling its duty: filling the ocean, fueling the waves, fracturing my shores.

I can survive this.

I must.

I want to.

But how?

I stare. Gray-azure eyes stare back. They’re mine. How do I know?

I trust.

I’ve never laid eyes on my own eyes. I put my trust, my faith, into the reflections. Are they lying? Are you?

I think I am.

Like I said, a cycle.

A contradiction, yes. But finally the truth is admitted: a cycle, and a cycle worth breaking.

Needing to break.

Will be broken.

[Has been broken.]

DESIGN BY KATE BOWERS, PHOTOGRAPHY BY MISHA MEHTA

OCTOBER 25, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 13

FEATURE

yc

cle y c

- c

le14 TUFTS OBSERVER SEPTEMBER 28, 2020

le

y c c -

&

in&a a g a

gain&a &a

i a g n

DESIGN BY EVELYN ABRAMOWITZ 1. TERRY COLE, CYCLE I, PAINTING 2. TERRY COLE, CYCLE III, PAINTING

i ga n

VOICES

an extended overreaction to a torn edge

M

y mother tells me fondly about her childhood in Guangzhou. As a girl, the bakery auntie handed her plastic bags with sweetheart cakes and egg tarts and told her to share them with her siblings, whom the auntie assigned nicknames: sing muk zai—smart kiddo, fei mui—chubby. On her meandering walks from Saikwan to Dungsaan district, storeowners ducked in and out of their caves, hawking their wares in aggressive, cheerful vernacular. The girls in the schoolyard fell into a rhythmic chant whenever she joined the bouts of competitive jumpsies.

Life at home was interspersed with joyful folk songs. My mother and her mother took turns posing in their glittering rental 16 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 25, 2021

cheongsam. As a teenager, she listened to smuggled CDs from Hong Kong. Anita Mui and Danny Chan were her favorite singers. She watched Television Broadcasts Limited (TVB) programs on the sputtering signal from her basement. Dim sum with friends on weekends were for gossiping about this or that leng zai, or that young bespectacled math teacher everyone pined over.

Is it obvious I romanticize? Hearing the way my mother tells stories, it wasn’t hard for me to encase this Guangzhou in gold foil while growing up—the Guangzhou of the ‘80s that lived and breathed Cantonese, my mother tongue. I was born in Guangzhou, but before I could catch

By Juliette Wu

more than a glimpse of this elusive haven, we moved to neighboring Shenzhen.

Shenzhen was a different story. If there was ever a sense of a self-determining Cantonese culture among the Punti and Tanka boat people, it was quickly unsettled by the top-down transformation of Shenzhen from fishing village to economic center. This led to the subsequent influx of migrant laborers and other newcomers for whom we decided Mandarin would be the lingua franca. It was a wonderful tale of success: the village that became a metropolis overnight. And this transformation would have been painless if we didn’t have to iron out the kinks here and there, the murmurs of a (now anti-modern, anti-urban)

VOICES

language deemed substandard and dialectal. A regretful thing, but surely it was for the common good. If a child spoke Cantonese in class, the teacher would snap at them to speak correctly. To use Cantonese out of class was to regress into everything that was previously rural or ugly about this now resplendent, progressive place, this special economic zone. Parents gave up speaking the language with their children.

There were no longer any games in Cantonese. There were no candies or stinky tofu sold near tennis courts in Cantonese.

There were no schoolyard taunts in Cantonese. As children grew up and no longer spoke the language, they did not transmit it to their own children. Life carries on in Shenzhen, but no longer in Cantonese.

I was excited to return to Guangzhou last summer. The phrases that I learned from my mother and tucked under my tongue—those practiced pitches and greetings, the bakery orders and muttered mgoi je je’s as I’d squeeze through crowds—would finally find their willing ear. A language calls its speech community home, and a speech community calls its language home, so I looked forward to my homecoming.

However, when I stepped off the train and found myself in my mother’s and my birth city, it quickly seemed that few people spoke my mother tongue. If I

DESIGN BY TARA STECKLER, ART BY MADELEINE OH

initiated inquiries in Cantonese, many people stared blankly back. The public announcements sounded in the automated voice of a Standard Chinese speaker. I am not a nativist or xenophobe; I do not think that migrant laborers should assimilate and be consigned to a non-existence by the snobbish exclusion of regional language speakers, but what I saw was that migrants and locals alike defaulted to Mandarin, that city officials scrubbed the streets clean of vernacular. My mother’s wistful stories fell away to reveal that Guangzhou had not been the bastion of what she calls Guangzhou-hua—Canton City-speak.

Please understand the pain of language loss. Individual language loss is something I’ve experienced (the way English cannibalizes Cantonese and Mandarin in my head), but it doesn’t compare to collective language loss. It’s something invisible and unnoticed; it’s when members of your own speech community say that language shifts are “organic’’ and that speaking perfect, non-accented Mandarin without fangyan weighing it down is a marker of achievement. It’s the myth of subtractive bilingualism. It’s when they think that to cast off the dredges of a heritage language is to become urban, to climb a social ladder, to fill the mold of a respectable, globalized citizen. It’s when

other Chinese people say I’m overreacting, that I’m making a problem out of nothing, that Cantonese is alive and well—just look at Hong Kong—and the dwindling numbers of speakers in the Mainland is just an unfortunate sacrifice in the re-making of Modern China. It’s when you walk around Guangzhou and nothing sounds familiar. It’s when everything hip or cool (read: mass-mediated) in a language community becomes everything non-local and non-Cantonese. It’s when a mother tongue becomes simply just a mother tongue; something you speak exclusively with your mother, until she greys and grows weaker and her language, too, gives away to hereditary dementia. It’s a taxi drive from Saikwan to Dungsaan (now: Xiguan and Dongshan) when the driver mutters, “Oh, my children don’t speak Cantonese, what was the point of teaching them anyway?

What resources are there with which to learn? The wife is busy slaving away at her factory job, and the grandparents are too tired and old to bother. The schools want everyone to speak correctly. To be a citizen of China, you must speak Mandarin.”

It’s the words in the language you learned from a stubbornly Cantonese mother—the words you’d practice when you anticipated that “homecoming”—staying tucked away and unused. In just a few decades, “dialect” will become a token of a China that once

OCTOBER 25, 2021

TUFTS OBSERVER 17

VOICES

was, a rusted artifact on some antiquarian collector’s shelf.

No one denies that Mandarin was necessary as the uniting language. Mandarin was central to this n at i on - bu i l d i ng project. It was the medium of modernization, the major instrument of some of the country’s most impressive achievements. Because of this newly enshrined national language, we saw an unprecedented reduction in illiteracy; we saw its use in diplomacy and in the forging of global interconnectedness.

But the point is not about Mandarin’s greatness or achievements or even usefulness. In extolling the virtues of Mandarin-asmodernization, we became nonchalant about the demise of those provincial soundscapes and the collective memory they carried.

In the middle of my second year, I was fortunate enough to join an art exhibition hosted by Tisch College. My piece, entitled Mandarin Only, is an illustration of a high school classroom setting with an official slogan in red characters superimposed, roughly translated as “Please speak only Mandarin; please write in only Standard Chinese.” My artist statement introduces the topic of language assimilation policy in education, in which public schools serve as a pragmatic site for the prevailing language ideology that favors 18 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 25, 2021

a singular national language, Mandarin, over all other spoken varieties of Chinese.

Last month, I walked by the wall inside Barnum Hall on which my artwork was exhibited and discovered that someone tore up my artist statement and smeared the margins in red. I’m no longer angry. I’m confused, maybe—confused about how an art piece celebrating language diversity bothered them so much, confused that they decided to breach the sanctified (mythologized, sure) realm of artistic freedom, confused about how students of color in America would rather pit ourselves against each other or engage in auto-exclusion than—god, imagine—engaging in community-making and explorations in solidarity. But I’m not angry anymore. I think I get it.

Maybe some think being a patriot means aligning oneself with the myth of a monocultural, monolingual China. Recalling the image of the beloved motherland, they see something that has triumphed against the ravages of colonialism, regime change, and CIA intervention. They don’t

as I learn from this mistake. She says: why won’t you keep your head down, I told you not to make noise, even for what you believe in. She says: your job is to reach as many people as possible; your every act and spoken word should service the image we uphold of “the Chinese.” In a time fraught with sinophobic fear-mongering, with geopolitical tensions, with anti-Asian sentiment, isn’t your obligation to your people? Isn’t it your duty to represent your entire community, when the fact is that someone’s negative opinion of China is so easily extrapolated from the disobedient individual?

Some of my classmates at Tufts have said the same thing. My duty was to be a representative first. I failed to represent the Chinese community at Tufts to be singularly excellent, a model community, and not a brainwashed and propagandized crowd. If I had a personal opinion, I should’ve kept silent rather than throwing the rest of us under the bus. I should’ve used softer language, or else “they” will think “we” are combative and

IT’S WHEN A MOTHER TONGUE BECOMES SIMPLY JUST A MOTHER TONGUE: SOMETHING YOU SPEAK EXCLUSIVELY WITH YOUR MOTHER, UNTIL SHE GREYS AND GROWS WEAKER AND HER LANGUAGE, TOO, GIVES WAY TO HEREDITARY DEMENTIA. agree that modern nation-states are flimsy constructions. Or maybe it hasn’t occurred to them that “Chineseness” looks different for everyone who identifies as Chinese.

Maybe they think identity is taxonomical, a cage, measured by authoritative standards, rather than what it could be—an empathetic network of meaning between those navigating markers of sameness and difference. They think identity is a fixed matter of “being,” rather than a pragmatic, subjective process of “becoming.”

It took me a month to process things, but I finally wrote something stronglyworded in retaliation, printed 50 copies, and placed them around the most visible parts of campus. Today it’s my mother that’s the one telling me I shouldn’t have posted those flyers. That I made a drastically wrong move and that she isn’t angry, as long

radical. Someone in particular said that I was defaming China, that I was exaggerating the extent to which public schools “shame and punish” their students for speaking non-Mandarin fangyan. (There is no exaggeration. If they only talked to anyone outside of those that have successfully self-assimilated, those that “made it” with their perfect monolingualism, they would know that it isn’t an exaggeration.)

I’m not one for cliches. But in any case, diversity is the answer. Language diversity, obviously. Diversity of political opinion in any imaginary community (à la Benedict Anderson) we call “Chinese” or “China.”

Heteroglossia. Not just a tolerance for, but also a celebration of everything non-standard. In short: let people be.

POETRY

daybreak

By Julia Steiner

I must hold on to this warmth, but delicately, like a bumblebee in cupped palms Flitting from crease to crease Wary That its yellow touch Will make me too keen of its existence Then, I might disturb its quiet tumbling Let its comforting hums turn to a searing pinch My hands can’t be a forever home Better to suspend myself in these fragile clouds, and keep my mind on Cake with maple buttercream And trees draped in sunsets Golden eyes Giving away hidden smiles How many months have slid by, Without the infinity of lush, red grass?

Goodness rests in the corners of my lips, two points drawing upwards Congratulating the moon and my eyes for catching bluebirds in their scope Both radiating with a knowing glow But are only reflections Of the light around them

DESIGN BY KATE BOWERS, ART BY IZZY LARSEN

OCTOBER 25, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 19

ARTS & CILTURE

STRIKE UP THE BAND

THE RETURN OF LIVE MUSIC

By Ella Fasciano

L

ive music is finally returning after being on pause for over a year. However, as artists start filling up theater calendars and the sounds of music start filling the streets, concerts are taking on a new shape. Masks, proof of vaccination, or a negative COVID test are just some of the precautions venues are taking to protect concert-goers as they enjoy bands again.

Venues are continuously updating their safety procedures in response to changing COVID guidelines. Michael Cambron, a senior who has worked the door at venues such as ONCE Somerville and The Crystal Ballroom at the Somerville Theatre, saw firsthand how COVID policies have impacted concert experiences.

While he was working at ONCE Somerville this summer, the venue started operating fully outdoors. Cambron explained over email that part of his job was to take people’s temperatures and ask about their vaccination status. If vaccinated, patrons were not required to wear masks, while unvaccinated individuals had to mask up.

The return to in-person events has not been without challenges. Remembering one difficult interaction, Cambron said, “Some guy refused to let me take his temp[erature], which was required for entry. He tried to cite that since he was on public property, I had no right to perform a medical procedure on him. This was total bullshit of course—ONCE is a private music venue that obviously has the right to set its own rules and regulations about COVID. He let me take his temp[erature] after I made him wait at the gate to the venue for 15 minutes.”

The adjustment to live crowds has been on musicians’ minds as well. For senior Ella McDonald, a solo artist, the energy of a live show is something Zoom was never able to capture. They said, “For me, it’s been really, really exciting to just be reminded of what I love about music and performing, and just the experience of performing live shows again. Being able to see the live response of audiences, being able to see the reactions on people’s faces, being able to feel the energy in the room and respond to it and pick what to play next and change my energy throughout a song has been really, really wonderful.” She said that masked audiences were worth the energy of a live crowd: “To be able to do shows outside, even if you’re masked… it’s been such an improvement.”

Tufts students can also expect to hear many more concerts back on campus in the coming weeks. Zoe McKeown, a junior

20 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 25, 2021

and the General Manager of WMFO, Tufts’ freeform radio station, talked about planning events later this semester with Tufts bands. Because WMFO is a student organization, she explained that the group must follow Tufts COVID policies. McKeown said over email, “For the time being and in the spring, we will do outdoor events, and when it’s cold we will have concerts inside with masks and reduced capacity. It’s not rocket science. We know how eager people are to see live music, and we want to provide that safely in any way we can.”

Alongside WMFO, the Music Department is also figuring out how to plan concerts this semester. Anna Griffis, the Coordinator of Music Public Relations and Box Office at the Granoff Music Center, said over email that the department is planning programs in a whole new way to “ensure safety during performances in Granoff. Obviously, there’s the mask mandate, so all

ARTS & CULUTRE

performers are masked and those playing winds and brass instruments and singing are wearing special performance PPE and using instruments bags. All performers that are not part of the Tufts Community must submit proof of vaccination.” She further explained that after much consideration, the department decided to have event attendance be limited to people with Tufts IDs, but she said, “We are providing a livestream of every event in Granoff, which is free and available to anyone through our Live Streaming Page.” Through this hybrid format, students and community members alike can enjoy a variety of live music events the department is putting on, including their Sunday Concert Series and other specialty concerts throughout the week.

However and wherever live music is experienced, there has always been something indescribable about it, according to Tufts English and Music Professor Michael Ullman. He described over email many memorable concerts, including one of his first live music experiences that, decades later, still sticks with him. Ullman described his experience seeing Louis Armstrong with his friend when they were teenagers. He explained that he had listened to a couple Armstrong records before, but nothing could prepare him for the experience.

“His trumpet sound was so rich, not at all brassy, but powerful. Everyone else stood in front of a microphone but he stood back and blew into the sky. I felt like I was in the presence of some benevolent god,” Ullman said. “I still remember just the first syllable: ‘I’… it was such a complex sound. So here was a legend coming to life. It was magic.” Memories of live music seem to be a big part of the concert going experience, and even as students experience music in new, COVID-safe ways, memories are still being made.

While venues try their hardest to be COVID-safe, there is still some fear present among audiences. Sophomore Lucy Millman said over email that she saw her first concert since the pandemic about two weeks ago. Her experience of seeing Dr. Dog with some of her friends was “exciting and scary, all at the same time.” She said, “I was super stoked to be at a concert again. I’d be lying if I said it felt the same for me though. I’m still a bit paranoid and going to a large event was a bit scary, even though masks were required.” Millman explained that even though she has been vaccinated for a while, she, like many people, is easing her way back into crowded experiences. “Some things have started to feel okay again, but there are still some things I’m a little nervous about… I’m so

DESIGN BY JULIA STEINER, ART BY AVRIL LYNCH

excited to try and return to some normalcy, but I think I’m still just figuring out how I feel and what feels right for me, as well as being safe and respectful.”

Sophomore Gio Torres-Lorenzotti went to their first concert since the pandemic over the summer in Uruguay when they saw The Backseat Lovers. She described the feeling as “surreal” and remembered not wanting to take the moment for granted. “That energy—feeling even more excited to just be in a room filled with people, not worrying about any consequence, even though we probably should still have been worrying about some sort of consequence, but nothing else mattered but just being present,” she said. After missing live music for so long, it is clear that people are trying to soak up every moment a concert has to offer.

As venues, musicians, and concert-goers try to figure out the balance between presenting in-person events and safety, the excitement of in-person shows is still as powerful as ever. The experience of being in a crowd seems to be a fundamental feeling that is hard to come by in any other way.

McKeown describes being “in a sea of people” at a concert as having a “deeply spiritual side.” She said, “Through this collective experience, you can tap into that ‘universal oneness,’ and many of your fears and problems can feel a whole lot smaller. I think people miss this feeling of unity, and concerts can help with all the pent up loneliness.” Ullman also talked about this time where “many of us have been isolated in an unprecedented way” having an effect on the draw of live music today. He said, “The audience is part of any performance: their responses matter… a person in an audience feels in some way like a co-creator and feels some solidarity with the others in the audience who share similar tastes.” Millman said that live music will always be special because “seeing a band you really love and seeing them with people you really love, is in my opinion, one of the happiest moments you can have.”

In the midst of an ongoing, ever-changing pandemic, live music has proven itself as a potent, connecting force.

Making unforgettable memories and the experience of being a part of a crowd have always been fundamental to live music. It is clear that even with the uncertainty and new safety precautions that this pandemic presents, those core parts of live music will never disappear.

OCTOBER 25, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 21

CAMPUS

TOUGH TRANSITIONS:

TUFTS STUDENTS COPE WITH THE CHALLENGES OF AN IN-PERSON SEMESTER

By Yumei Lin

A

fter workplaces and academic institutions shifted online early last year, people faced new challenges and anxieties in all aspects of life. Although a return to in-person events is a welcome shift from quarantine, anxieties have not lifted, but rather changed in nature.

“I’m feeling very tired this semester, and I think it’s because I’m still trying to readjust to having in person classes again,” said junior Raynor Ahlstrin-Muniec in a written message. His fatigue is not unique; instead, it seems to represent a larger trend of student burnout. Junior Raga Bhagavathi said also via a written message, “Every single person I’ve talked to describes their emotions the same way… feeling overwhelmed and scatterbrained, constantly feeling at the edge of missing something, [and] feeling overscheduled to the point where I know it’s a bigger theme than just on an individual level.”

In an email to the Tufts Observer, Julie Ross, the director of Tufts Counseling and Mental Health Services , said, “I know Health Services is very busy and

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at CMHS we have a very high volume of students seeking counseling support.” That sentiment is echoed by student leadership from Ears for Peers, a student-run anonymous and confidential helpline on Tufts campus, who shared that the volume of calls has increased this semester in comparison to last.

“Every single person I’ve talked to describes their emotions the same way...feeling overwhelmed and scatterbrained, constantly feeling at the edge of missing something, [and] feeling overscheduled to the point where I know it’s a bigger theme than just on an individual level.”

Part of what may be driving these fears is a lack of academic flexibility in a time of heightened stress. One student, who wished to remain anonymous, said, “I worry that If I ever get sick, or if I get COVID and I have to be in my house for ten

days… I’m going to miss out on my classes.” While some professors have stated that they intend to find ways to work around health recommendations, students often feel like that’s not a guarantee.

The anonymous student continued, “Some teachers have been great about it.

They say if you miss class, they’ll meet with you one-on-one, but at the same time, it’s still a little bit stressful knowing that there’s no backup.”

In a university-wide email on October 1, the undergraduate advising deans said that “it is up to the individual instructor on how they will manage their course and provide flexibility.” While the deans left the degree of flexibility up to professors, students were told not to attend classes or take exams when diagnosed with COVID-19 or exhibiting symptoms that could be attributed to COVID-19.

Ross stated that “at universities across the country, including Tufts, academic stress has increased significantly since the pandemic began. Several studies have gathered data indicating that students are struggling more with concentration, motivation, attention, and focus on academic work.” A survey done by a Boston University researcher indicated that the pandemic is worsening anxiety and depression rates among college students, which in turn, negatively impacts their coursework.

Those issues haven’t gone away with the resumption of in-person classes; rather,

CAMPUS

the lack of flexibility is creating a new set of barriers for students as they head back into the classrooms.

Students have also found that academic pressure itself has been high. Ahlstrin-Muniec said, “It’s been a constant influx of homework—the kind professors give when they think their class is the only one that gives homework.” Ross said that professors and the administration can assist students by offering flexibility and by being understanding of the weight placed on students. “Showing students that you understand that your class is just one of the many things students are juggling right now is also helpful,” Ross said.

Academics aren’t the only thing that students are struggling with. As Tufts transitions back into in-person classes and events, students’ anxieties are also shifting.

Ross says that she has observed “an uptick in social anxiety since in-person classes and events resumed,” in addition to health anxiety as students grapple with living in residential communities where people may have vastly different health comfort levels. “Some of my friends and roommates are completely comfortable going back into huge, packed, party-like settings as if COVID is not a threat anymore,” said junior Elliot Koeppel through a written message. “It seems like now people think you’re overly cautious or ridiculous for continuing to worry.”

While some students have found aspects of in-person interactions anxiety-provoking, others have found them beneficial. Senior Maitreyi Kale said via email that she’s glad in-person classes have resumed, saying, “I did not get much out of Zoom lectures last year, so I’m glad to have in-class discussions and interactions again.” While in-person lectures have enhanced learning, the addition of in-person socialization has added a new layer to college for students to navigate. Koeppel said, “I feel like I’ve become rusty at balancing work and life, since time over the last year and a half was spent working much more than doing social things or being part of groups.”

Some students feel that the difficulty with this transition is being overlooked.

DESIGN BY EMMA DAVIS, ART BY MADELEINE OH

Bhagavathi said, “It’s insane to expect people to be completely fine and normal with all inperson classes, normal workloads, heavy social interaction… after a year and a half of sitting alone indoors with most of our interactions happening over Zoom.”

CMHS has made several adjustments to their programming in light of the challenges brought on by the pandemic, such as Project Connect, a program where students can meet their peers and build friendships, designed to facilitate and build community on campus. Ross said, “Connections with others are a protective factor in mental wellness, so we are very excited to be able to offer this to our students.” While all events are still virtual, CMHS has made efforts to reach out to students, whether through social media or their Mental Health Ambassadors program. But students still say that more could be done.

Kale said, “I personally think the administration could do more to support niche populations such as international students. As a student from India, I have not been home [or] seen my family in nearly a

year… I believe CMHS has a support group for international students, but it meets infrequently and at an inconvenient time during which most students have classes.”

The past 19 months have been a challenge for all, and Ross said that administrators and professors “acknowledg[ing] the collective trauma of the pandemic” and the toll that it has taken on students makes them feel more supported.

“Compassion and validation are important,” said Ross. “I have one professor this semester who has brought up on multiple occasions how difficult what we’re going through is, and how everyone should give themselves more credit because this isn’t easy for anyone,” Bhagavathi said. “I wish more professors/administrators [sic] were willing to have those kinds of conversations with us.”

OCTOBER 25, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 23

VOICES

delirium from the

By Mariana Janer Agrelot

I

was sitting in my grandparents’ living room listening to the local nightly news when a reporter with a brown bob and wide eyes announced: “The tropical storm has turned into a Category 5 hurricane. It is called ‘Hurricane Maria.’”

The screens went yellow, blue, and red with swirls akin to Van Gogh. The radios were on all over the house and new batteries were bought and stored for when the ones in use failed. There was barking and yelling as water kept pouring and pouring from every orifice in the house. I could hear my dementia-ridden great-grandmother screeching and fighting from the other room, where I had to frantically run to hold her down at times to make sure she did not fall. The signal of the battery-powered radio in her room was scattered as the monotone voice of the newscaster became background noise. My grandma would talk incoherently for hours, screaming in anguish. Other times it would be completely rational things: “I want to go home, please take me home,” but we couldn’t take her home; we couldn’t even leave the house because the roads were blocked and looters were ravaging the city.

In the longevity of the damned night, I began to hear new noises. The battery-powered flashlight by my bed emanated

24 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTOBER 25, 2021 24 TUFTS OBSERVER OCTO-

a cranky, mustard yellow noise, screeching as if it were begging to be turned off.

I didn’t dare turn off that flashlight. I felt like I was five again and completely afraid of the dark. I was sleepless in the aftermath of the hurricane, in the pitch black, sweaty, sticky nights. Before the hurricane, I hadn’t known what real wind sounded like. It is not the mere swooshes of a light breeze; it is arrows laying siege to my house.

It happened so many years ago that I don’t think anyone cares anymore. It is not on the news, and therefore not on the daily minds of the American people. Even while writing this I feel like I’m complaining, milking a subject that was once heavily discussed only to promote somebody’s political agenda. Puerto Ricans are citizens of America; our passports say it. But suddenly, whenever my trauma was triggered, I was not an American citizen anymore. I was just a childish Puerto Rican, ungrateful for all the slapdash aid that the American government had given the island. Yet, this aid didn’t help that, with every daily action, I felt like screaming at the top of my lungs out of pure fear. Children like me were left in a state of emotional daze, forced to move on quickly and focus on the future.

We weren’t going to achieve progress if I cried. We all wanted to go back to a sense of normalcy so fast that we stunted our emotional growth. I am angry at my school for making me go back so quickly, to feel sweat dripping down into my laboratory notebooks in a drowsy,

unincorporated us territory

asphyxiating uniform. I am angry at my friends and colleagues and family members and the government and mental health services and colonialism and imperialism and the American citizenry. I am angry at you. I am angry at myself. Maybe the people close to me are angry at me too.

Where are we now? What normalcy have we achieved? We have been consumed with chaos for nearly four years and we are still unable to come to terms with the hurricaine’s aftermath. The summer of 2019 was the climax of our anger towards the local and US governments.

We ousted the government in a two week long protest when one million people took to the streets. Then, two successive earthquakes startled an already traumatized nation. Now, there are blackouts every day due to a corrupt deal between the US government, our colonial administration, and some money-hungry bondholder grabbers who privatized our already detrimental local power authority. So, in the end, isn’t our quality of life still exactly the same as when the hurricane hit? Was it worth it to move on so fast when no one was ready to accept reality? They’re still there, those same people on top of the castle, and the United States government is selling political positions and cutting up our island like a cake. How can we continue to support the same damn people who created so much suffering?

I think I was in a state where I completely denied my trauma, and now that I am aware, I need to put the pieces back together and come to terms with everything I went

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VOICES

through. How is it that every September 20 I mourn the loss of 4,654 people in complete silence? How could I forget the greatest natural disaster I’ve ever witnessed? I have yet to find answers or a way to come to terms with it all.

I broke it down once and realized I was one of the lucky few from that fateful day; my house did not collapse on me, and my family survived in one piece. But I still can’t help seeing those yellow, red, and blue swirls on TV and being filled with raging anger and pain. Whenever I smell diesel, I can’t help but fall back into a similar state of delirium. Whenever I hear the wind hit my windows, my back shoots straight up. I do not want to remember this event at all, but it hovers over me every day, at times leaving me speechless. A man once asked me if the “hurricane got my tongue.” It did, and I’m tired.

OCTOBER 25, 2021 TUFTS OBSERVER 25

OPINION

ANTI-CAPITALISM IS NOT A METAPHOR

By Amanda Westlake

26 26 TUFTS TUFTSOBSERVER OBSERVER SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 25,28,2021 2020

OPINION

“H

ow many of you support capitalism?” a student comedian asked the crowd at a recent Tufts Stand-Up Comedy Collective show. There were a few scattered yells, but the audience was largely silent. Here at Tufts, most students are proud anti-capitalists and jump at the opportunity to bring up Marx both in class and at house parties. They’ll drop words like “praxis” and “bourgeoisie”—before pivoting to how they “summered” in southern France or lost their favorite Canada Goose jacket at a frat party. Tufts students’ supposed ideologies are far to the left of the neoliberal Massachusetts norm, but many of those who embrace communist rhetoric also belong to society’s most powerful economic classes. For middle- and upper-class white people, ideology is meaningless unless it’s enacted with consistent, uncomfortable, and tangible anti-capitalist actions.

Last year in my Introduction to Race, Colonialism, and Diaspora course, our very first assigned reading was “Decolonization is Not a Metaphor” by Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang. The piece tackles the fact that the language of decolonization is often used by institutions that do not do decolonial work and, in fact, actively perpetuate colonialism as predominantly white institutions on stolen Indigenous land. As much as universities, institutions, and individuals speak about the importance of decolonization, their actions often tell a different story. Tuck and Yang call this a “settler move to innocence,” a way to alleviate guilt while still maintaining oppressive institutional power. Tufts, for instance, claims to have a mission to become an anti-racist institution, yet it exists on the former slave-holding plantation Ten Hills Farm; occupies Massachusett, Nipmuc, and Wompanoag land; perpetuates gentrification in Boston’s Chinatown; and has an extraordinarily long history of discrimination against Black, Indigenous, and FirstGeneration and Low-Income students, making the administration’s words a direct contradiction to their actions.

Tuck and Yang’s reading stayed with me long after that class.

It pushed me to think further about the difference between words and actions, and the tension that exists in the space between what we say and what we do. I’ve always believed in the power of language, but just as words can affirm, uplift, and bring justice, they can also obfuscate the truth, distort facts, and hide a malicious, harmful reality.

I firmly believe that anti-capitalism is the only moral economic view to have. The US’ form of extractive capitalism, which benefits only the wealthy and violently subdues the working class, is fundamentally indefensible. A system that props up a rich, mostly white elite while others struggle to find food, healthcare, security, and shelter is not any kind of system that I want to live in. I also see privilege and class as systems that are inherently intersectional, especially with race, but also with gender, sexuality, ability, and every other complex identity.

However, I no longer believe that holding even the strongest anti-capitalist beliefs is enough.

Acknowledging wealth, privilege, and unequal amounts of power relative to others can be awkward, shameful, and comes without any clear guidelines or rules. It’s easy to claim powerlessness, come up with justifications not to act, or refuse to acknowledge a reality where you have the ability to choose. It’s true for race and anti-racism, for settlers grappling with decolonization, and it’s true for class, too.

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It’s extraordinarily easy to label yourself an anti-capitalist, socialist, communist, or Marxist at a university where the majority of students share those ideas. But radical opposition to capitalism, by definition, should not be easy for the wealthy. And it shouldn’t be comfortable, either materially or immaterially.

Leftist circles don’t usually focus on personal responsibility for injustice, instead casting blame on greedy billionaires, ruthless corporations, and our irreparably broken systems of economics, policing, education, housing, and more. I don’t disagree with any of that; it makes sense that we’ve pushed back against a narrative that tells us that the climate crisis is caused by forgetting to recycle or that debt is a moral failure instead of a societal one. But only criticizing systems can also be a way out of personal accountability. Unjust systems are upheld by people who are complicit in them, and the people who are the most complicit in US capitalism are the white and wealthy.

WHEN YOU INCORPORATE EVEN SMALL REVOLUTIONARY ACTIONS INTO YOUR EVERYDAY LIFE, IDEAOLOGY CEASES TO BE AN EMPTY METAPHOR AND STARTS TO BECOME REALITY. THAT’S PRAXIS. For the rich and privileged, anti-capitalist ideology calls for something more than words and thoughts. It demands that the wealthy become class traitors and asks that they refuse to be complicit in a system that benefits them. To be against capitalism as a person with wealth is to recognize that your material comfort stems from historical systems of oppression and continues at a direct cost of human suffering—anti-capitalism means choosing to reject this privilege in favor of justice, making sacrifices in the process. It’s not comfortable, but it is necessary.

Of course, not everyone can afford to redistribute wealth, and many students at Tufts do not have generational wealth in the first place. FGLI students do not need to do anything to prove their commitment to anti-capitalism. However, the truth is that most of our peers align more closely with the owning class than with the working class: in a 2017 New York Times Upshot study of 2,395 colleges throughout the country, Tufts was found to be the tenth most inequitable.

More students at this school come from the top one percent than the bottom 60 percent, an absurd but believable statistic found by the study. That breaks down to 18.6 percent of students who come from families in the top one percent, as opposed to just 11.8 percent of students who are from families in the bottom 60 percent. The average parental income of Tufts students is​​ $224,800, an amount that’s far above the US median household income average of $68,703 in 2019. The collective wealth possessed by the student body is enormous. This means that if we’re going to talk about anti-capitalism, there has to be real action to back it up beyond tweets, discussion sections, and book clubs.

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OPINION

Otherwise, it’s simply an elaborate farce comparable to the “settler moves to innocence” that Tuck and Yang describe, serving only to make wealthy people feel better about themselves while helping absolutely no one.

Here are some things that are easy: calling yourself a socialist in your political science seminar. Reposting an infographic on your Instagram story. Asking other people to redistribute wealth—which I recognize is what I’m doing here. Here are some things that are hard: redistributing more money than you’re comfortable with to a mutual aid fund on a monthly basis. Joining a radical anti-capitalist, anti-racist, or abolitionist organization and committing to it, even without recognition. Showing up when you’re asked to show up, not just when it’s convenient, and doing the hard, unglamorous work. Listening to BIPOC and FGLI peers when they talk about their experiences, and centering them instead of yourself. Pushing yourself out of your comfort zone to do a little bit more, instead of agonizing endlessly over whether or not the specific amount of privilege you have necessitates the moral obligation to. Making a sacrifice, even if it’s a small one.

These “difficult” steps are the only ones that will improve the material conditions of the working class, the goal of anti-capitalism—as a leftist, if you’re not doing that but could, then what are you even doing? Anti-capitalism is not a metaphor, and neither are decolonization or anti-racism. Ideologies aren’t supposed to be theories in a vacuum; they’re blueprints designed to be put into practice. When you incorporate even small revolutionary actions into your everyday life, ideology ceases to be an empty metaphor and starts to become reality. That’s praxis.

This is not a judgment of who you are or what you have.

That’s something only you can know. But if you’re reading this as somebody with access to generational wealth or disposable income, especially if you’re white, I’m asking you to join me in going a step further to interrogate our personal choices, the impact that we have on our community, and the ability we have to change that impact for the better. If you truly support anti-capitalism, then you must support a transition to a just economic system, and that system cannot exist without sacrifices from all who currently possess any amount of wealth. That includes me—and statistically, that probably includes you, too.

To redistribute wealth to local community members right now, send money to Mutual Aid Medford and Somerville at mutualaidmamas.com.

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PHOTOS BY SOFIA PRETELL