Fall 2017 Issue 5

page 26 - The ‘Poor’ Aesthetic

O B S E R V

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VOL. CXXXV ISSUE 5

#ARTIFICIALITY

page 28 - From the Mixed Up Files

page 5 - An Open Letter to the Dance Program

T U F T S

STAFF

Table of Contents

EDITOR IN CHIEF Ben Kesslen MANAGING EDITOR Carissa Fleury CREATIVE DIRECTOR Kyle Scott PRODUCTION MANAGER Chase Conley FEATURES Henry Jani NEWS Ale Benjamin Vivian Tam OPINION Emmett Pinsky Merissa Jaye

‘Artificiality’

As we grow older, we start to realize that the things we once knew to be true are artificial, constructed, and sometimes, just plain fake. We unlearn and relearn the way the world has been taught to us—a process that can be difficult and challenging, but also liberatory. This week, as we think about artificiality, we hope to explore these constructions with you, and work together to better understand the often murky differences between real and fake.

ARTS & CULTURE Lena Novins-Montague Jordan Lauf CAMPUS Wilson Wong Julia Press POETRY & PROSE Nasrin Lin Alexandra Strong VOICES Gabriela Bonfiglio STAFF CARTOONIST Ben Rutberg WEB EDITOR Sasha Hulkower COLUMNS Sivi Satchithanandan COLUMNISTS Myisha Majumder Riva Dhamala Britt PHOTO DIRECTOR Abigail Barton PHOTO TEAM Priyanka Padidam Roxanne Zhang LEAD PHOTOGRAPHER Jordan Delawder

November 20, 2017 Volume CXxxv, Issue 5 Tufts observer, since 1895 Tufts’ student magazine

2 5

FEATURE Converting to the Semester-Hour Unit

by Lena Novins-Montague

CAMPUS An Open Letter:

By Students of color of the Tufts Dance Dept

OPINION

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We are what we waste

ART DIRECTORS Annie Roome Nina Hofkosh-Hulbert LEAD ARTISTS Jake Rochford Nicole Cohen MULTIMEDIA DIRECTOR Kayden Mimmack

10 NEWS

by Myisha Majumder

12

by Alexandra Strong

By Josh Cohen & Rebecca Redelmeier

VIDEO DIRECTOR Aaron Watts PODCAST DIRECTOR Evie Bellew PUBLICITY DIRECTORS Alyssa Bourne-Peters Ashley Miller

AI In Our Image

COVER: PHOTO BY ANNAHSTASIA IFEOMA ENUKE | GRAPHIC DESIGN: KYLE V. SCOTT

untitled

poetry

1 1 2

MULTIMEDIA TEAM Deanna Baris Peter Lam Hans Tercek

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b&W

e

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INSET

17 18 20

Poetry REASONS I DON’T LIKE TO HUG PEOPLE I ONLY KIND OF KNOW

by Emily Chu

Arts & Culture No Filter

by Megan Mooney

Opinion Shaking the Foundations

by Gabriela Bonfiglio

22 24 26 28

News Corporatizing health

by Sonya Bhatia & Vivian Tam

Arts & Culture Charged Up

by Juliana Vega

Campus The 'Poor' Aesthetic

by Bethany Kirby

Voices From the Mixed up Files

by Priyanka Padidam

VIDEO TEAM Daniel Jelčić Dylan Kelly Emai Lai PODCAST TEAM Han Lee Issay Matsumoto Sara Bass Max Battle Megan Mooney Izzy Rosenbaum PUBLICITY TEAM Owen Cheung Grant Gebetsberger Ellie McIntosh Sarah Park Amy Tong STAFF WRITERS Kyle Lui Jonathan Innocent Rosy Fitzgerald DESIGNERS Nicole Cohen Erica Levy Anna Stroe Dennis Kim Muna Mohamed LEAD COPY EDITORS Chris Paulino Owen Cheung COPY EDITORS Erin Berja Anita Lam Sonya Bhatia Juliana Vega Niamh Doyle

CONTRIBUTORS Elizabeth Brooke Sofie Hecht Emma Herdman Madeline Lee Sage Scanlon-Perez Rachel Stein Amy Tong Laura Wolfe

FEATURE

Feature

converting to the semester-hour UNIT reconfiguring academic credits at tufts

By Lena Novins-Montague

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hen the Spring 2018 semester comes to an end, Tufts will officially adopt a semester-hour unit system in place of the current one course, one credit system. Under the current structure, the vast majority of classes are worth one credit. But under the new semester-hour unit configuration, credits are intended to be proportional to the amount of time a class requires per week.

Classes will be worth anywhere from one to five semester-hour units.

This switch is a small part of a national initiative to standardize higher education. Carmen Lowe, Dean of Undergraduate Studies at Tufts, explained that in 2011 the Federal Department of Education became aware of “wild inconsistencies” regarding graduation requirements for undergraduate and graduate degree programs. The department decided that the semester-hour unit was the best way to standardize degree requirements because it clearly denotes how much time a course requires. Philip Carrasco, a M.Ed. student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, researches the origin and implementation of the semester-hour unit as a method of tracking degree completion. Carrasco explained the semester-hour unit’s appeal: “With its standardized definition, the [semester-hour unit] serves as a basic currency among higher education institutions. With increasing numbers of students attending more than one institution in their undergraduate careers, the [semester]-hour unit helps students take their educational experiences wherever they go.”

A federal semester-hour unit represents one hour in class and two hours of homework a week. This means that a three credit class should require three hours of class time and six hours of

homework per week. The department also determined that a student should complete 120 semester-hour units in order to earn a bachelor’s degree. Under the current one course, one credit system, students in the College of Arts and Sciences must complete 34 credits in order to graduate, while students in the School of Engineering must complete 38 credits.

After the Department of Education announced its new standard for degree completion, accreditation institutions were mandated to ensure that the universities were adhering to this new federal standard. The New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC), which accredits Tufts, communicated to the university that under its current system, it was possible for Tufts students to graduate with only 102 semester-hour units, instead of the required 120. In order to retain its status as an accredited university, NEASC said Tufts would have to make a change. Anne Mahoney, the Chair of the Education Policy Committee and a Classics Department Lecturer, explained over email, “Accreditation is what makes your degree count. A school that isn’t accredited is a diploma mill, a rip-off. If we aren’t accredited, then our students are not eligible for federal financial aid, including Pell Grants, federal work-study, and federal student loans. And our researchers would have a harder time applying for federal grants.”

The decision was put to faculty votes in March of 2015. The first vote established that the current system of credit was unsatisfactory and had to be changed. Lowe explained, “Then we had two options. One was the semester-hour unit system, the one we use around the country. The second option was to stick with one class, one credit, but to add different decimal variations like ‘1.75’ and

‘1.5’. The faculty felt that that was too complicated and cumbersome.” The vote came out in favor of semester-hour units.

The difficulty came in assigning semester-hour units to each individual course. Lowe explained that the registrar made a spreadsheet of every single class that is taught at Tufts and then estimated the number of semester-hour units the class should be worth, based on the amount of time spent in class every week.

Each department then reviewed the registrar’s estimates and conducted their own review of the time required for each class. Based on this review, the departments either accepted the semester-hour unit assigned by the registrar or submitted an online petition to explain why the course should be worth a different number of semester-hour units. These petitions were then reviewed by a curriculum committee—one for Arts and Sciences and one for Engineering. Mahoney served on the Arts and Sciences curriculum committee and explained the petition process: “We checked the substance of the claim: is this course really worth four semester-hour units, or more, or fewer? We suggested to some departments that they could ask for more semester-hour units for a class, and to others that they hadn’t justified the number they were asking for.”

The Tufts administration has stated that the new system will make it easier for graduate schools to understand the transcripts of Tufts students, while also enabling students to enroll in a more balanced course load. Once the switch is made to the semester-hour unit system, most classes will count as three credits, some will count as four credits, and a few will be counted as five credits or more.

Full-time students will be required to enroll in a minimum of 12 credits a semes-

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ter, and on average, students will enroll in 15 credits.

Lowe emphasized that current Tufts students’ progression towards graduation will not be affected by the switch. Every class completed before June that was worth one credit will automatically count for four semester-hour units and every half-credit course will count for two semester-hour units. Because of this, credits will be slightly inflated. For example, under the new system, most English classes will be worth three semester-hour units, but an English class taken before June of 2018 will count for four semester-hour units.

Mahoney pointed out that the switch is meant to enhance the typical Tufts education. One notable addition is that of “mini courses.” Under the new system, mini courses will count for one semester-hour unit. Mahoney said, “The idea is that a professor could set up a course that meets one hour a week, to cover just something small. Or you could meet three hours a week but have no homework at all.” Mahoney continued, “I could imagine a one semester-hour unit course on a technical aspect of the Ancient Greek or Latin languages, something useful for students but esoteric enough that they don’t need a whole three semester-hour unit class about it.”

Both Lowe and Mahoney also emphasized that the new system is intended to help students build a more balanced course load. Jake Rochford, a lead artist for the Observer, is a dual degree student at the School of Museum of Fine Arts (SMFA) who is majoring in Science, Technology, and Society at Tufts while also working towards their BFA with a focus on illustration and printmaking at

SMFA. They are “hopeful but also doubtful” that the new system will be able to help students lighten the course loads of students. They said, “Having taken [Introduction to Computer Science] and [Data Structures], I know for a fact that both courses, and other courses on the computer science track, take immense amounts of time and energy for out-ofclass work. However, for SMFA students, out-of-class work could potentially not be reflected by the semester-hour unit credit system because that out-of-class work is either less valued or just less recognized.”

Lowe noted that some computer science classes, and classes like Biology 13 (Cells & Organisms with Lab), will be worth five semester-hour units because they have both a lab and a recitation in addition to a lecture. However, SMFA studio classes that meet for six hours a week and have large amounts of outside work required will likely be worth only four semesterhour units.

The majority of foreign languages and lab sciences will also be worth four semester-hour units. Lowe said, “I think students who take foreign language and lab sciences might be able to take a lighter course load, and students who avoid foreign language and lab sciences might have to take more courses.” Emma Fleisher, a sophomore who is on the pre-medical track and is majoring in Clinical Psychology, thinks that the new system might be an improvement.

She said, “I’ve always thought the way we assign credit now is unfair considering my labs are around three hours and also the preparation for lab and lab reports take up so much time. Other schools measure credits in terms of hours, which I’ve always thought made more sense.”

The switch may affect humanities majors differently than it will affect STEM majors. Maddie Oliff, a sophomore who is double majoring in American Studies and Sociology, speculated that the new system may reflect Tufts’ shifting priorities. She said, “It seems like students in the humanities will have to take closer to five classes to merely have enough credits to graduate. I don’t necessarily think that’s a harmful thing. Breadth is important and I personally have been able to balance five classes. But I think this shows a clear indicator that Tufts, a self-identified liberal arts institution, is trying to value various disciplines over others.” Carrasco said that he thinks the effects of the switch will be minimal. He said, “Having reviewed Tufts academic catalog [The Bulletin] and the information contained within about the implementation, I would not anticipate any change in workload for the average student…the [semester]-hour system mainly serves as a standardized currency for educational activities.”

Lowe acknowledged that the new system has its flaws. She admitted, “It’s in no way possible to make this perfect. Let’s say there are many sections of a class and if Professor A assigns a lot more homework than Professor B, we can’t really change that.” But, she holds that this is still preferable to the one course, one credit system.

“At least now professors will have more of an idea of how much work should be assigned for outside of class.”

Carrasco offered further insights on the switch. “It appears to me that Tufts has done a lot of work in developing how to implement this transition, but even the best laid plans require flexibility. Students should be prepared for the transition.”

“WITH INCREASING NUMBERS OF STUDENTS ATTENDING MORE THAN ONE INSTITUTION IN THEIR UNDERGRADUATE CAREERS, THE [SEMESTER]-HOUR UNIT HELPS STUDENTS TAKE THEIR EDUCATIONAL EXPERIENCES WHEREVER THEY GO.” 4

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an open letter T o t h e T u f t s U n i v e r s i t y Da n c e P r o g r a m [content warning: racism, transphobia, cultural appropriation, victim-blaming] We write to you as current students of color who wish to share our experiences of racism in the Tufts Dance Program.

Dance is an embodied, physical practice that is often deeply personal and vulnerable. It requires your full self to be present in the space in order to engage with movement. For this reason, it is necessary to minimize the harm done to students of marginalized identities—so that we too can bring our full selves to the space and to dance.

Many of us gravitate towards the Dance Program in hopes of finding healing through relaxation and expression.

However, as students of color in predominantly White and highly vulnerable spaces, many of us have in fact been retraumatized through our experiences. Below are some of our narratives:

I

As a person of South Asian diaspora, I eagerly approached the North Indian Kathak dance class with dreams of relearning a culture my American upbringing denied me. However, when I discovered that North Indian Kathak was taught by a White woman, my dreams soon shattered. Gretchen came to class every day in a salwar kameez and spoke enough Hindi to count out our steps and no more.

When the time came for our final projects, I presented on Kathak’s manifestation in the non-South Asian body and in the South Asian diasporic body. Gretchen gave me a lower grade than a majority of my classmates and wrote on my returned feedback that I should talk to her after class. As the two of us sat alone in an empty dance lab, Gretchen—with her bright green salwar kameez gleaming in contrast to her white skin—asked me: “What is cultural appropriation?” A lump in my throat swelled. I felt as if I was watching the experience from a point of view other than my own. I watched as I, a South Asian person in Western clothes, talked to Gretchen, a White woman in South Asian clothes. I explained that I thought cultural appropriation was most evident when those of dominant cultures profited from less privileged cultures. I spoke slowly as to not get overwhelmed, as to remind myself that this White professor had authority over me in many ways, as to not cry thinking about all the aunties I knew who taught South Asian dance from their basements for free, just so that my diasporic generation could relearn.

Never did I dream I’d be relearning my culture from a White woman. But then again I should have known. Did Tufts even reach out to the hundreds of South Asian women who have a spiritual connection to this dance form, before choosing to pay this one White woman who knows Kathak?

II

One day in class, the professor (a White woman) asked us to pair up and create movement based on a couple prompts, one of which was to choreograph movement that challenged gender norms. When a group of two women of color showed her what we had come up with, she asked us to change the direction of the piece and to make it a piece about the pressures that ‘women’ feel from society to look pretty and smile. I was clearly uncomfortable, and the movement felt incredibly unnatural and contrived because I did not feel as though the pressures that the professor spoke of related to me as a person of color. The way that women of color navigate this world and the societal pressures they feel are incredibly different from those of White women. By asking two students of color to change our piece to reflect something that isn’t relevant to us, this professor was creating an unwelcome space for us. White professors often talk about ideas of womanhood only in their own White experiences. I don’t believe that dance professors should ask students to change their pieces to reflect experiences that are different from their own.

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campus

In these sorts of situations where White women professors speak about gender dynamics exclusively, and not how race also plays into societal pressures, I feel as though the Dance Program only cares for the woman in me, and not the person of color.

III

I was in the dance building before class one day when I overheard a White woman who teaches a non-Western dance form being asked about what kinds of responses she has received for doing so. She said some students had pushed back. She proceeded to compare herself to a Black woman teaching ballet, suggesting that her action was acceptable if people of color could teach White dance forms. This White teacher also wears clothes and serves food of that non-Western culture without understanding the concept of cultural appropriation.

I find it incredibly disheartening that there isn’t enough conversation regarding cultural appropriation and White privilege so that our educators understand the absurdity of this comparison. Black women have a number of obstacles to overcome to be both successful in White-dominated dance forms and to be hired as professors. On the other hand, this White female professor has a leg up in being considered a ‘legitimate’ dancer, as well as in having access to advantages in entering the realm of academia.

Why does Tufts continue to hire White professors instead of teachers who are from the cultures that they teach about? As a person of color, I find this incredibly alienating, showing me that the Tufts Dance Program does not consider people who look like me legitimate enough dancers to be hired as professionals.

IV

I took a dance composition class that was inclined purely towards European dance. In that space, I had to practice the expected European style in class assignments. During class, only Western contemporary music was played. I couldn’t practice composing dances for my Latin dances. This made it impossible for me in this class to develop my creativity in my dance of interest. I realized that the Dance Program disregards my culture and is not geared towards my needs.

V

In an in-class exercise, a group of students was discussing whether the proposed activity would be cultural appropriation. In the midst of a productive conversation, our White professor interrupted us. The professor spoke for the student who had suggested the activity, asserting that it was important to continue with the exploration even though the student was ready to change the idea. The professor also invalidated our concerns about appropriation, asserting that “hyperconsciousness of power dynamics” is only limiting the arts.

I raised that as a person of color; I feel angry when I see my culture stolen and paraded onstage by White people.

The professor responded that as a White person, they felt happy to watch people of color perform White dance forms onstage—indicating a false comparison and a complete lack of understanding of cultural appropriation.

Over email after class, the professor exercised victim blaming. Instead of addressing the problematic activity, they faulted me for being upset for the situation and for choosing to participate in the activity to begin with.

VI

In “International Social Dance,” we learned folkloric dances indigenous to various groups around the world. These dances had culturally sensitive meaning to the people in the groups from which we were stealing. Many movements mimicked day-to-day actions related to labor-intensive roles in each group.

What we were doing was cultural appropriation and it made me uncomfortable. If we weren’t dancing for the purpose of elevating the people in these groups, giving back to their communities, or learning these dances accurately and with consent, why were we even doing it?

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ART BY LAURA WOLFE

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campus

Once, the instructor looked at her token student of color to ask if they do dances like this in their culture. The instructor was completely insensitive to the fact that not all people who look like they’re from a particular part of the world are actually connected to that culture, even if they yearn to be—which can be a sensitive and painful experience.

I considered dropping the class on several occasions, but couldn’t because I did not want to drop my Dance minor.

Every minor is required to take one non-Western dance class. The Dance Program is therefore literally forcing White students to appropriate another culture through dance. Cultural appropriation isn’t even brought up in most of these classes, even though it could easily be incorporated through assignments and in-class discussions.

VII

I felt uncomfortable in “Dance Therapy” (a new course taught by a White cisgender woman) because it was another reminder of who therapy usually serves and who is free to express themselves. Dance in itself feels so White to me because of that—when has my body been told to move freely? How can I move freely to express my feelings and my pain when that makes me so vulnerable to the very peers and places that create such unease?

__

These experiences make up only the tip of the iceberg. Given our lived realities, we are surprised that the Dance Program claims to be concerned about social justice. On the official website of the Department of Drama and Dance, there is a lengthy statement about its commitment to building inclusive communities, recognizing the lived experiences of people of color and queer people, and engaging with social justice.

The Dance Program is not “deeply committed to sustaining a diverse and inclusive community” if students of color continue to experience countless examples of racism in the Dance Program. The Dance Program loves to parade the presence of the few students of color—especially during public events and in marketing materials—but invalidates and neglects complaints we raise in relation to the program’s racism. This is tokenization in a space that disregards our pain and fails to meet our basic needs.

The Dance Program cannot claim to “expand our understanding of what it means to be a more open, representative, and collaborative community” while prioritizing the learning, comfort, and practices of White students and faculty. Cultural appropriation is rampant, especially in a program where most of the non-Western dance forms are taught by White faculty, with little discussion of race and power dynamics. The program’s “color-blind” hiring practices allow racism to continue to fester, doing nothing to address the uneven playing fields of dance and academia for faculty of color.

The Dance Program does not “recognize the humanity and lived experience of [...] LGBTQ citizens” when it constantly invalidates and makes invisible our existence. The program has hired no openly transgender or gender nonconforming dance artists as faculty. Across most courses, trans and gender nonconforming students experience constant misgendering, despite introducing themselves with their gender pronouns at the start of each semester. Several classes continue to teach roles or versions of movement based on the gender binary— “women do this and men do that.” Donning rainbow pins is a superficial gesture if the core of the program’s transphobia remains unaddressed.

If the department truly “[invites] students to think about how their coursework engages with social justice issues,” we are putting that into action by writing this open letter. This decision comes after countless attempts to engage through available platforms. We have talked to our professors, approached the Program Chair with complaints, written feedback in instructor evaluations, spoken up in Dance Minor meetings, and more. Now, we come to you in such a public way because we are done being quiet, we are done waiting on change, we are done turning the other cheek—we want respect, we want accountability, we want action.

In resistance, Students of color of the Tufts Dance Program

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WE ARE WHAT

alk through Tisch on a Sunday night and you’ll see mountains of discarded coffee cups and to-go containers from Tower Café spilling over the lip of every landfill bin. You may walk by those bins without thinking twice, but each of those cups has a history.

Here’s one version of that story: it begins with oil extraction, maybe in the US, but quite possibly somewhere in the Middle East or South America. That crude oil is then shipped across the world to be processed in an American refinery where a byproduct is used to make plastic. That plastic is processed, shipped, and molded into your coffee cup’s lid only to be used for 30 minutes and then discarded. Not all cups are made of plastic or come from oil. Some come from natural gas or forests, but the end result is all the same—once it’s thrown away, it doesn’t disappear. “Away” does not exist.

The coffee cup will be disposed of by a custodian, put into a dumpster, and picked up by Republic Services. If we’re lucky, the cup was recycled and it’ll be brought to a processing plant northwest of Boston and eventually shipped to China, along with 24 percent of American recycled post-consumer content.

This is the result of the United States’ attempt to balance the Sino-American trade of goods. But, in all likelihood,

it wasn’t recycled and the cup will stay local. It’ll be brought to Charlestown, MA, and put into an incinerator next to a neighborhood of predominantly lower-income people of color. But that’s not what we see or think about when we throw something “away.”

During our time as Tufts Eco Reps and through work with other sustainability initiatives on campus, we were exposed to the fallacy of “away” and the role that honest language can play in promoting environmentalism. When waste station signage changed from “trash” to “landfill,” Tufts chose to use precise environmental language. Yet, capitalism has conned us into uncritically using language that removes human responsibility from environmental degradation, creating a cognitive dissonance between what we consume and the waste it becomes. In grocery stores, we buy beef and pork, not cow and pig; companies advertise “clean coal” that still pollutes the air, contaminates water systems, and destroys thousands of acres of forests and natural lands.

And while Tufts students are eager to denounce capitalism and the exploitation inherent to this system, our campus wastefulness demonstrates students’ complicity in the exploitation of our Earth. As Tina Woolston, Program Di-

rector of the Tufts Office of Sustainability, says, “Tufts is super sensitive to the words people use,” adding, “But ‘away’ just [...] insinuates that [where waste ends up] isn’t near anybody.” The unfortunate truth is that “away” is a misleading stand-in for waste processing plants and dump sites that often sit next to wetlands, forests, and vital ecosystems—places where the pileup and processing of waste harms the health of the environment and the community that it sustains by lowering air quality, releasing carcinogens, and causing runoff into water systems.

This issue extends far beyond linguistic apathy. Our inattention to language hints at the perpetual indifference with which we treat wastefulness and the dangers of our out-of-sight, out-of-mind ethos towards our personal responsibility for waste. Waste may be a byproduct of modern living, but we can mitigate our complacency to the issue by taking intentional and effective steps that have minimal impact on our daily routines and wallets. Forgo plastic bottles, bags, and single-use coffee cups for reusable ones.

Properly rinse and sort your recycling— this takes relatively little time and with the signs that accompany every waste station at Tufts, it takes almost no mental acrobatics to figure out what goes where. Use the compost in your dorm or set one up

By Josh Cohen & Rebecca Redelmeier

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in your home. This not only helps reduce food waste, but also keeps Tufts compliant with Massachusetts law that requires institutions producing more than a ton of food waste a year to compost it. You can also avoid buying first-hand clothing and instead purchase your clothes from thrift stores and consignment shops to avoid the perils of fast fashion.

Taking individual action and responsibility for waste has a ripple effect across our community, evening the burden of waste and changing the campus culture towards it. According to a student who works at the Tisch circulation desk during late school-nights, students often seem unconcerned with the important work that others do to manage the waste generated on campus. The student noted that, “[While] many of us are staying up late to work on papers and complete assignments, there are many workers, who are the backbone of this institution, who have to stay up even later to clean up after us.”

Similarly, Bianca Hutner, president of Tufts Divest, commented on how the nature of Tufts’ waste removal procedures allows students to remain disassociated from their waste. “With all the work the janitors do,” she said, “[People living in dorms] are not conscious of all the waste they’re producing.” When we have custodial staff cleaning our dorms every day, it’s easy to turn our heads from the waste we make and even easier to turn our heads from the people who take it away.

Yet, increasing individual awareness and care for reducing the burden of campus waste is far from a lost cause. Tufts Labor Coalition has had a presence on our campus for over 25 years, indicating that our community values the proper treatment of our custodial staff. Furthermore, in a survey conducted by Tufts Eco Reps, 94.6 percent of the 675 respondents said they agreed or strongly agreed with the statement “environmental issues are important to me.” If we care about our janitors and we care about the Earth, how have we removed ourselves from taking responsibility for our waste for so long?

ART BY EMMA HERDMAN

Often, apathy towards the role that individuals can play in reducing our community’s environmental impacts stems from pointing our fingers at the faults of the university as an institution.

Many complain of inconveniently placed compost bins and overflowing recycling bins—fairly noting that the infrastructure that Tufts provides for waste management often inconveniences individuals who hope to reduce their waste while neglecting the fact that these same individuals generated unnecessary waste to begin with.

If we care about our janitors and we care about the earth, how have we removed ourselves from taking responsibility for our waste for so long?

Though Tufts as an institution has adopted many positive environmental practices—installing new solar panels on the roofs of Dowling Hall and Sophia Gordon Hall, constructing a cogeneration plant—a power plant that is more efficient than normal because it uses the heat given off by energy generation to heat our buildings—and developing our food rescue program, to name a few—there is still work to be done and greater institutional support needed by campus environmental initiatives. Furthermore, the Tufts administration has committed to reducing campus waste by three percent each year. The actions that Tufts takes to support this goal are vital; despite the vast potential for individuals to impact Tufts’ waste production, institutional support is necessary to promote the success and longevity of changes spearheaded by the student body.

Such is the double-edged sword of most environmental issues: without the proper infrastructure from the administration, students’ actions can lack the support and framework that they require to be as environmentally-friendly as possible. Thus, reducing our campus’ environmental impact requires individuals to work concurrently on instigating systematic change and pledging individual responsibility.

Moreover, on a college campus, students play a vital role in molding the values that our community upholds. The popularization of reusable water bottles, two-sided printing, and food waste reduction policies in the dining halls was in-part due to the influence of a student body dedicated to changing the campus waste culture.

In the Office of Sustainability, Woolston has seen first-hand the essential role that students can play in shaping Tufts’ policies towards environmental issues. “[Recycling] started at Tufts as student [volunteers] who would go around and collect recycling,” she noted. While today we lack an institutional consciousness for mis-sorted recycling bins and the overuse of disposable items (coffee cups, Hodgdon containers, etc.), our community’s history proves that we have the ability to change the campus attitude towards waste.

It is time that we choose to notice the overflowing trash bins around campus, and recognize our individual implication in Tufts’ perpetuation of ignorant wastefulness. According to the 2017 Eco Reps Survey, two-thirds of respondents believe that the average Tufts student is only moderately concerned with questions of the environment. This lack of concern points out an unfortunate, yet optimistic, reality: our student body has so much more care, energy, and awareness that it can direct towards reducing the environmental footprint of our campus. Tufts’ three percent waste reduction goal is a noble first step in reshaping campus attitudes around waste, calling on our community to uphold our end of the bargain and to take individual ownership.

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NEWS

AI

IN OUR IMAGE

HOW TECHNOLOGY REFLECTS SYSTEMIC BIASES

By Myisha Majumder

T

o many, artificial intelligence is something out of science fiction. A robot starts by responding to your every command, then eventually, somehow it becomes too human, and ends up outsmarting the human race.

But in reality, artificial intelligence, or AI, is not just a dream of the future—it’s already all around us, improving modern technology in ways that make it more effective and easy to use. Today, AI manifests in many forms, like search engine optimization or what your GPS on your phone uses to calculate the fastest route to reach your location.

Some prospects for the future of AI include selfdriving cars, which, if executed properly, could significantly reduce rates of auto accidents.

At the same time, the “human” factor of AI software that long seemed fictional is manifesting in technologies like Siri. These mechanisms are also meant to have more of a “personality.”

While software similar to Siri have undeniably helped many, bots that receive information for responses from global data face a challenge: sexism.

In 2016, Microsoft created Tay, a bot that would learn to chat with users and intended as an experiment in machine learning and interaction.

At first, Tay’s automation worked well, producing innocent, personable tweets, like “can i just say i’m super stoked to meet u? humans are super cool,” directed towards Twitter users. Soon 10

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enough, however, Tay began to mirror tweets sent

by Twitter trolls, who bombarded Twitter with racist and sexist beliefs. Because Tay generated “her” responses from the general Twitter trends and popular sentiments, the account spiraled out of control. Tay began to tweet things like “I fucking hate feminists and they should all die and burn in hell,” and Microsoft shut the bot down no more than 16 hours after it went live.

Incidents like this raise the question: how can AI technology be created such that it doesn’t have prejudiced beliefs? Along with the significant biases against women in AI’s data, the number of women working in AI is extremely disproportionate to the amount of men. Without women playing a role in developing AI, tech companies everywhere risk another Microsoft scandal. Preventing the rise of more sexist bots requires concrete solutions. Girls Who Code and Million Women Mentors are organizations encouraging girls to join the computer science world and continue to support women in tech throughout higher education.

At Tufts, women majoring in computer science make up no more than 40 percent of the department—though only 17.9 percent of the School of Engineering. This combined enrollment between Arts and Sciences is much higher than the national average, where women earn only 18 percent of Computer Science degrees.

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Professor Jivko Sinapov, a new hire in the Department of Computer Science specializing in cognitive and developmental robotics, says that at Tufts specifically, there is less of a gap between genders in the Computer Science department. In fact, he noted, this relative equality motivated him to work at Tufts. “[The disparity in gender is] getting better, especially looking at graduate[s] and undergraduate[s],” Sinapov said. “However, higher up, for example, there are generally less women applying for positions. This is due to societal and institutional reasons, as historically science and tech have been assumed to be men’s jobs.”

Another professor, Donna Slonim, who has a dual appointment at Tufts between the Computer Science Department and the Department of Integrative Physiology and Pathobiology at Tufts School of Medicine, said that when she was an undergraduate student at Yale, her Computer Science (CS) program was about 1520 percent female. She also notes that while over 30 percent of CS Arts and Sciences undergraduate majors at Tufts are women, “[Tufts’] SOE representation […] mirrors the national average; more than a quarter century after I graduated, women still make up under 20 percent of the undergrad CS majors across the country.”

Both Professor Sinapov and Professor Slonim offered possible solutions to increase CS participation among women.

Sinapov recalled a program she participated in at UT Austin called “First Bites.” Sinapov described First Bites as a summer camp for high school girls where “they come to our labs and work with robots and spend some time coding.”

She is hopeful that having more programs like this will help breed a more inclusive field for women in the CS world. “As long as outreach is there, the situation can change,” she said.

Slonim believes important steps like these are being taken at Tufts as well. “At the most recent department faculty meeting, I was amused to notice three of the four most recent Computer Science department chairs sitting next to each other, all of them female,” she recalled. “We certainly try to put good role models front and center.”

Additionally, Slonim praised the fact that “we have an active Women in Computer Science group, a Society of Women Engineers group, and we just hosted the Tufts Women in Tech Conference.

Faculty are very aware of this issue and talk about it frequently.”

Overall, Slonim said that the lack of women in CS is not one that is being taken lightly in the community. “There are many successful programs that do well at attracting women to CS,” she said. “Carnegie Mellon has been a leader in this area, but many different approaches have been demonstrated to work. The key is that all of them take effort and resources. At a time when universities are under siege financially, and faculty—especially in CS—are overloaded, it’s hard to devote adequate resources to this along with all the other top priorities.”

More than just the broader world of CS, Tufts is also starting to get a footing in the AI community, where gender equity continues to be an important issue. Sinapov was a recent robotics hire, but even still, there are only three CS professors who focus on this area—all of them men. The CS department is looking to hire another, but Sinapov noted that the majority of applicants are also men. Sinapov himself focuses on service robot projects, which he aims to make “a permanent fixture of [Halligan]” so the robots can “collaborate with those in the building” and in return will make the department more effective. This Halloween, Sinapov designed a robot which went around Halligan and delivered candy and chanted classic Halloween phrases.

Professor Matthias Scheutz, another faculty member who specializes in robotics, is working primarily on human robot interaction (HRI) and how to further help robots learn through experiencing the world.

At his HRI lab, Scheutz is currently working on project focused on “moral competence in computational architectures.” He described the project as “designing robots to achieve moral competence naturally relies on the many layers and connections of concepts, rules, feelings, and judgments that constitute human morality.”

The concepts Scheutz studies directly tie into concerns about AI capabilities.

Sinapov adds that beyond the Microsoft scandal, there are a lot more subtle bias-

es in “machine learning classifiers and deep learning.”

“No one necessarily wants it to be there, but it’s there,” he said. These results are simply due to the data each machine’s algorithm is based upon, and counteracting these biases on a technological level is extremely difficult to accomplish.

The future of AI is entirely dependent on the school of thought that society as a whole chooses to project. If we continue to be a society that is biased, prejudiced, and discriminatory in our beliefs, the AI we create will mirror those values. Without initiatives and support for integrating and retaining marginalized student interest in computer science, and eventually, AI development, we risk perpetuating problematic technology that further oppresses these voices.

THE FUTURE OF AI IS ENTIRELY DEPENDENT ON THE SCHOOL OF THOUGHT THAT SOCIETY AS A WHOLE CHOOSES TO PROJECT.

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FEATURE

Poetry

the shadow of a cupid’s bow resting between cheeks grows more and more prominent with each passing day as an object it’s gotten to a point where the natural hue looks washed out faded

empty. *funny how the original looks so bleak* it’s not a plea but a shout. a building sense of self-awareness that helps me be the me that you…have grown to love these tints aren’t permanent but it’s better than nothing and helps shape the day the bare minimum simply doesn’t cut it compared to the tailored taupe on Monday the primped and primed plum on Tuesday the neatly layered nude on the Thursday before the risky vibrant red on Friday *on Wednesday the shades are rinsed out like watercolors*

By Alexandra Strong

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ART BY NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT

FEATURE

PHOTOS BY SAGE SCANLON-PEREZ

PHOTOS BY ELIZABETH BROOKE (TOP) & RACHEL STEIN (BOTTOM)

PHOTOS BY SOFIE HECHT

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PHOTO BY JORDAN DELAWDER

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poetry

REASONS I DON’T If I’m in a cafeteria, my hands will be gripping a heaping plate and I won’t know where to put it. The huggee might hug me despite the pile of red sauce and spaghetti. The huggee might nearly press my white shirt into my spaghetti. While hugging the pasta, I curl my spine like a cat agitated, stiff and unyielding, and I seem like a bitch.

Great. Maybe I’ll have the foresight to balance the plate in one hand. Is it still an embrace if you use just one arm? I’m very short and I wear makeup. My lipstick will end up smeared on the person’s shoulder, leaving a waxy, carmine streak. I hope they learn a lesson in stain removal. Group hugs are even more unpleasant; I always try to pull away.

LIKE TO HUG PEOPLE I ONLY KIND OF KNOW

I may wind up with my face pressed against another person’s face. My nose might become a cork stopper stuck in the crevice between head and neck, a moment of forced intimacy. I might suffocate on the potency of their cologne or choke on the odor of sweat and unfamiliar pheromones. I might want to thrash, claw my way out, wolverine

style. I’m sensitive to smells, even more sensitive to touch. A hug is comforting or awkward, and I can never decide which.

My arms spin awkwardly, constantly adjusting to the angle and speed of the approaching body. Hugs begin too suddenly for me to fix the placement of my limbs—once I latch on, I’ve committed, so that

my arms may intimately encircle the neck of a vague acquaintance. Or, one may lodge itself in an armpit, with my other hand on their back, not sure whether to rub or to pat, or to let it lie there limply like a small, bony dead thing. Pressure is hard to gauge, too. How hard do you squeeze? Too soft and I’m not genuine. Too firm and I’m a strangler. Hugging

can be unavoidably so surfacely social whereas my fondest hugs happen only in private. After hugging, I might stand there for too long, wondering when we decided we were close enough to touch.

By Emily Chu

ART BY ANNIE ROOME

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FEATURE

Arts & culture

no filter an exploration of finsta culture

By Megan Mooney

F

or a period of time in 2016, a lot of people would ask me if my Instagram (which, at the time, had the handle @sad__venmo) was a finsta. I was feeling unsettled in my personal life, and I started posting eclectic photos with non-sequitur captions.

Within these posts were snippets of honesty: crying in public places, eating meat again after a year of vegetarianism, debating the logical nature of the sentence, “Every organization is either the government or an NGO.” But it wasn’t a “finsta,” or fake Instagram. I was just posting what I wanted to post.

Finstas are almost always secondary, private accounts in which users post images for a much smaller audience than on their “rinstas,” or regular/real instas. If you search the term online, you will mostly find news sources like USA Today and The 18

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Guardian telling parents to be cautious of teen behavior on social media. They warn that these accounts, with privacy settings that require users to approve followers, can become vessels for bullying and exclusivity. In September 2016, a contributor for the Huffington Post added fuel to the parental fire. “Originally born from the desire to carve out a space free from nosy parents, finstas have morphed into a malicious animal capable of reducing even the most well-adjusted and mentally healthy teens to rubble.”

Another debate online about finstas involves the complex nature of having multiple accounts: what does it mean that one is considered fake and one is considered real? Despite the fact that it is in the name itself, finsta users at Tufts do not see their accounts as “fake”—rather, they are different spheres where they can choose what exactly they want to share, free from any expectations.

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Sophomore Leo Mandani says of his finsta, “It’s definitely real. My rinsta is cherry picked experiences. My finstas are more of stream of consciousness. I don’t hide anything there.” He went on to say that public Instagram accounts are more of a facade, and really only serve to show nice and aesthetically pleasing photos.

First-year Colin Carroll echoes this, calling his rinsta a “safe image” that he would be comfortable with a future employer seeing. But that’s not to say that his finsta is wildly risqué. “Some [posts] are self-deprecating humor, some photos are just screenshots of my general thoughts on a topic. Some are satire. Some posts are just bizarre, or inside jokes. It’s a lot of stuff that people who aren’t my close friends would not understand.” Carroll reiterated to me several times that his posts are not inappropriate, contrary to the fact that people expect finsta posts to be raunchy.

Brie Gates, a sophomore who is an active finsta user, says she expects all finstas to be way juicier than their rinsta counterparts. “There are normally memes and posts about struggling with school. Also, depending on the person, I generally expect to hear about their sex lives.”

Despite their reputation for dirt and drama, finstas do not have the same performative quality that rinstas do. Finstas, as a form, exist in spite of and because of the way we use rinstas, and this largely has to do with audience. Sophomore Erica Nork carefully curates her finsta followers, so much so that it took time before she allowed anyone from Tufts to follow the finsta.

“Right now, I have about 15 followers.

Usually it’s people who Jane Austen would call ‘bosom friends:’ people who I think see me complexly, or would want to see me for all that I am, or maybe are interested in the way that I see the world. But they are still a somewhat unpredictable audience.”

Jesse Greenfield agrees with Nork.

“My finsta is primarily for my friends from back home that I’ve deemed important enough to get these updates on my life. I’ve let a couple Tufts people follow it, but these folks are carefully selected for their trustworthiness.”

But the more followers a user gains on finsta, the less distinctive it becomes from a rinsta. Mandani, for example, has two finstas: one where he posts almost daily, and the other with fewer followers where he only posts about once or twice a month.

Even with a handpicked audience, Nork still feels as though she must censor herself. She sometimes talks about drugs and alcohol, rarely talks about sexual experiences, and never discusses mental health.

“I don’t want to keep that in this record of my life if it has already colored so much of my experience of being alive.”

I can recall a late night at Tisch during finals where my best friend sat next to me and deleted all 150 followers from his finsta. He was caught in a bind: there were too many people that he didn’t trust following his finsta, so he couldn’t be completely honest, but he felt too guilty to block people individually. When I asked him why he couldn’t just delete his account, he shrugged. “It’s for the archive.”

When I posted a photo of myself on my rinsta in the reading room bathroom after crying because I didn’t get into the Burlesque dance I wanted to get into, I wasn’t trying to be subversive or weird.

I was just being honest. Scrolling back through photos from that spring, I can see exactly what I was going through even if I was less explicit in other posts.

This made me understand what people like about their finstas: without worrying about maintaining a cool and collected image, the accounts can be archives with no holds barred. They are there for only you—and a few other people of your choosing—to see.

Nork feels that the content of her account is way more important for her than it is for other people. “Scrolling through my finsta feels so much like going through my old diaries. It feels like a time capsule as well as a sketchbook, a record that still feels very active and alive.”

If you want them to be, finstas can be conversations with your friends in the comfort of your own home. They are notes passed around the room to a select few.

They are not what you want your parents

or your employer or your significant other to see. But this content ranges from the smallest mishaps in your day to the most intimate details about your life, and it is hard to imagine anyone beginning to post those things publicly for the world to see.

Consider a private Instagram account.

It is filled with photos and captions, confessions and secrets. There are zero followers, absolutely no one to like or comment or see anything posted. There is no incentive for likes, no interaction between people at all. It would just be a diary, completely hidden from the public eye, accessible to one person only. A tree falling in the middle of the forest without a sound.

The handle @sad__venmo is up for grabs if anyone wants it.

finsta users at Tufts do not see their accounts as “fake”— rather, they are different spheres where they can choose what exactly they want to share, free from any expectations.

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FEATURE

OPINION

SHAKING THE FOUNDATIONS The exploitative SOURCES OF NON-PR0Fit Funding

By Gabriela Bonfiglio

H

ow often do you hear Tufts students say the word “non-profit?” As in: “Yeah I got fellowship through Tisch College at a non-profit this summer,” or “did you see that non-profit listing on the Women’s Center e-list?” Even more frequent was the post-election dialogue around donating to non-profits, including the NAACP and Planned Parenthood. Non-profit work is integral to Tufts’ branding as a university focused on “active citizenship,” and as students here, it too has become central to how many of us envision life after college.

The on-the-ground work that nonprofits carry out is funded by foundations.

Foundations have endowments—huge sums of money that are kept in a variety of investments, of which a small percentage is donated to nonprofit organizations that fit a foundation’s mission statement.

An endowment, though, or really any large sum of investments, is not a stagnant or apolitical body; investors of endowments actively make choices between which business stocks, government bonds, or even impact organizations to invest in. It is critical, then, that 20

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students engaged with non-profit work think deeply about how foundation endowments function, how they have been earned, and how they could depart from their complicated history.

A quick search of the largest philanthropic foundations in the US reveals ten names: Gates, Ford, Getty, Wood Johnson, Lilly, Hewlett, Kellogg, Packard, Moore, and Bloomberg. If these names ring familiar, it’s because they are tied to some of the largest businesses in the US today— Gates and Hewlett-Packard are computing/software giants (and often work in tandem); Bloomberg is the inventor of Wall Street’s software infrastructure.

These fortunes were amassed through exploitative labor practices, tax evasion, and the unsustainable extraction of resources across the world. The Guardian reports Kellogg’s subset, Unilever, uses palm oil that is harvested by child laborers under unsafe conditions in Indonesia.

Getty’s main product—oil—continues to pollute the earth at alarming rates.

Bloomberg built software that expedites investments and creates greater distance between the investor and the people on

the other end of those stocks or products.

The companies who share these foundations’ names continue to profit from trade laws that privilege national corporations at the expense of the Global South.

The reality is that much of the money non-profits use come from these sources. So, the money accumulated through the exploitation of thousands is then dedicated to addressing the injustices it causes. The horrible irony of this reality raises the question—what really is the point of these foundations?

The IRS requires that a foundation spend a minimum of five percent of its endowment every year towards its mission. This means that the other 95 percent of that endowment continues to grow, tax free, forever. So, I see these massive endowments—the 10 foundations mentioned above collectively hold $127 billion dollars in assets—as vehicles through which powerful White families hoard wealth. A 2014 study revealed that in that year, 92 percent of foundation CEOs/presidents, 87 percent of foundation board members/trustees, and every founder of the 10 foundations named above were and ART BY NINA HOFKOSH-HULBERT

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The money accumulated through the exploitation of thousands is then dedicated to addressing the injustices it causes. are White. While family members can’t personally spend these funds, they have significant say in how the money is donated, and therefore over which non-profits the foundation funds. In short, through accumulation of money over time, the families of old and new powerful businessmen continue to have influence over the lives of marginalized people.

This power too often comes with a lack of accountability—foundations have no donors, taxpayers, or even stockholders to report to. Tufts senior Emma Kahn is conducting a thesis on “Reimagining the Civic Commons,” a joint foundation initiative aimed at revitalizing public spaces in different cities across the US as places for “civic engagement,” “economic integration,” and “sustainability.” Kahn explained that when foundations take the place of municipal governments, there is a disconnect between the decisions made and the communities affected by those decisions. At times, she added, a foundation project can push a municipal government to remove barriers to building, zoning laws, and other community development projects, leaving the path to such projects clear for organizations less wellintentioned than foundations.

This project has potential to depart from a history of foundations gentrifying parks in communities of color in the name of philanthropy. However, the philanthropic sector needs to make radical shifts in its policies, processes, and practices to effect the social justice oriented change that many of its members preach without practicing.

The Ford Foundation is taking a step in this direction; it is the only one of the top 10 foundations listed above

that names social justice in its mission statement. Ford has also integrated this mission throughout the organization, including only hiring interns who are on need-based financial aid at their respective universities and from the New York Tri-State Area.

This suggests one—perhaps obvious—way foundations can counter a very White board and founding family: hire grantmakers who know and represent constituent communities.

Another solution foundations are exploring is wholly integrating their missions into how endowments are invested.

The foundation pioneering both divestment and reinvestment in impact investments is an heir to the world’ biggest oil fortune; the Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) announced in 2014 that it would divest all of its over $800 million endowment from fossil fuels.

I spent time working independently for the RBF on revising the Fund’s proxy voting guidelines—a set of policies which guide how a foundation (or really any stockholding organization) will vote on company resolutions. Remembering that an endowment has this ability shifts how we can regard foundations; although they are philanthropic institutions, they exist in the role of investors in companies. The sustainability-focused non-profit Ceres advocates working with businesses and investors this way as a path towards rapid systemic change. Their theory is well-supported: earlier this summer, two historic shareholder votes at Exxon Mobil and Occidental Petroleum pushed these companies to address climate change within their business models.

Proxy voting offers one major opportunity to move the companies these major foundations are linked to away from exploitative or unsustainable practices. But I’m left wondering if more radical solutions exist—can we address the issues we care about without relying at all on these fortunes or their legacy? The John Merck Fund offers an alternative: they’ve adopted a “spendout” strategy, which means instead of holding onto an endowment for an indefinite period, they will spend all of their money towards their mission within the next ten years. They write in their statement that the issues they care about “should not have to wait for small incremental progress;” they are refusing to sit on their endowment for the purpose of “intergenerational growth.”

Community foundations are an example of philanthropy with accountability, since they consist of variety of contributors and donors from the community, and employees, and Board membership linked to the community. This movement is not small: the Silicon Valley Community Foundation is the second biggest donor in the US, giving around $956 million last year, according to Foundation Center. Importantly, this eclipses the giving to the other nine foundations in the top 10 list by endowment size—community foundations tend to give more of their funds away.

Knowing the potential for change among foundations, and not knowing what will be enough to break from their fortunes’ legacy—where do we go from here? As we Tufts students move into careers within or tangential to the nonprofit world, as well as moving through campus connected to Tufts’ own endowment, simply knowing the violent legacies and current realities of these endowments may not be enough. We can and should look for ways to push this money away from its legacy, to cut it from its history—to make the radical shifts necessary to center communities and marginalized people in philanthropic work.

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FEATURE

NEWS

CORPORATIZING

A LOOK AT WORKPLACE WELLNESS CULTURE

F

rom meditation to green smoothie cleanses, improving our wellness has recently become a popular forefront of our society’s concerns. This direction of wellness has not escaped the minds of corporations, many of whom invest in wellness programs. Wellness is defined by the World Health Organization (WHO) as “a state of well-being in which every individual realizes [their] own potential, can cope with the normal stresses of life, can work productively and fruitfully, and is able to make a contribution to [their] community.”

For many people, stress comes from the workplace. With work and productivity entrenched into the definition of wellness, it is not surprising that companies are trying to implement various types of these programs across their offices. From biometric screenings to in-office yoga, around 50 percent of US employers offer wellness programs to their employees. Typically, these initiatives are boasted with the goal of helping employees achieve a “healthy” life. But how do these companies define wellness?

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By Sonya Bhatia & Vivian Tam

The 2012 Research and Development Corporation (RAND) Employer Survey indicates that at firms and organizations with 50 or more employees, 79 percent of employees had access to a wellness program.

The specific programs that employers offer can vary, but popular initiatives include personalized wellness screenings to identify health risks, preventive interventions for specific risks, and promotion activities to support active lifestyles.

As a company looking to do just that, Tufts has also created several wellness initiatives for its employees. The University opened a wellness center four years ago through a collaboration with Marathon Health, a company that manages clinics for employers. Health coaching and counseling services are available at the Medford/Somerville, Boston, and Grafton campuses. On the Medford/Somerville campus, the wellness center facility at the Tisch Sports and Fitness Center offers medical services as well. At these facilities, employees, along with their spouses and domestic partners, can receive personalized health assessments and meet

with health coaches who provide strategies at no extra cost for tobacco cessation, healthy diet and nutrition, and more.

In an interview with TuftsNow, the University’s official news site, former Director of Benefits and the Human Resources Service Center, Ann Mackenzie, said that Tufts is “committed to investing in our most important asset, our people, and second, to ultimately helping the University and our employees save money on health-care costs.”

In addition to the wellness center, the University also outlines a well-time policy for its employees. Full time employees of the University can use up to eight hours of their accrued sick time each year as “well-time” to participate in wellness activities that have been pre-approved by the administration.

The policy names lunch and learn programs and walking programs as some examples of these activities.

Part-time employees, however, have their well-time pro-rated, meaning their welltime hours are dependent on how often they are scheduled to work. In order to use their well-time, all employees, regardless of fulltime or part-time status, need to have “good attendance,” and “overall job performance must be rated at a level of ‘Successfully Meets Expectations’ or ‘better,’” as stated in the University’s Human Resource benefits policies.

Before using their well-time, employees are required to receive prior approval from their manager and usually are only given well-time in hourly increments. These hours do not carry over from year to year. (The Observer was unable to reach current Director of Benefits Robbyn Dewar for comment, despite several interview requests.)

While the concept of workplace wellness may seem benevolent, the outlined policy illustrates that not all employees receive the same access to these programs. Since they must be approved by the University beforehand, the power to define wellness rests in the hands of their employers. This also prioritizes the employees that the University direct hires, compared to workers who are outsourced through outside companies. One example ART BY MADELINE LEE

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NEWS

includes custodial staff, which Tufts subcontracts through C&W Services. Because they aren’t directly employed under the University, there is little incentive for Tufts to take responsibility over the wellness of these workers, who are often left at the margins.

This reveals one element of the darker company motives behind wellness programs. While such programs often claim to have a symbiotic relationship between employer and employee, in reality, the employers’ pockets are frequently the greater beneficiaries. Employers can utilize wellness programs to shift the burden of health costs onto the employees by transforming unmet wellness goals into financial costs. For example, if employees do not meet a fitness benchmark or refuse to participate in a program initiative, they can be punished with fines or higher insurance rates. Wellness programs can also provide a distraction from employers cutting corners to reduce their insurance costs.

In the book The Wellness Syndrome, authors Carl Cederström and André Spicer write that, “when health becomes an ideology, the failure to conform becomes a stigma […] This ideological shift is part of a larger transformation in contemporary culture where individual responsibility and self-expression are morphed with the mindset of a free-market economist.”

According to this ideology, wellness has become a competition for employers. Companies create this mindset by explicitly defining wellness through their programs and defining a narrow set of guidelines that may not apply to everyone. In addition, employers perpetuate their characterization of wellness only to further their own motives; they are not always keeping the workers’ actual wellbeing in mind. If employees do not fit their prejudiced ideal of wellness, they are labeled under the category of “not good enough”—a label that may actually harm their mental well-being. This feeds into a problematic mindset that ignores racial, socioeconomic, and ability status by expecting all employees to reach the same goals despite having diverse backgrounds.

This is dangerous, as wellness perks are often a selling point when companies recruit students for internships and entry-level positions. With promises of nap pods, laser tag, and organic gardens, these offers are enticing to students seeking employers who appear committed to them as whole people. Associate Director of Employee Relations Saqi Mehta discusses wellness as a component of the career search. “It’s more about the holistic picture, what career do you want; the wellness piece of it is one picture of it.” She also adds, “It depends

THE IDEOLOGY BEHIND WELLNESS WORK PROGRAMS PROMOTES A NARROWMINDED VIEWPOINT THAT SUSTAINS A DISCRIMINATORY HIERARCHY — THOSE WHO DO NOT LIVE UP TO THE STANDARD OF WELLNESS ARE CATEGORIZED AS OUTSIDERS.

on the balance. If it means a company offers more food, it probably means you’re working more and have less time to go out.”

Unfortunately, the power dynamic between employer and employee makes this balance difficult. The ideology behind wellness work programs promotes narrow-minded viewpoints that sustain a discriminatory hierarchy; those who do not live up to the standard of wellness are categorized as outsiders. So how should society define wellness? The answer proves tricky, according to Professor of Occupational Therapy Dr. Linda Tickle-Degnen, who said that “wellness usually is found to be a continuum, not a dichotomous variable.”

In addition, she said, measurement of wellness can differ among groups.

“People within what might be marginalized groups can have many different experiences of wellness, from low feelings to high feelings of wellness in one dimension, while having completely different feelings of wellness in another dimension,” she said.

Her explanations suggested that employers should take more cautious steps to broaden their definition of wellness and create more transparent policies. Only then can employees reclaim agency over their participation in wellness trends. They can decide if and how they participate in company programs, or seek out alternate forms of care if they choose.

Tufts wellness programs are no exception to this. The University should take responsibility to extend wellness benefits to all employees, and eliminate arbitrary standards that are counterproductive to all employees’ well-being. By having flexible offerings that tailor to individuals, Tufts can create wellness policies that value employees’ lives over their productivity.

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FEATURE

Arts & Culture

CHARGED up Ghostwriting TABOOS IN RAP MUSIC

By Juliana Vega

I

n July 2015, Meek Mill tweeted that Drake used a ghostwritten verse for his feature on Mill’s song “R.I.C.O”: “Stop comparing drake to me too…He don’t write his own raps!” and later, “He ain’t even write that verse on my album and if I woulda knew I woulda took it off my album…” Drake came back at Mill, and what better way to do it than with a diss track. “Charged Up” was the result of this beef, and its lyrics are a gibe at Mill: “done doing favors for people/ ‘Cause it ain’t like I need the money I make off a feature.”

On another track aimed at Mill’s critique, “Back to Back,” Drake proclaimed,

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“This for y’all to think that I don’t write enough/They just mad ‘cause I got the Midas touch.” Meek Mill’s diss not only created a social media firestorm, it also called into question whether ghostwriting is acceptable in rap music.

Ghostwriters are people who write lyrics for artists without being credited for it. In a genre like hip hop that bases its legitimacy on its hyper-authentic lyrics, ghostwriting has always been taboo.

While ghostwriters are able to make a career out of songwriting in other genres, giving credit to a ghostwriter for a verse in hip hop is unthinkable.

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Arts & culture

“Rap music is supposed to be authentic because it is associated with Black people,” said Stephan Pennington, a Black Tufts music professor. “We like to think of people of color as ‘authentic,’ that’s their job. Their job for White society is to provide danger and authenticity. Poor people and people of color suffer in order to provide the middle and upper White class enjoyment,” Pennington said.

Max Hornung, a senior member of S-Factor, one of two acapella groups at Tufts that focuses on the music of the African Diaspora, weighed in on this issue. “If you rap, you want to be spitting your own truth, and you want to have that kind of confidence to say what you wrote,” Hornung said.

From the inception of hip hop, rappers have been associated with environments affected by higher crime and increasing poverty rates, and used their music to communicate their experiences. “Country and hip hop have a lot in common. They do, like in terms of discourse and masculinity and needing to prove that ‘oh you were once really a cowboy’ or ‘you really sold drugs on the street,’” said Pennington. “All ways to sort of prove masculinity, it’s all sort of working class masculinity when these are all professional musicians.”

Consequently, to be a rapper nowadays, an artist has to study the origins of hip hop, understand the differences in flows, and be aware of what current rappers are working on—but the most important aspect is to know their own story. Hornung explained, “You need to study your work, especially at a place like Tufts, where people who rap—not all of us—don’t have a story, so if you don’t have anything to say, if you don’t have any personal struggle, there is no reason to rap.”

But this standard does not seem to apply to pop music, where songwriting is a paid and credited profession. According to Pennington, “no one cares about ghostwriters in pop music because no one thinks anyone in pop is authentic or real in the first place. People have so little respect for

pop that they just don’t care what you do.

It is not an anti-hip hop thing, it is an antipop thing.”

Meek Mill’s accusations marred Drake’s credibility and exposed the greater issue of ghostwriting in rap. But it also revealed a potential double standard within the genre. “The anger towards Drake is about a lot of things… [it] is not only about ghost writing. It’s about the fact that he is mixed-race, is about the fact that he is Canadian, is about the fact that he doesn’t have a hard persona,” Pennington says. “What if it turns out that Lil Wayne is using a ghostwriter, would you care then? And if you

about masculinity. When rappers claim “knowledge of ‘ghetto styles and sensibilities’ rappers are asserting their legitimate masculinity,” Michael Eric Dyson, a professor of sociology at Georgetown, explained in his book Making Malcolm: The Myth and Meaning of Malcolm X. If a rapper does not write their own lyrics, then they are not being a man. “While pursuing the ideal of the aggressive, virile man, rap artists perpetuate a highly sexualized and subservient representation of women in hip hop,” he claimed.

Understood this way, authenticity in rap music becomes associated with masculinity, and vice versa. Pennington said,

“If you rap, you want to be spitting your own truth, and you want to have that kind of confidence to say what you wrote.” wouldn’t care about Lil Wayne but you do care for Drake, then we need to ask some questions.”

Lyrics are a vital part of any rap song, and they are strengthened by a rapper’s voice and cadence. “People overlook the power of a rapper’s voice, like how their voice sounds when you record it,” Hornung shared. “That in enough is a skill, knowing how to rap in a way that sounds good in the studio.” An artist who is willing to perform ghostwritten verses shows humility, according to Hornung. “Kanye will bring 20 people in the studio with him, even if people give him flack for having an ego, which he has. When he wants to create the best song he just wants everyone’s input into what will really make his track be hot.”

Further, the expectation for rap to be authentic is also based on constructions of masculinity, specifically working class masculinity, in this genre. One cannot talk about rap without talking

“Women barely get to be real in these models and we are almost always talking about men, and if you are a woman how you negotiate realness is tricky because sexism. Women are not viewed as real as men are.” The fact that Nicki Minaj’s and Cardi B’s lyrics are not scrutinized as thoroughly as their male counterparts is because it is a genre that concentrates on patriarchal views and portrays women as fake.

Yet this criticism of women in rap ignores the fact that in the music industry, all artist personas are calculated to a certain extent. Publicists and record labels decide when to release, what to post, and how to best market their artist for success.

Perhaps the concealing of ghostwriters is a more egregious sin than using them in the first place. “[The media and the public] think of [female rappers] as completely constructed,” Pennington commented, “but you wanna know who is constructed?

All of them.”

November 20, 2017

Tufts Observer

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FEATURE

Campus

The OMG i’m so broke.I gotta save the chainsmokers concert for money. Split an uber? before urban outfitters Left my canada goose jacket

Aesthetic

By Bethany Kirby

cash. I used my allowance on I have to text my dad and ask Wait, Let’s try goodwill first, Whole foods or trader joes? basement of ato last night!

examining poorness on a rich campus

“Y

ou can say that you’re ‘poor’ after your shopping sprees and still [have the ability] to be a college student,” began low-income senior Maria Mo. “However, had I not received a scholarship and financial aid, I wouldn’t be sitting in the same classes at Tufts with the other 77 percent who claim to share the same struggle.” The 77 percent to which Mo referenced is the percentage of students at Tufts who come from the top 20 percent, a statistic from an article published in The New York Times earlier this year. In light of this article, income equality has been discussed more openly, but it’s time that we addressed socioeconomic class, social spaces, and how those two interact with one another on campus. At a school where 2.9 percent of students come from the bottom 20 percent, it is not surprising that poorness is a misunderstood concept at Tufts.

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Some aspects of being low-income, such as struggling with financial aid, food insecurity, and long work hours, are gaining attention through dialogue and written pieces by low-income students. However, one piece of the puzzle that is often missing from the dialogue is how Tufts’ more affluent peers interact with poorness, and the discomfort that low-income students often feel around these interactions. A lot of discussions both in and out of classrooms seem to revolve around the social policies and systems that create and uphold income inequality, but there is very little analysis done by students about their own wealth and privilege.

One example is the disparity that exists between students around the meaning of the word “broke.” The definition of “brokeness” is often interpreted differently in the minds of wealthy students compared to their low-income peers. For many low-

ART BY NICOLE COHEN

FEATURE

campus income students, “broke” is defined by a lack of financial stability. Matthew Wilson, a low-income senior, shared his thoughts on this discrepancy between definitions. He said, “If you’re not broke and know you’re not broke, don’t say you’re broke. There are people out there, people on this campus who are literally, actually broke. It’s time to start thinking about how the things we say affect other people.”

Justin Hudson, a low-income junior, added, “From my experience, when people here say they’re broke, they mean they’ve spent most of their allowance for the month and still have enough money to not have to work a job while also balancing school—that’s the difference between being Tufts broke and actually broke.”

Along with this trivialization of being “broke” come many wealthier students who may think that they relate to, or understand, the experience of being poor, but whose experiences are vastly different from those of poor students on campus.

Sam*, a low-income student, said, “One time, when I was worried about not being able to pay for spring semester tuition, my friend started talking about the struggles of the middleclass and telling me how hard it was being ‘well-off,’ but not as well-off as their neighbors.”

Many low-income students also share the concern that programs intended to provide resources for them are being misused by their wealthier peers.

Low-income senior Leanna Pham shared her frustration with this phenomenon, stating, “What angers me the most is when people trivialize and enjoy the struggle of scheming for free stuff. Yeah, capitalism sucks and we shouldn’t be paying the prices we do, but I hate the way people with wealth don’t hesitate around free or reduced things, like textbooks, iClickers, and more, because then the brunt of capitalism still falls on those with less money.”

Oftentimes, wealthier students will utilize programs and organizations like the Senate Textbook Exchange or Goodwill, among others, to purchase things at cheap prices. While saving money shouldn’t be a source of guilt, it is often important to understand that by using these resources, individuals with class privilege are potentially taking resources from a student who genuinely cannot afford them. While it may be enticing to get a good deal on a textbook, clothes, or food, there are students who, in return, go without.

Pham continued, “It’s really tiring to hear people talk about how they’ve saved money. I am a poor person who is so tired of having to think about money to get by. I don’t really want to listen or applaud you when you tell me about the very things I never felt like I had to vocalize. I’m uncomfort-

n k t, ? t!

able sharing publicly how I’ve saved money because I’m worried wealthy people won’t step back and those hacks and hidden pathways [will] become congested or made unavailable.”

Explicit class discussions at Tufts are often misconstrued as an attack on wealthy students. However, these discussions don’t normally aim to depict the wealthy as villains. Instead, they are intended to facilitate conversation about the challenges and struggles low-income students face on campus and what students with class privilege can tangibly do to mitigate these obstacles.

Many low-income students express frustration with having their poorness trivialized by the ‘fake poor’ aesthetic at Tufts, which is seen when higher-income students use poorness—in the form of thrift store clothing or secondhand items—as a fashion statement. Quite often, discussions of poverty in classes and readings are misunderstood as equivalent to the lived experiences of low-income individuals. Being on a limited meal plan does not equate to being unable to afford food, and not having money to go out as much as you’d like is not being “poor” or being “broke.”

There are many ways wealthier students can be more conscious of their privilege and how it may affect poor peers. A step in the right direction would be examining interactions with poor folks on campus and the potential impact of these interactions.

Are there accessible social spaces being created for lower-income friends, or is time together based around spending money? Are there discussions of elaborate plans to go to Mexico for spring break in front of peers who can’t even afford to go home? Is there joking about Tufts being a “backup” or “reject” school when some students fought to even attend a college, let alone a college like Tufts? Are wealthier students using the credit cards their parents gave them to treat peers who are working multiple jobs, or are they still sending those Venmo requests?

Sam summed up their thoughts, stating, “Please stop speaking about poorness as something that you understand, and stop making students feel as if their concerns aren’t valid. Lowincome students exist on this campus, and with the increase in dialogue around income inequality, it is time for our concerns to be heard.” *Name has been changed at the student’s request.

November 20, 2017

Tufts Observer

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FEATURE

voices

“First, it was hiding. Not being discovered. And after hiding became easy, there was Angel. Somehow, Angel became more important than running away.” - Claudia Kincaid

A

s a child, I never took seriously the possibility of running away.

I read stories, though. Fed-up, precocious kids would pack small suitcases and make it as far as the street corner, only to be brought back by their own naiveté or a realization of their parents’ unconditional love. Some succeeded. I loved reading about kids who left, but I just couldn’t imagine doing it myself. I didn’t see this kind of escape as a real solution and couldn’t imagine where I would go. Instead, I went to the library and checked out five more installments of The Adventures of Mary-Kate and Ashley.

In my mind, my boring suburban life lacked art and mystery. Those lived in the city. I used books to go there. Most of the characters in these books were quite different than I was, and therein lay their appeal.

As a child of immigrants, I thought I was uninformed and uncool, missing out on yet another fundamentally American tradition.

When I first read E. L. Konigsburg’s From The Mixed-Up Files of Basil E. Frankweiler as a nine-year-old, it didn’t make much sense to me. I kind of regarded it as a work of experimental fiction. In this 1967 classic of children’s literature, sixth-grader Claudia Kincaid decides to run away from her Greenwich, Connecticut home, where the main injustices she faces are chores and

her parents’ inattentiveness. Her escape is no frustrated stomp in the playground; it’s a carefully deliberated plan. She chooses her younger brother Jamie to accompany her because he knows how to handle money and has a sizeable sum of it: $24. They stuff their clothing into cello cases and go to live in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City.

While somehow managing to avoid detection by security (it was the 1960s, I guess), they quickly embroil themselves in a mystery. A new work of art of unknown provenance has been donated to the museum, and our protagonists suspect it may be a Michelangelo. The sculpture becomes their reason for staying, as “secrets are the kind of adventure [Claudia] needs.” Konigsburg’s storytelling infuses everything our siblings do with drama, high stakes, and a light humor. Their epiphanic encounter of the Angel, a marbled being bathed in light, comes back to me in every art museum I visit.

Being around Jamie’s age, I couldn’t maintain any distance from the characters. Their confusion and delight became my own. I believed their every word and wanted to stay in their world. Hiding became easy.

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PHOTO BY PRIYANKA PADIDAM

FEATURE

voices

I grew up far enough away from The City to long for it, and close enough to know that it was somehow more real than anything else, to daydream about the forms it took: Philadelphia, New York and even Boston (I know). By the time I worked up the requisite sense of self to run away, I was 18 years old, taking the bus to visit friends for an October weekend. My relationship with New York City was new and private. Of course I imagined it as a kind of affair, like I was slipping into a different room to be someone else for a few days only to be carried back via Megabus to my unglamorous life, where I would fail my Bio13 midterm. This was before I realized I wasn’t special, and that there’s no poetry in cheating.

But even now I let myself romanticize the place though I know it’s useless, misguided, and will lead to heartbreak. I think: this is where the heart of the country is buried. This is where it beats. Turning these tired, necessary metaphors over and over as if sucking on a cough drop in the new cold. I think about my own personal New York City saints—poets, writers, painters and performers—who lived and died there; I asked for Frank O’Hara’s collected poems for my 16th birthday. Then I think about Trump Tower, Williamsburg, and iced pumpkin spice chai lattes. How cheap and flat 2017 seems in comparison to any other year.

F R O M T H E M I X E D - U P F I L E S : o n r u n n i n g away by priyanka paDiDam How everyone’s an artist with an all-white bedroom, one succulent, and a Matisse print on the wall. From The Mixed Up Files: “If you think of doing something in New York City, you can be certain that at least two thousand other people have the same thought.”

More than a decade out from my first reading of The Mixed Up Files, I’m not as committed to the idea of escapism as I once was. But somewhere along the way, I have been Claudia. In the book’s last movements, the children’s journey to find out about the Angel leads them to encounter the eponymous Basil E., the aged art collector who gave the statue to the Met in the first

place. In her stately home, she indulges the children by reaching into her mythically expansive filing system of secrets and presenting Michelangelo’s original sketch of the Angel. She bequeaths the framed sketch to Claudia and Jamie. Claudia starts to cry. She is a girl on the edge of adolescence, overwhelmed by the magnificence and resonance of an old secret finally made real. Something Michelangelo himself touched. When the New York City skyline comes into view, I feel close to her: fascinated and uncontained.

The ending of the book depends on a surprising change of tone as Mrs. Frankweiler’s narration moves to the forefront. She describes Claudia, our idealistic hero, as sounding like “a bad actress in a bad play.” It used to seem to me that she punctured the children’s hopes by chauffeuring them home. When I read these pages now, I’m struck by the poignancy of how she responds to Claudia’s assertion that she should learn one new thing every day: “I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal. But you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything. And you can feel it inside you.”

If before I wanted to run away as Claudia, now I’d rather build a life in which I get to be Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, an eccentric collector of mixed-up secrets. The kind of life that makes room for the contradictions of longing and knowing, for allowing them to swell. It involves going places, sure, but no longer wanting to run away from myself.

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November 20, 2017

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