Issue 5 Spring 2019

TU F T S O B S ERVER IMPACT. Vol. CXXVIII. Issue 5.

S TA F F EDITOR IN CHIEF: Alexandra Benjamin MANAGING EDITOR: Wilson Wong CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Erica Levy FEATURES EDITOR: Jesse Ryan NEWS EDITORS: Anita Lam Brittany Regas ARTS & CULTURE EDITORS: Juliana Vega del Castillo Alice Hickson OPINION EDITORS: Sasha Hulkower Alexandra Strong CAMPUS EDITORS: Myisha Majumder Josie Wagner POETRY & PROSE EDITORS: Ruthie Block Cris Paulino VOICES EDITOR: Rosy Triggs Fitzgerald PHOTO DIRECTORS: Stuart Montgomery Paula Gil-Ordoñez Gomez ART DIRECTOR: Laura Wolfe LEAD ARTIST: Joanna Kleszczewski COLUMNS EDITOR: Sivi Satchithanandan VIDEO DIRECTOR: Emai Lai PODCAST DIRECTOR: Julia Press

Hidden Dissent 2 Feature | By Tara Kola

on body papers 6 Campus | By Wilson Wong

where did our votes go 10 8 News | By Sonya Bhatia

photo inset 13

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I M PAC T

PUBLICITY DIRECTORS: Nasrin Lin Sarah Park

1 7 why should bodies end at the skin: Poetry | By B.A.L.

1 8 finding joy in solidarity Opinion | By Sasha Hulkower

2 2 Game On: We-Ing Column | By Shreya Marathe

2 4 Meet pete Opinion | By Caroline Blanton

2 6 In silence Voices | By Myisha Majumder

2 8 asmr in nature Cartoon | By Nasrin Lin

STAFF WRITERS: Issay Matsumoto Trina Sanyal Sonya Bhatia Muna Mohamed Caroline Blanton DESIGNERS: Richard Nakatsuka Brigid Cawley Daniel Jelčić Sofia Pretell Brenna Trollinger Emma Herdman Janie Ingrassia LEAD COPY EDITOR: Sara Barkouli COPY EDITORS: Kate Bowers Aidan Schaffert Leah Kirsch Lola Jacquin Mahika Khosla Akbota Saudabayeva EDITOR EMERITUS: Emmett Pinsky CONTRIBUTORS: Grace Talusan Alonso Nichols Olivia Herdman

FRONT COVER PHOTOS BY JOSIE WAGNER TOC PHOTOS BY EMMA HERDMAN

Feature

Hidden dissent: The well-concealed histories behind the sackler name

By Tara Kola

P

rofessor Michael Malamy has been at Tufts long enough to remember when the medical school shared space with the old garment factories in Chinatown. He also remembers the first time the name of the Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences was challenged in April 1980. Now, over the past year, Tufts has come under scrutiny for its connections to the Sackler family, which is credited with developing the aggressive marketing strategies that encouraged the over-prescription of OxyContin that eventually propelled America into an opioid crisis. “Everybody thinks of OxyContin and the opioid epidemic,” Malamy said, sitting in his office in the Sackler School across from the Sackler Medical Education Building. “But our objection to the Sacklers went back to the donation that founded the [biomedical] school.”

Last month, TCU Senate, the students of Tufts University School of Medicine (TUSM), and the Sack Sackler Campaign (organized by an inter-campus group of students and alumni), all submitted demands to remove the Sackler name from Tufts’ Biomedical School and the Sackler building at 145 Harrison Ave. In a resolution on the Sackler ties to Tufts, the Faculty Senate has also advised the University to “seek new opportunities to improve terminology for how we refer to Tufts activities and buildings.” All of these groups have cited the harm caused by the opioid epidemic in their demands.

In response to questions about the presence of the Sackler name at Tufts, Patrick Collins, Executive Director of Public Relations, has repeatedly stated that the Sackler donation was made “more than a decade before OxyContin was introduced to the marketplace.” But as Professor Malamy noted, “[OxyContin] is not our first bad encounter with the Sackler family.” Tufts had cause to scrutinize the Sackler name for several decades before 400,000 Americans died by opioid overdose between 1997 and 2017 and before Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey released a 274-page memorandum in January describing the “marketing benefits Purdue Pharma reaped from Tufts.”

In reality, the story began 60 years ago in Washington DC, with Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver. Kefauver was famous for conducting high-profile investigations, including the Kefauver Committee on organized crime, in which Frank Costello, the iconic New York mafia boss, testified. In 1959, Kefauver began congressional hearings on a more ambiguous sort of organized crime—the business of pharmaceuticals. Initially, Kefauver sought to investigate the high prices of prescription drugs. But as the hearings continued, a number of new concerns arose about aggressive marketing, deceptive advertising, and questionable testing methods being employed by the pharmaceutical industry.

In 1962, Arthur M. Sackler testified before Kefauver. Sackler was raised in a working-class family in Brooklyn, graduated with 2 Tufts Observer April 8, 2019

an MD from the NYU School of Medicine, and then pursued his residency in psychiatry. By the time of his testimony, he had already become a prominent figure in the pharmaceutical industry as the head of the country’s largest pharmaceutical-focused advertising firm, William Douglas McAdams.

According to Barry Meier, author of Pain Killer: A “Wonder” Drug’s Trail of Addiction and Death, Sackler edited the Journal of Clinical and Experimental Psychology, founded the Medical Tribune, a free bi-weekly newsletter sent directly to doctors, bought a pharmaceutical company with his brothers, and planted pro-opioid stories in newspapers. As one of Kefauver’s staff memos put it, “The Sackler empire [was] a completely integrated operation” that could develop drugs, create favorable testing results, ghostwrite scientific journal articles, and directly advertise to doctors and the public. Sackler managed to leave the 1962 hearing unscathed, but Kefauver had already noticed the concerns that would rise to the public eye years later, over the drug we now associate with the Sackler name: OxyContin.

Throughout the 1970s and ‘80s, Arthur Sackler made a number of large donations to art museums and medical institutions, including Tufts. In 1979, Tufts President Jean Mayer began seeking private funding to renovate research facilities. Mayer had an ambitious vision of what he called “one medicine,” which included a single graduate school that would coordinate research efforts in the biomedical sciences and across the medical, dental, and veterinary schools.

In 1980, Arthur, along with his brothers Raymond and Mortimer, signed a contract to donate a total of $1.5 million to Tufts.

In return, the contract stipulated that the University “agrees that the name, ‘The Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences,’ shall be displayed prominently on the building [housing the school]… in any official and scholarly publication, catalogue, invitation or announcement… [and] on all diplomas received by its graduate students.” Apart from delineating the terms of Sackler brand placement on buildings, publications, and diplomas, the naming contract also stated that this condition would be effective in perpetuity.

On March 25, 2019, in response to the Attorney General’s memorandum, Tufts President Anthony Monaco announced an internal review of the possible influence of the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma on the research and training at Tufts. His university-wide message said that while many members of the Tufts community are calling for the removal of the Sackler name, the University “will await the results of the review… prior to making any final decisions.” But whatever the results of the review might be, according to the terms of the 1980 contract, the name cannot be legally changed without the written permission of the Sacklers.

ART BY BRIGID CAWLEY

Feature

Jan 15, 2019 • Attorney General Maura Healey sumbits memorandum showing influence of Sacklers on Tufts 2017 • Esquire and New Yorker articles discuss Sackler donations, including Tufts

March 2019 • TCU Senate, Sack Sackler, Faculty Senate, Medical School students raise concerns about ethics of the Sackler donation OC

2003 • Barry Meier’s book reports on Sackler complicity in OxyContin

1909 • Smoking opium banned in the US

19th C • Heroin is developed and marketed as a non-addictive medicine

1916 • Oxycodone developed in Germay

1924 • Heroin made illegal, even for medical use

8th C • Opium as a medicine is first recorded in Dioscordes’ De Materia Medica

1959 • Kefauver hearings on pharmaceutical industry begin

~3400 BC • Opium cultivation begins in Assyria

8th C • Arab traders introduce opium to India

19th C • Opiates are a common treatment for women with “hysteria”

16th C • Laudanum introduced in Europe from Arab medicine

2001 • FDA marks OxyContin as drug with high risk for abuse

1979 • Tufts University begins drafting proposal for Sackler School with Arthur M. Sackler

1980 • Sackler School is formed; faculty raises concerns about ethics of the Sackler donation 1995 • OxyContin approved by FDA

1980 • Purdue Pharma begins creating OxyContin April 8, 2019 Tufts Observer 3

Feature

Professor Michael Malamy reminds us that the Sackler name was opposed even when that contract was first written. This forgotten history can be traced in the Tufts Archive. In the minutes from a faculty meeting on April 7, 1980, faculty members raised concerns pertaining to the formation of the Sackler School, including: “1) If it costs $1,000,000 to endow a professorship, how can the Trustees and administration consider developing a school on a $1,500,000 donation?

2) How much of the total donation will actually go toward the Sackler School?

3) Professors Shaffer and Slapikoff would like to have the question of ethics addressed in light of recent allegations as to how Sackler funds were amassed.”

Given what the Kefauver subcommittee had briefly revealed about the ethically-questionable practices of the Sacklers, Malamy said that many faculty members felt that “taking the money was an issue, but naming it the Sackler School––we didn’t think the Sackler name should be associated with an academic institution doing biomedical research.”

Professor Malamy appears in the archive as well, in the minutes of a special meeting on April 29, 1980, during a discussion of the proposed Sackler School.

The minutes summarized, “[Professor Malamy] urged the faculty in their deliberations to be cautious… to move slowly, to define the goals of graduate education, to see what is being proposed and then [to] do something positive about it.”

President Mayer is then quoted as saying this was a “damned if you do and damned if you don’t situation.”

Malamy said that discussions about the ethics of the Sackler donation continued in medical school faculty discussions after this meeting, but due to a 75 year embargo on those documents, the Observer was unable to corroborate the records. The few available documents, though, clearly indicate that ethical concerns were raised about the Sackler funds in 1980, long before OxyContin even hit the market.

Like the dissenting faculty members almost four decades ago, many Tufts community members today have challenged the power wielded by the Sackler name. Sarah Hemphill, a first-year student and organizer at the medical school, said that “Tufts has a huge opportunity here to lead the charge in becoming the first academic institution that cuts ties with the Sacklers.” She sees removing the Sackler name as “a symbolic gesture of solidarity with the hundreds of thousands of people who have been affected by the opioid crisis.”

Professor Malamy also feels “it would be appropriate to take the name away, especially in light of the student protests.” Sonia Das, an alumnus of the Sackler School who now works as a researcher in cancer drug development, affirmed that “[The Sacklers] need to be held accountable,” expressing her “support for everyone still at Tufts who is trying to remove the name.”

Hemphill said that there is “widespread acceptance” among students, faculty, and administrators of unofficially referring to the building at 145 Harrison Street as Med Ed, or the Medical Education building. A university-wide email from the Provost’s office on March 28 also referred to the building by this name. Yet both Professor Malamy and Professor Wortis, a Sackler School representative within the university-wide Faculty Senate, had not been made aware of this unofficial name change.

Malamy and Wortis both recognized the value of removing the Sackler name, while still expressing other concerns about changing it. “I would be happy to be rid of it,” Wortis said, “but I think we have bigger problems.”

“Even more concerning is the possible influence on the curriculum,” Malamy continued. But Hemphill said that the medical students have been reassured repeatedly by the Deans that their MD curriculum has not been influenced by the Sacklers in any way. “We are pretty confident that is true,” she told the Observer. Professor Emmanuel Pothos, Director of Addiction Medicine at TUSM, also emphatically stated that the course incurs no industry influence.

But the Attorney General’s report examines a specific Tufts Masters program in Pain Research, Education, and Policy (MS-PREP) at TUSM that was established by a gift from the Sackler family in 1999. The report unequivocally reveals that “The Sacklers got a lot for their money” through MS-PREP. Both Professor Pothos and Professor Malamy confirmed that the administration, including TUSM Dean Harris Berman, have announced to faculty that the MS-PREP program will be shut down. Pothos attributed this decision to low enrollment. However, President Monaco, Dean Berman, Patrick Collins, and the Director of the MS-PREP program declined to verify this. They also declined to comment on any of the Observer’s questions pertaining to the Sackler issue, out of respect for the ongoing internal investigation of the program by Donald K. Stern.

This opaque response epitomizes the most vehemently emphasized concern of the student organizers advocating to rename the Sackler school: the lack of transparency from the Tufts administration. This opacity is perpetuated by the restrictions placed on the archival documents the Observer sought to consult in re-

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4 Tufts Observer April 8, 2019

Feature

constructing the history of Sackler ties at Tufts. Daniel Fritz, a PhD student at Sackler involved in drafting the petition for the Sack Sackler campaign said, “I understand they can’t take action until the process is concluded, but I don’t think they should close off discussion.”

Sophomore Connor Goggins was one of four authors on TCU Senate’s “Resolution Calling for Tufts University to Explain their Complicity in the Opioid Crisis and Clarify the Oversight of Trustees and Advisors.” His motivation for working on the resolution was to “expose the opacity, which is only continuing with this investigation.”

Hemphill said that while she feels the administration is “on [their] same team,” she and other medical students were “disappointed” by President Monaco’s announcement regarding the internal investigation, especially because of his lack of commitment to eventually share the investigation results in full. “We are worried that Tufts will take an action and we will never have any transparency on how that decision was made,” she said. Likewise, Fritz expressed that the Sack Sackler group’s biggest concern at present is that President Monaco’s announcement contained “no real assurances.”

But the Sackler issue has also been a site of deeper fissures and wider tensions within the University. Eric Rizzotti, a graduate student in the history department, was not surprised when he learnt of Tufts’ connection to the opioid crisis. “There is just such a distance between Tufts and the broader community, especially where I’m coming from—and where a lot of people are coming from.”

Rizzotti grew up in Berkley, Massachusetts, a small town of fewer than 7,000 residents. Between 2013 and 2017, Berkley saw 11 opioid overdose deaths. Rizzotti explained that growing up, “there was a ton of Oxy and Percocet floating around.” In high school, a classmate on the football team got an injury and was prescribed OxyContin. He started selling the opioids at school, and soon “a ton of people got addicted to painkillers, and then became heroin addicts,” Rizzotti recalled. He described the alienation he felt coming to an “elite” institution like Tufts, “where the world is just so abstract to people.”

“Changing the Sackler name is really nothing,” Rizzotti said, reflecting on the losses of those in his hometown. “The way funding is set up, there are all kinds of interests like the Sacklers coming into schools like Tufts.” Like Rizzotti, a number of students expressed concern about what the particular case of the Sacklers might reveal about how institutions are structured with hidden pockets of opacity. Fritz said that one of his primary concerns in drafting the Sack Sackler petition was “to encourage the University to be more transparent in the future,” particularly regarding financial information. The TCU Senate resolution also asked the administration to “apply more thoughtful, rigorous, and critical criteria when evaluating board members in the future.”

“The Sacklers are just the tip of the iceberg,” Hemphill said, referring to pharmaceutical fraud, the entanglements of ethically problematic donors with universities, and the way those institutions can become tangled within themselves. Professor Malamy’s memory of the Kefauver hearings draws us back to a strange knot

of history, which reveals how the boundaries between profitseeking corporations, state regulations, and universities can be unevenly and unknowingly stitched together.

Thus, the paragons of pharmaceutical regulation and pharmaceutical recklessness moved through the same spheres—from a congressional hearing to a university. History asks us to take consequences of institutional amnesia seriously. “Nobody remembers anything,” Professor Malamy laments. “It’s as if every time a new dean or new president takes over, everything that came before is erased.” If Malamy is one of the few faculty members who still remembers the original questions raised about the Sackler name decades ago, what other forms of exploitation receive forgotten sanctuary within institutions of higher learning?

“I don’t believe the Sacklers are at fault,” Malamy said. “It’s the doctors who are prescribing these things.” Hemphill disagreed, countering, “The blame falls on the drug companies and the government’s failure to regulate them, it doesn’t fall on the doctors.” But to Malamy’s point, Professor Pothos said, “We should have the sincerity to discuss the role of the healthcare community itself.” Finally, on the subject of the University’s complicity, Goggins said, “So many levels of Tufts administration let this happen.” The answer is perhaps more challenging than any single donor, doctor, or institution.

Even as we respond to the damage done by OxyContin overprescription and the ethical challenges of responsibility that it raises, Pothos is also skeptical about the future of opioid addiction. “The opioid crisis has been with us for a few hundred years, is here with us to stay, and will probably evolve into another opioid crisis in the future,” he said. As he pointed out, the American opioid crisis is neither particularly “American,” nor is it unique to this moment, even if it has just recently landed on Tufts’ doorstep.

Ben Siegel is a Professor of History at Boston University studying the opium trade. The structure of the current opioid crisis, he explained, is similar to opioid panics and crises we have seen from the nineteenth century onwards, including mass addictions to the once over-the-counter opioid, heroin, and to the cureall of the American Civil War, morphine. Like OxyContin, both heroin and morphine were initially marketed as non-addictive.

“The case of Sackler and Oxy is less singular than we might think,” Siegel offered. “Against the narrative of American exceptionalism, there are opioid crises in every corner of the world right now, and they are all interlinked by a complex global market.” As the Tufts community grapples with how to respond to the Sacklers and the American opioid crisis at large, will we be willing to see the complex networks that tie the ills of the here and now to the suffering of the faraway and long-ago? “Even though Tufts likes to talk about its global reach, this is a moment of reckoning,” Goggins said.

Sitting in his office across from the Medical Education Building, Professor Malamy reminds us that “coming to simple conclusions is a mistake, because it gives us a way out.” Even if removing the Sackler name were easy, the Tufts community must face that as “active citizens” and “global citizens,” we may have no easy way out of the global opioid crisis that has arrived at 145 Harrison Ave, Boston, MA. April 8, 2019 Tufts Observer 5

Campus

Grace Talusan (A’94) is author of the memoir The Body Papers and winner of the 2017 Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing for Nonfiction. She was born in the Philippines and came to the US with her parents at age 2. She has published essays, longform journalism, fiction, and book reviews in Brevity, Creative Nonfiction, Boston Magazine, Boston Globe, The Rumpus, and various other publications.

She received a degree in English from Tufts University and an MFA in Writing from the University of California, Irvine. Her writing has been supported by Fulbright, Hedgebrook, Ragdale, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and others.

W

On Body Papers Grace Talusan on her memoir

By Wilson Wong CW: Sexual assault, suicidal depression, mental illness

6 Tufts Observer April 8, 2019

e meet in Dewick because Grace bought too many meal swipes before accepting her new position at Brandeis University. “It’s like an Old Country Buffet,” she says between coughs. Still recovering from pneumonia, she apologizes, “I’m only feeling 80 percent better.”

I’m astounded, taken aback by how she has still managed to go from teaching classes to squeezing in a meal with me to immediately rushing to her therapy appointment thereafter. If the symptoms of pneumonia were looking radiant while speaking in a low, husky voice before embarking on a book tour, Grace certainly had it.

We settle down on a long empty table upstairs, nestled in a quiet corner. “Taking up space!” I say. She laughs and nods in agreement. “Immigrant families, Filipinx families, Asian American families, [and] families of color barely make up the space of what’s written out there.” In fact, she tells me, there is such little representation that Talusan had even questioned her own stories while writing her memoir, understanding the weight they carry. For Talusan, memoirs are based on memories, her memories are based on her version of events, and her version is her truth. “It is the truth, but is that damaging? It might be, but if we had 500 more books about our experiences, then mine would not be representative at all—mine would just be one family,” she explains.

In the 1970s, Talusan’s parents immigrated from Manila to Chicago before eventually settling in Boston. Her father, Totoy, came to the US on a student visa to finish his medical career. And when

Campus

Totoy’s visa expired, Grace’s family, despite their newfound middle-class status, became undocumented. With a shuffle of papers, Totoy’s office, Grace’s two US-born brothers, and their entire livelihoods could have disappeared. At the time, Grace had no idea how precarious everything was; despite walking on thin ice, she continued to succeed in school. Until she didn’t.

In the process of researching for her memoir, she wanted to follow a paper trail that documented and explained this change. Totoy kept a file on each of his children, comprised of important papers and school assignments. Talusan studied her file to find “all these other ways of experience, besides memory, to help measure or track this time period.” In first grade, she received the highest marks in each subject. By second grade, there was a sudden decline.

“I looked at old photos, and I can see the change even within my face in ways I didn’t [at the time],” she adds. Lastly, she tells me about something else she didn’t fully realize the implications of at the time—that the topic of her senior high school research paper was child molestation.

Every summer for five years, Totoy’s father would visit her family. And every night those summers, Totoy’s father would visit Grace’s bed. We talked about how Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh was the first child sexual abuse story we had both encountered featuring an Asian American protagonist. In his autobiographical novel, Chee explains how sexual abuse is commonly misunderstood as someone robbing something from you.

“Instead, someone leaves something with you that grows until it replaces you,” he writes. “You imagine that the worst thing is that someone would know. The attention you need to heal you have been taught will end you. And it will—it will end the pain you have mistaken for yourself. The worst thing is not that someone would know. The worst thing is that you might lay waste to your whole life by hiding.”

“I learned—or I didn’t learn—the right things, how to trust,” Grace says. “Even my

nieces and nephews and niblings (gender neutral term),” she pauses, “the people I probably feel the most comfortable with, notice how awkwardly I hug them.” She gesticulates a half pat-on-the-back, a half arm hug while half-heartedly laughing.

“They don’t know fully why yet, but they will soon.”

Ta l u s a n herself would not know the full extent of her trauma until her adult years.

With unrelenting and refreshing candor, she describes struggling with suicidal depression, dissociative disorder, insomnia, and recurring hives and boils. “Every month, I pay the equivalent of rent toward my mental health: its own kind of home,” she writes in her book.

Despite enduring trauma almost her entire life, she graduated from Tufts with a degree in English. It was September of 1990 when she first arrived, and in her first week, she received a typewritten letter. Addressed to “Babut” (Talusan’s nickname), Grace’s dad informed her that after dropping her off, her mom got mad at

“Every month, I pay the equivalent of rent toward my mental health: its own kind of home”

PHOTOS AND DOCUMENTS COURTESY OF GRACE TALUSAN

him after telling her there was no reason to cry. “You don’t understand how a mother feels,” he explains.

More than a decade later, married and paying off her student loans, Talusan had begun exploring the possibility of motherhood. However, her 30s, also known as the “cancer years,” marked a new reckoning. First for her niece, then her older sister, then her, and finally her younger sister.

Totoy is a known carrier for the BRCA 1 gene mutation, which increases the risk of breast and ovarian cancer in women. There was a 50-50 chance of his offspring carrying the gene—Grace and her sisters all tested positive.

“I have a funny story about that,” she says as she scrapes the toppings off her now-cold pizza. “One time, I had a breast core biopsy where I discovered I had atypical cells, pre-cancer cells.” A core biopsy is a procedure where the medical examiner removes small pieces of tissue with a special needle. “They took a core of me, and I had to go teach an hour later,” she laughs. “Of course, I didn’t tell anybody, but it’s like who’s going to substitute me?

I have to teach!” She recalls brushing up against a lectern before letting out a yelp barely discernible from a child’s.

Talusan went through with a double mastectomy, but the momentary respite it provided was short-lived. She now faced the April 8, 2019 Tufts Observer 7

Campus

question of undergoing an oophorectomy (removing her ovaries), but was certain she still wanted a child. Her husband, Alonso, on the other hand, was not quite on board. As a child, he was abandoned by his father, whom he describes with three words: “alcoholic, womanizer, narcissist.”

His father told him, “Someday you will end up in the gutter where I found you,” she writes. For Alonso, the thought of becoming a father was scarier than having no child at all.

When I ask Grace if there was any tension in the ways some people were portrayed in her memoir, she holds my gaze and nods silently. “[Alonso] worried that that was all of him and it’s not. It’s one story.

We’ve been together for 20 years, there are other parts of our life that we enjoy—that’s why we’re together,” she says. “I really had strong feelings of wanting kids, but looking back, I wouldn’t be able to do what I do with my nieces and nephews, with my work, with the choices around my work, if I was taking care day-to-day of my own child.”

8 Tufts Observer April 8, 2019

“In terms of that trade-off, I’m fine with it,” she says. “But,” she continued, “that was something that was hard and I thought about what it meant to share that part of our marriage with folks. That’s not my concern, really. He can have his feelings. People are going to think what they think. I can’t control that. I tried to be as fair as possible, but what’s more important is that people struggle with this question, and it’s not something we talk about very much.”

When Grace turned 40, her dreams of motherhood ended—at least in what is most commonly understood as motherhood. When her niece Naomi was 12, she read her “Tita Grace”, a poem she had written for a school assignment. “A second mother / The person that plays with you, bakes with you and loves you,” she read. Talusan doesn’t think it’s productive to imagine a life without abuse, but sometimes, she admits she sees her future in Naomi.

“I’m hoping Naomi sees what’s possible… I want her—all of them, my nieces

and nephews and niblings—to know that they can survive a lot,” she says. “If you have the right support and treatment and medication or whatever it is you need, there is a lot you can survive and live through.” ~ The same year, Talusan received a yearlong Fulbright Scholarship to do research in Manila. “A literary pilgrimage,” writers might call this. But for Talusan, it also meant returning and living in a place she hadn’t stayed in for an extended period of time since she was two—a home of sorts. (Imagine, an Asian American defining home).

“It was a really profound experience, to be known, to be seen,” she says. “Even being seen in Starbucks, like, it was airconditioned so we were there every day, workers would recognize us and greet us by our names. ‘The usual?’ they would say.

And I was like, ‘Yeah, the usual!’” For 17 years, Grace has been going to the Starbucks in Davis Square, where workers

Campus

misspell her last name and where there is no usual. “We talked about our families, all that stuff. There’s a sort of intimacy, a closeness,” she says.

She asks me if I felt similarly when I went abroad to Hong Kong last year. I told her that the men I’d meet wouldn’t even bat an eyelash at a White man. “Isn’t that wild? That we live with this structure every day? It’s just part of the air we breathe here,” she responds.

Returning to a “home” always has its complications, even in a place where we feel seen. “I couldn’t breathe,” she says, laughing.

“Like, physically couldn’t breathe?” I responded.

She nods and tells me that people in Manila are constantly incinerating trash, which causes her to have asthma attacks.

Talusan also notes that the Philippines is not without its history of colonialism and White supremacy. In her book, she was shocked to hear about her White colleague’s experiences in Manila. “I was like, ‘What?

You’ve never opened a door a single time since you’ve been here?’” she says. Because her colleague is White, “people would tell her to come to the front of the line, and of course, she would always decline, but I was like, ‘Colonialism, White supremacy, here it is!’” she says.

In the Philippines, she adds, everybody knew her name: Talusan. You can trace the Talusan lineage back to Grace’s second cousin, Alfrredo Navarro Salanga—a published author and prolific writer.

“Here in the US, people can’t even pronounce [my last name],” she says. “Publishing is 80 percent White, and that’s power. That’s influencing a narrative, like what they’re interested in is different than what we’re interested in.”

Getting her foot in the door of the publishing world wasn’t easy. Talusan is well aware of the structural issues she faces as a writer of color and woman of color, but these factors have never discouraged her from

writing. Early in her career, she kept a critic journal. “I had this file that has all that’s in my head that keeps me from getting work done,” she says. “I would say all that I wanted to say, like, ‘Who cares?’ or ‘You suck, your writing sucks!’ and I would write in a different font or color and talk back to it.” It’s difficult enough receiving writing opportunities, trying to get paid, or becoming visible, especially as writers of color. “It’s going to be worse if we’re attacking ourselves,” she says.

~ I first met Talusan in January 2016. She was teaching the first-year writing English course, “Asian American Perspectives”—a class she has taught for more than a decade. For the first time in my life, I saw myself represented in front of the classroom, in my readings, and in my assignments.

Attempting to compensate for lost time, I would later take all of the Asian American Studies courses offered for the remainder of my undergraduate career, but none of these were taught by Talusan. “Because I didn’t have a PhD, I couldn’t teach a course higher than a first-year level writing course,” she says. “Nor do I really want to [get a PhD]… Places that understand [creative] writing understand that you don’t necessarily have to have a PhD.” This upcoming fall, Talusan will begin her work as a Fannie Hurst Writer-in-

Residence at Brandeis while still teaching courses at Tufts through Tisch College. Her departure from Tufts is a tremendous loss not only for our community, but also for its course offerings listed under Asian American Studies. When I ask her if she is sad to leave, she immediately responds, “No.” At Brandeis, she tells me, she will be paid more to teach fewer courses and will actually be teaching what she hasn’t been able to teach here: creative writing. “I’ve really appreciated everyone I’ve met here, but I cannot volunteer my time,” she says.

“I mean, I did,” she continues, “But the system is not set up to work in the way I want to work with people.”

What’s next? “I’m working on my first novel and doing research on Jewish refugees moving to the Philippines before World War II,” she says. “I’m marketing, too.

I’m doing a different part of the writing process where I’m like, ‘What does it mean to market myself?’”

An introvert (like all good writers), Talusan feels weird about using Twitter and Bookstagram (Instagrams literally dedicated to books). “I’m not good at Twitter, I’m not, I’m really bad at it. I feel like Celeste [Ng] is really good at Twitter,” she says, referencing another female Asian American writer.

But, aside from anxiety-inducing activities like navigating social media and making her next student loan payment, Talusan simply wants to write more.

“When I’m working on something, and it’s going so well, it’s,” she pauses, breaking her gaze. “Almost like falling in love over and over again. You must know that feeling, you’re a writer, too,” she says looking back up at me. I do know that feeling—an untouchable place no one can inhabit but you, unaffected by abuse or injustice. “I want to check up on it right before bed and then first thing in the morning. I want to make my coffee and get started, because I get really excited,” she says. “I want to have more of that, those experiences. I want to get more writing done so I can feel that.”

April 8, 2019 Tufts Observer 9

News

Where did our Silencing young voters in the aftermath of Parkland

By Sonya Bhatia CW: Suicide, gun violence

A

lyssa Alhadeff, Martin Duque Anguiano, Nicholas Dworet, Jaime Guttenberg, Luke Hoyer, Cara Loughran, Gina Montalto, Joaquin Oliver, Alaina Petty, Meadow Pollack, Helena Ramsay, Alex Schachter, Carmen Schentrup, Peter Wang, Chris Hixon, Aaron Feis, Scott Beigel. These were the victims of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High in Parkland, Florida on February 14, 2018.

Melanie Gilbert Becker, an alumna of Stoneman Douglas High and sophomore at Tufts University, remembers the complete shock she felt when she received the news about the shooting from her uncle.

“I was thinking of this one teacher, she’s a cancer survivor. She did survive, but so many other people didn’t,” Becker said.

Like many others from Parkland, Becker was heartbroken by the tragedy. “It was a really hard day. The shooter was in my gym class in eighth grade,” she recalled.“This class clown I knew was a mass murderer.

Everything I knew was turned on its head.”

The losses from the shooting rippled deeply and gravely throughout the community. In the days, weeks, and months following, the healing process took on different forms for different people.

“What made it easier for me was seeing the movement immediately mobilize,” Becker remarked. Only four days after the shooting, Parkland student survivors came together under the online platform Never Again, with the mission of stricter gun reform policy and plans for nationwide protests. With Never Again, they organized the March for Our Lives Protest that eventually took place on March 24, 2018. These student activists also used social media platforms to prolong the movement’s pres10 Tufts Observer Apri l 8, 2019

ence in the news cycle. Young people were at the forefront of fostering bold political action in response to epic tragedy, a force never before witnessed on a national level.

As the movement grew, there came with it a sense of urgency for young people to vote in the 2018 midterm elections.

Housed in Tisch College of Civic Life, the group Center For Information & Research On Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE) researched the youth movement after Parkland and found significant evidence of its effects in the midterms. Voting provides a direct channel to determine which federal, local, and state officials accurately represent Americans and the issues they care about. For today’s youth, one of the most urgent of those issues is gun reform. Gun violence is an epidemic that has reached an unacceptable death toll, one that directly impacts young people at alarming rates. The 2018 midterm elections were an opportunity for students to vote for representatives who could respond to their grief and anger through effective legislative action. Kristian Lundber, Associate Researcher at CIRCLE, said that young people “decided the way to fix [gun violence] was to work within the system and vote to enact the change they wanted to see, to make their voices heard at the ballot box.”

Dr. Peter Levine, founding deputy director of CIRCLE, commented that the Parkland students created “an amazing youth led social movement.” He added that CIRCLE’s research “finds that almost twothirds of all youth said they had paid some attention to Parkland. Those who were actively involved with the movement were 21 percentage points more likely to vote.”

On a national level, the results of the movement were tangible. According to

CIRCLE’s research, young voters aged 1821 saw their highest election turnout in 25 years. Additionally, NBC News analysts found that voters under 30 were one of the core groups key to the Democratic takeback of the House.

Despite the youth movement’s general success, a closer look at the elections in Florida reveals a darker side of the story.

The young voices who were most directly affected by gun violence, and who had the loudest outcries against it, were those in Parkland. But evidence shows that those voices may have been silenced when it came to voting at the polls last November. The Washington Post reported that 15 percent of mail-in ballots that were sent in for the midterm election by young voters (ages 18-21) in Broward County, where Parkland is located, were never counted.

This number is significantly higher than Florida’s state average for uncounted ballots—5.4 percent.

This news, though disheartening, is not all that surprising coming from Florida. The state is notorious for its contentious election history, which gained national attention in 2000 with the contested Bush v. Gore presidential election and following Supreme Court case.

“The biggest issue then was ballot irregularities and how to count the ballots,” Megan Newsome, a researcher at the University of Florida, told the Observer. She also emphasised that there was less voter accessibility in 2000; for example, there were no mail-in ballots in Florida during that time. Newsome added that “the reforms put in place in 2000 were intended to make the recount process smoother, quicker, and less controversial than 2000.

What 2018 showed was that those reforms helped in some areas and hurt in others;

News

votes go? the recount of 2018 was ultimately still very controversial despite the efforts in 2000.” Even with these reforms, Newsome warns that Florida is still “incredibly behind” in terms of election law.

The Broward County mail-in ballots were rejected for reasons such as failing to arrive on time and having signatures that did not match voting records. Election officials compare the signature on the mail-in ballot to the signature on a voter’s registration form. This signature is often taken from documents such as a driver’s license, which many young voters would have filled out in high school.

Matt Tolbert, a sophomore at Tufts and active member of JumboVote, commented on the voting-by-mail process based on his experience working with students. “For young people in particular, chances are your signature has changed, your handwriting has changed, something may not be exactly the same,” he said.

“If [election officials] see something is different, and it is totally up to them, there is no form of accountability, they can just be like, ‘Sorry, signature doesn’t match,’ [and] reject your ballot—that’s huge.”

Another part of the problem in Florida is the time frame the state sets for sending in mail-in ballots. Mail-in ballots are due at 5:00 a.m. on Election Day, whereas residents in Florida can vote in the polls until 7:00 p.m. Newsome believes that mail-in ballots should be counted if they are postmarked on Election Day. Talking specifically about Florida, Tolbert added that “a lot of swing states, a lot of purple states, have a lot of strict voting laws. Florida is not user-friendly at all.”

Newsome spoke to the fact that the voting discrepancy in Broward County signals a larger voting problem in Florida, where one percent of mail-in ballots get thrown out statewide. Though this may seem like a

low percentage, its practical implication is that one in 100 votes are not counted. “In 2018 the governor's race was determined by 30,000 votes and Senate determined by 100,000 votes. It’s incredibly important— this is the race where everybody’s vote should’ve counted,” Newsome said.

So long as young people are systematically silenced on issues of gun violence through the electoral process, Parkland will continue to be profoundly affected by its dark history of gun violence.

On a national level, challenges in the voting process often disproportionately affect young voting-by-mail voters as well. These obstacles are actively disenfranchising young people from the political process. “[The] absentee ballot is another barrier to vote, it’s a process that young people find challenging,” Kiesa said. “A story like this is concerning but is not surprising.”

Newsome said she was disappointed that voting by mail was the most encouraged method to vote nationwide, rather than early voting. However, she acknowledges that there is some appeal to voting by mail in cases with “a historically long ballot, which can be daunting, so you don’t feel like you have time to research ahead,”

she said. “Instead, with a mail-in ballot, you can have just your ballot at home and take your time with your research.”

But with an increase in vote-by-mail ballots and a faulty infrastructure to handle them, Newsome explained that “by consequence, we had a flurry of mail-in ballots not counted.”

Newsome views the news about Parkland ballots as a symptom of deeply rooted institutional issues that marginalizes young voters. “Lawmakers knew what groups would be affected when they instituted the [signature] law. It’s an effect of those systematic changes.”

So long as young people are systematically silenced on issues of gun violence through the electoral process, Parkland will continue to be profoundly affected by its dark history of gun violence.

And the polls are not the only place this darkness is manifesting. Last month, over the weekend of March 25, two young people from Parkland took their own lives.

Nineteen-year-old Sydney Aiello was a senior at Douglas when the shooting occurred and was close friends with one of the victims, Meadow Pollack. Sixteenyear-old Calvin Desir was a sophomore at Douglas High who survived the shooting, according to the Miami Herald. An NPR report speculated that survivor’s guilt played a role in their deaths. It is not only young people that suffer from the aftermath of school shootings. The New York Times reported that same weekend that Jeremy Richman—father of Sandy Hook victim Avielle Richman—also took his own life.

A year ago, in the wake of the Parkland shootings, lawmakers approved a $69 million budget for mental health services in Florida, with $4 million allocated specifically to Broward County School District. However, according to the Tampa Bay Times, the legislation gave no specific direction for Florida schools to consider suicide prevention efforts.

April 8, 2019 Tufts Observer 11

News

After the suicides, Parkland parents, school officials, and others called an emergency meeting to brainstorm how to respond and reach out to others at risk. The Eagles’ Haven Community Wellness Center in Parkland, founded in response to the shooting, expedited its opening. But more help is still needed. NPR reports that despite these efforts, only a fraction of those affected by Parkland shootings have actually sought counseling. Town officials are encouraging parents to initiate these difficult yet necessary dialogues about mental health with their children.

Becker was devastated by the news of the recent suicides and empathizes with the mental health struggles of those in Parkland. “My cousin had PTSD for a long time. These are the things you don’t hear about,” she said. “Teachers are heartbroken. That’s happening and nobody really thinks about it.”

Trauma remains an active presence in the Parkland community and cannot be pushed aside just because the shooting has left the news cycle. Over the past year, young people have channeled their anger through political engagement. In fact, CIRCLE has found data indicating a strong connection between cynicism and political engagement in the youth movement in Parkland. “Young people reported feeling more and more cynical than they did in 2016. People who reported feeling the most cynical were also most likely to vote. So they were really fired up,” Lundberg said.

The data from the 2018 election reveals a palpable change in potential for youth political engagement. Kiesa talks about the necessity for youth work to be supported, both on a national and community level, especially looking towards the 2020 election. “We are particularly concerned about young people having opportunities to have an impact on issues and know that their voice matters regardless in what community they’re from.”

Where there should be opportunities for young people to have an impact on a political level, we instead find barriers. In theory, voting is a system through which

people can directly impact the people who will fight for and represent them. Voting failed young people in Broward County, whose fears and anger about gun violence were met inadequately by election officials. And while these officials fail to take appropriate action, more lives have been lost. Young people’s cries are loud, their action is present, yet their votes are not being counted. Government action needs to match the vigor of these young voices. Existing systems such as the voting-by-mail process, which are meant to make voting more accessible, need to assure that young

Trauma remains an active presence in the Parkland community and cannot be pushed aside just because the shooting has left the news cycle.

12 Tufts Observer April 8, 2019

of school shootings, armed domestic violence, drug homicides, unintentional discharges, and stray bullets. This project is ongoing. On their website, student journalists tell us, “We all remember Parkland.

We’re still frightened. Frustrated. Angry.

But if this project has taught us anything, it’s that we’re not powerless.”

We must continue to stay angry, refuse to be silenced, and engage critically with our political systems. “They try to reinforce this idea [that] your vote won’t matter, and that is one of the most destructive things possible,” Tolbert said. As students, we deserve justice.

Alyssa Alhadeff, Martin Duque Anguiano, Nicholas Dworet, Jaime Guttenberg, Luke Hoyer, Cara Loughran, Gina Montalto, Joaquin Oliver, Alaina Petty, Meadow Pollack, Helena Ramsay, Alex Schachter, Carmen Schentrup, Peter Wang, Chris Hixon, Aaron Feis, Scott Beigel. These were lives lost to gun violence that could have been prevented through stricter gun laws and reform.

Young people from Parkland and across the nation are angry and hurting. They want representatives who will advance legislation that can prevent the next school shooting and can prevent another community from suffering their same trauma. So, why aren’t their votes being counted?

people’s voices are accounted for. “There has to be deliberate efforts to young people of outreach to make sure the system is welcoming and people know how to navigate it,” Kiesa emphasized.

Despite the many challenges they face, young people continue to take action.

On February 12, a project was launched by youth activists that both demands accountability from higher institutions of power and honors the humanity and pain of gun violence tragedies. “Since Parkland” is a national project started by over 2000 teen reporters documenting children killed by gun violence in the year following the Parkland shooting. Included in the project are the stories of the victims

Feature

CLOCKWISE: BRENNA TROLLINGER, BRITANNY REGAS, MYISHA MAJUMDER, JOSIE WAGNER

MAHIKA

ALEXANDRA BENJAMIN

ALEXANDRA BENJAMIN

Feature

EMMA HERDMAN

AHIKA KHOSLA

MAHIKA KHOSLA

MARCH 5, 2018 MAHIKA KHOSLA

MYISHA MAJUMDER

Tufts Observer

15

BRITTANY REGAS

OLIVIA HERDMAN

BRENNA TROLLINGER

Feature

why should bodies end at the skin:

by B.A.L.

i’d like mine corrugated by collapsed limbs attached at the seams by pins and needles they don’t feel as far from me when they’re still asleep or i’ll settle for one made up of the spiders in the night the ones who leave a kiss or three on the roof of my mouth i hope they take souvenirs when they go strapping pieces of teeth to their backs, getting strong like ants i’d even lend it to those chunks of shredded apple tangled up in sheets of fingernail under the metal counter

PHOTOS BY SOFIA PRETELL AND CRIS PAULINO

April 8, 2018 Tufts Observer 17

opinion

finding joy in solidarity: a conversation reflecting on student protest

By Sasha Hulkower with Noah Harris

ART COURTESY OF TDAC FACEBOOK PAGE 18 Tufts Observer april 8, 2019

opinion

O

n March 5, 2019, the Tufts Dining Action Coalition’s (TDAC) picket in support of dining hall workers made Tufts history. With over 1,200 students, workers, faculty, community members, and staff from Boston’s food service and hospitality workers union, UNITE HERE Local 26 in attendance, the demonstration was the largest ever seen at Tufts. In the days and weeks following the event, I’ve found myself discussing the experience and its implications constantly with my peers—a process made possible by the massive, unprecedented turnout.

Talking to friends after the picket, I found an interesting common sentiment emerging in nearly every exchange: joy.

People expressed feelings of excitement and community, labeled the protest (sometimes somewhat hesitantly) as “fun,” often accompanied by expressions of personal confusion at this feeling (“I feel like protests aren’t *supposed* to be ‘fun’... but I don’t know, I was just having a blast!”). While these descriptions were all fitting with my own experience, I found them inherently at odds with almost all of the previous protests I had attended. In attempting to make sense of my experiences, I began to reflect on my past connection to protest and to evaluate the factors at play in setting the TDAC picket so distinctly apart.

I grew up a block from Union Square in Manhattan, a park known for its long history as a site of protest and political organizing. For much of my childhood my main associations with protest were ones of frustration: my parents would complain about the noise and police presence while simultaneously undermining the efforts of whoever was choosing our neighborhood as their site of demonstration by lamenting the inefficiency of protest as a political action. Growing up around these opinions (which were almost constantly invoked in response to the near-constant presence of protest in our daily lives), they soon became ingrained in my political ideology, and I quickly assumed a rather cynical outlook.

When Occupy Wall Street protestors flooded our neighborhood in 2011 and some of my friends flirted with our newly minted, eighth grade freedom by attending actions, I kept my distance and secretly looked down on them for their naivete. I associated the movement with disorganization and confusion, descriptors which I still think are apt despite their obviously inability to fully encapsulate the campaign, but now I also associate the movement with radical community and solidarity.

The first protest I attended on my own was a Black Lives Matters protest in 2014. I remember walking up the West Side highway with my friends (many of the most heavily trafficked areas in the city had shut down completely for the protest), flooded with adrenaline and in complete awe of the size of the crowd in which I found myself submerged. The chants were angry and intensely provocative as they were shouted by thousands in choppy unison, and the current running through the crowd felt similarly charged with undeniable intensity.

Now, five years later, the dining protest felt entirely different. Members of Tufts BEATS marched alongside us, providing rhythmic accompaniment to chants led by TDAC organizers wearing bright yellow vests and brandishing megaphones. Almost every one of the 1,000 plus individuals who showed up were given picket signs bearing the slogans “One Job Should Be Enough” and “UNITE HERE Local 26” to hold and wave upon their arrival, drawing in newcomers instantaneously. The Residential Quad was transformed into a sea of picket signs and homemade posters raised high in the late afternoon light. People were laughing and smiling, welcoming late-arriving friends to their ranks and linking arms as they marched in a continuous circle outside of Carmichael Hall.

The Friday following the picket, March 15, dining workers voted almost unanimously in favor of authorizing a strike to ramp up administrative pressure on contract negotiations. The Tuesday after we returned from spring break, on March 26, an “Urgent Community Meeting” was held to discuss what a dining workers’ strike would actually look like and the actions that students and allies could continue to take in support of our workers. And on Thursday, March 28, I sat down with Noah Harris, a Tufts Senior and long-time organizer with Tufts Labor Coalition (TLC) to discuss the picket, the movement, and the future of the dining workers. *** Sasha Hulkower: So the first thing I’m curious about is your perspective of the demonstration as one of the organizers. How did you feel while organizing it?

Noah Harris: It was really energizing for me. It’s a beautiful feeling to feel at the end of an action like that—I left feeling like I had so much more energy to pour into this campaign and feeling inspired to keep doing this work. And it’s great to hear that other people were inspired, too.

SH: I felt like there was such a common energy.

Many people stayed from beginning to end and were so involved and clearly looking for more ways to get involved. What were other organizers’ feelings and experiences like?

NH: Yeah, TDAC debriefed the next night and a lot of similar sentiments were expressed. It was really emotional. For a lot of people there was this sentiment april 8, 2019 Tufts Observer 19

opinion of like, ‘Wow, we’re so inspired by this community.’ It was amazing that so ganizing process at Tufts, and only started showing up many students showed up in the way that they did, and I think it made a more consistently for actions within the past year or so. I lot of folks feel really confident in the energy surrounding this campaign. think a large part of that is probably due to my childhood SH: I definitely also want to credit you guys (TDAC) with so much of perception that it didn’t really matter… Organizing with that. What was the planning process for the picket like? I know that you dining hall workers made me feel like I had the ability to went around to so many people individually to confirm attendance inactually make a difference compared to the much larger, person and made all of these really personalized actions. From the beless personal, and less organized protests that I’d been to ginning of the movement, for me at least, it has felt really personal since in the past. I would often feel jaded, where it’s like, ‘Yeah it is so close to home, [and] since it’s about people that you see every I can show up and I know that this matters and that numday and, to varying degrees, develop bonds with… and then moving bers matter.’ And there is a very different kind of power in that sense of closeness over to the organizing side of it, did that feel like a space like that, being surrounded by literally thousands or an intentional move on your part? hundreds of thousands of people.

NH: Yeah for sure—I mean, that’s the model we use. Before actions, NH: Do you feel like that familiarity contributed to the we sit down with people in our communities and people in our networks campaign’s success? and we all have a conversation in which we say why this is something SH: Yeah, absolutely. Being in this space where you can that we care about so much and ask the person we’re talking with exlook around and recognize 80 percent of the faces both showplicitly whether or not they can come, and making it clear that we’re ing up in support and those that you’re showing up in support expecting them to be there if they say they’re gonna be there. of—there’s something really special about having this smaller SH: What did you learn from following this model of individscale situation where you can see the outcomes of your action ual-based meetings? more clearly and directly, especially as someone who’s about NH: I’ve learned so much from that experience—just about

to graduate and re-enter those much larger spaces. It teaches you about how we can build community and build a movement, perceiving and enacting change on a smaller scale which helps it translate and how much of a difference it makes in terms of getto those larger spaces I think. It feels a lot more tangible on this level. ting people to show up if you just sit down with them NH: That’s awesome, that’s super cool. I would add also that this and explain that this is why it matters and that this is campaign has been really challenging, especially with negotiations. The why you care. And it’s so cool, hearing what you’re sayUniversity has been disrespectful. It’s been a year of negotiating. The Uniing, that it makes you feel like you have a big stake in versity has the capacity to meet these demands and has refused. It was it too, and makes you want to show up more, which is incredibly frustrating. totally the goal. I’m curious to hear from you though, SH: How do you feel like you’ve managed to keep up morale throughout like why do you think it matters that people left the the campaign? Have there been specific efforts surrounding that or is it more picket with those feelings [i.e. joy]? Or do you have of just a convenient byproduct type of situation? any thoughts about why it felt that way?

NH: Well, workers are organizing workers and students are organizing SH: I mean for me it was such a unique expestudents. It’s a worker organized campaign so that’s where the movement has rience because I’ve never been involved in the or20 Tufts Observer April 8, 2019

opinion

MOVING FORWARD

really been coming from. In terms of the student campaign and morale, just having support for each other, directing our energy towards turning people out for actions, and giving it as much as we can as a group, knowing that none of us are doing this alone.

Not even just in terms of the TDAC organizers, but everyone who’s been showing up for actions, we’re all doing it together. It’s not like any one of us is alone, and that’s amazing.

SH: Yeah I so agree. I loved the idea that was brought up in the meeting on Tuesday about having Community Meals in the event of a strike, and having those be spaces for solidarity and community and support. Could you talk more about community empowerment and avoiding burnout? Has there been anything that’s helpful for you outside of the protests and actions that has kept up your morale?

NH: Yeah, just reminding myself that showing up to actions really does matter. It’s not just an, ‘Oh I could show up, but also I might not…’ at least for me, I mean. It makes such a huge difference in terms of supporting the workers and showing the university that the students are in full support of the workers, and that students aren’t taking breaks from the campaign, losing interest, or losing energy. Knowing that does matter—that keeps negotiations moving forward and boosts morale for the community.

SH: The idea of having social spaces in tandem with political spaces is also really interesting to me and feels really important. Having something more than just like, ‘Oh hey! I saw you at the protest, let’s chat about it for a few seconds,’ and instead, saying, ‘Ok we’re going to this protest and then we’re gonna make a meal together and talk about the experience.’ Like making an intentional effort to give ourselves the space to interact and think about it in person.

NH: And did you feel like you had that?

SH: Yeah, I did! Not intentionally though. I didn’t go to the protest with the plan of coming home afterwards and having a ‘community meal’ per se, but I just happened to leave with a friend and then go back to my house and make dinner and kind of debrief the event, which felt really good. And also just smaller conversations over the next couple of days—or even during the protest itself.

NH: That’s awesome. We’re definitely going to be emphasizing that sense of support and community if the workers decide to strike, so hearing that people are already feeling that is really cool.

SH: Do you have any updates you can share about how things have been going?

NH: Well, nothing I can share, but I can say that things will become a lot more clear in the next couple of days—be sure to keep an eye out on the TDAC page for updates and ways to help out!

SH: Amazing. Thank you so much for sitting down with me and good luck with everything.

Moving Forward...

Two days after we spoke, on Saturday, March 30, the dining workers reached a resolution on their contract and put an end to a year of negotiations. Though this was a challenging year during which dining workers continued to face workplace harassment, unfair conditions, and continuous disrespect from an administration unwilling to meet their demands, the campaign was bolstered by unwavering support from students. The personal nature of the movement contributed to its success—these are individuals who care for us on a daily basis, transforming Tufts into a home away from home for many.

Two days after we spoke, on Saturday, March 30, the Dining Workers reached a resolution on their contract, putting an end to a year of negotiations.

April 8, 2019 Tufts Observer 21

COLUMN Feature

game on:

C

Find Shreya’s work online throughout the semester at tuftsobserver.org/ columns.

22 Tufts Observer APRIL 8, 2019

heers broke out across campus this year’s Super Bowl Sunday when the Patriots made their sixth franchise championship win. Shouts rang out exclaiming, “We just won the Super Bowl!” This may seem like a strange thing to say when all of these rowdy fans were miles away from Mercedes-Benz stadium in Atlanta, where the Super Bowl was just played. None of them had set foot on the field, called a play, or even grazed a football. Regardless, the call that “we” had won rang throughout Tufts’ campus.

The “we-ification of sports” is a phrase used to explain referring to a sports team you’re a fan of as “we” instead of “them.” When football fans insist, “we must score on this drive,” basketball fans demand, “we need to defend home court,” or baseball fans hope, “we sign a power batter this off-season,” they’re all using first-person pronouns to talk about a process they actually have minimal influence on.

Despite my hatred of the Patriots, I fully supported Patriots fans celebrating their win just like my family cheered for the Seahawks during our Super Bowl victory five years ago. Using the word “we” connects us to that team. It’s as if we’re not just watching a group of people far away play a game; the game has an effect on us, and therefore we’re a part of it. If the team wins, “we” will be happy and if the team loses “we” won’t be.

It seems strange to me that many people, including former sports blog Grantland writer Chris Jones have denounced the “we-ification” of sports.

Jones has made comments like, “If someone read a book to me and said, ‘We really killed that opening chapter,’ I’d wonder if I were talking to Gollum…

Have you ever watched a movie… and said, ‘Wow, I can’t believe we triumphed over evil again?’” He has a point; put in this context, we-ification sounds fairly ridiculous.

That being said, Jones still points to a natural human tendency to associate yourself with characters in a narrative. While it’s not common to directly refer to a story’s protagonists with first-person pronouns, you have to admit you are still rooting for them. In this sense, you associate yourself with specific characters—you cheer when they succeed and are discouraged when they fail. The same goes for sports, but instead of fictitious characters, they’re real human beings.

COLUMN

By Shreya Marathe

Jones recognizes certain cases where he deems it acceptable to refer to a sports team as “we.” One example he notes is attending a college basketball game at your university where you’re a student and pay tuition. There are other cases that Jones considers acceptable, such as within the fanbase of the Green Bay Packers, the only team in the NFL that is a publicly owned franchise with hundreds of thousands of owners that each hold shares. Still, it’s unclear to me why ownership of a team should be defined only by holding shares in it, but not by the numerous other ways fans contribute to a team—monetarily or otherwise.

28 of the 32 stadiums in the NFL were built using taxpayer dollars. At the point at which the citizens of Atlanta, for instance, just paid a total of $200 million in taxes to construct the Falcons’ new Mercedes-Benz stadium—do they not have a right to refer to the team as “we?”

Beyond this, it seems unreasonable to expect fans to reframe the way they watch and think about teams depending on whether they’re watching the NCAA or the NBA. If you’re rooting for UNC basketball or the Charlotte Hornets, the way you express your fandom is the same.

The argument seems to rest on the idea that if you have no influence on the impact of the game, you can’t consider yourself part of the team. I’d argue that fandom doesn’t work that way. Being a devoted fan of the team makes it impossible for you not to consider their success as your happiness, making the term “we” feel very natural. But even with that standard, fans have shown that they actually do influence many games. At the NFC Championship game between the New Orleans Saints and the LA Rams, the Saints fans were incredibly loud. As a result, Rams quarterback Jared Goff struggled to hear through his headset and even claimed it was “disorientingly loud.”

ART BY ERICA LEVY

As a Seahawks fan, I take pride in the 12th man mentality. This refers to the ability of the fans to influence a game. In football, eleven players are allowed on the field at a time. The 12th man implies that the fans play an additional role beyond the players on the field. The Seahawks, whose fans have set world records for loudest crowd noise at a sporting event twice, take pride in this and refer to their fans as “12s.” Other teams, including the Buffalo Bills and the Indianapolis Colts, have also referred to their fans as the 12th man.

Beyond just football, fans in many sports contribute to creating a home court advantage for the team that gets to play in their own stadium. Accordingly, leagues try to correct for these advantages. For example, association football (soccer) matches are played in two legs with both teams playing at home once and the NBA playoff series are held with nearly equal games being played on each team’s court.

“We-ing” your sports team acknowledges the fact that you’re affected by the state of the team and creates a camaraderie among fans. When I see a Seahawks fan, especially in the middle of New England, I get incredibly excited and feel an immediate bond with them because I know there is an interest we share. Loyally following a sports team implies a collective experience and enthusiasm, and using the word “we” recognizes that. Nobody who overhears the use of the term will assume you had the same impact on the game as the coach or the players. But using “we” lets you show how your attachment to the team is strong enough to call for unifying language that reflects your mentality about the team.

However, that’s not to say the term is entirely unproblematic Implicit in the use of the word “we” is an acknowledgement that there is also a “them.” “Football hooliganism,” usually used in reference to soccer, describes the disorderly or even violent behavior perpetrated by spectators at soc-

cer games. Some such incidents include the stabbing of six English supporters of Liverpool during a fight between A.S. Roma and Liverpool fans in 2001, as well as the death of a fan of Ethnikos Piraeus during one of their games. Football hooliganism cannot be entirely attributed to “we-ification.”

That being said, these events are still a clear representation of how the stakes of a game or a team can become unreasonably elevated for certain fans. Suddenly, a bad call by a referee isn’t just a moment you watch on TV, but a personal attack. “We-ing,” in that respect, is almost tribal. It creates an illusion of greater divisions between fans of different teams and leads to an us vs. them mentality for some fans.

For this reason, maintaining a degree of separation between you and your team can sometimes be important. It allows viewers to be critical of the actions athletes take. But there is a distinction people make when holding athletes accountable for their actions compared to many other celebrities. Although the Time’s Up movement has a lot more work to do in Hollywood, it dwarfs any semblance of a movement that exists for athletes. Despite the rampance of domestic violence within the NFL, many spectators turn a blind eye.

This past NFL season, for example, a video came out with clear evidence of Kareem Hunt’s violent actions towards a woman.

As a result, Hunt was released from the Kansas City Chiefs. But then, a few months later, the Browns signed him.

Most people were appalled by the video—Chiefs and Browns fans alike. But when it came to having the 2017 leading rusher on your team, criticism subsided.

It’s easy to condemn the actions of celebrities that seem untouchable. It’s much harder to hold the same standard for people you consider as part of your own team.

“We-ification” blurs those lines.

APRIL 8, 2019 Tufts Observer 23

Feature OPINION

W

Meet PETE: DEMOCRAT FOR A NEW GENERATION

By Caroline Blanton

24 Tufts Observer APRIL 8, 2019

GRAPHICS BY DANIEL JELCIC

hen I think about where I’ll be when I turn 29 years old, my vision includes some kind of gainful employment and maybe a dog. But for Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg, the year he turned 29 also happened to be the year he became the youngest mayor of South Bend, Indiana, a city known for its lengthy period of decline after Studebaker shut down its auto plant in the 1960s. Now, at age 37, Buttigieg (pronounced boot-edge-edge) is aiming for another lofty goal: becoming the 2020 Democratic nominee for President of the United States.

Buttigieg, known affectionately by his constituents as Mayor Pete, served as Mayor of South Bend for two four-year terms. And who is Mayor Pete? Buttigieg’s resume is almost comically overstuffed and his background is extremely unique. Pete, the son of a first-generation immigrant from Malta, is a Harvard graduate, a Rhodes Scholar, and a veteran of the war in Afghanistan. He speaks seven languages, was the first openly gay mayor elected in Indiana, and is the youngest mayor in the country of a city with over 100,000 residents.

Buttigieg cannot be slotted into any of the familiar political narratives, and thus his candidacy is unlike any other.

Both intentionally and inherently, Buttigieg resists the temptation to fill a certain niche. In this way, he has definitively differentiated himself from what could end up being fifteen or twenty other candidates in the Democratic primaries. And no, he isn’t running on any one facet of his identity. He’s running as himself. He’s running as Mayor Pete.

As unique as he is, his authenticity and fresh perspective in the 2020 election cycle might remind us of another groundbreaking race: Barack Obama’s 2008 campaign.

Both young, relatively “inexperienced” politicians bursting onto the scene after years of the Democratic machine boasting their potential, Buttigieg and Obama are both driven by a belief in the power of pure human empathy to do good when used in the name of government.

With backgrounds that defy stereotypes, bright-eyed and perhaps idyllic visions for the future of our country, and an almost uncanny mastery of practically every issue and policy, the comparison between the two men seems almost a given. And just as pundits endlessly discussed whether the country was ready for a Black president, the prospect of electing our nation’s first gay president is often, frustratingly enough, the focus of discussions about Buttigieg’s candidacy.

Feature OPINION I would argue that this question isn’t even worth our time. According to the most recent Gallup data, two in three Americans supported gay marriage in 2018, a record high indicating change in the face of increasing polarization. Not only is gay marriage significantly less of a controversial subject than it was even three years ago, when Buttigieg came out midway through his campaign for reelection (in the same state where Governor Mike Pence was simultaneously pushing his bigoted Religious Freedom Restoration Act), but even then Mayor Pete won reelection with a whopping 80 percent of the vote. If he can garner such widespread support in his substantially conservative small town, who’s to say he couldn’t do the same in many more conservative small towns across the country?

When Buttigieg first took office in 2012, the population of South Bend had been in steady decline since the 1960s—dropping by more than 30,000 people. The blue-collar, rust belt city had been hemorrhaging jobs and residents for half a century, leaving large swathes of neighborhoods abandoned and decaying.

At the start of his first term, Mayor Pete proposed an ambitious plan to demolish or repair 1,000 homes in 1,000 days. By September 2015, a thousand days in, the city had taken action on 1,122 properties. Roughly 60 percent were demolished and 40 percent were repaired, according to the city, and the program continues to this day.

Of course, I would be remiss not to point out the pressing issue of gentrification inherent to Buttigeig’s revamping of the city’s previously derelict downtown. South Bend’s African American residents make up 27 percent of the population and yet face financial struggles at a rate much higher than the national average. Enforcing steep fines was one of the main strategies the city used to incentivize homeowners to make repairs, which disproportionately penalized low-income homeowners, particularly in South Bend’s predominantly African American neighborhoods.

But when community leader Stacy Odom came to Mayor Pete with these concerns asking for a $300,000 grant to help mitigate the cost of home repairs and allow low-income homeowners to keep their houses, Buttigieg countered with a $650,000 grant, more than doubling her request. He also implemented $2 million programs focused on home repairs and affordable housing for South Bend residents as of 2018.

His housing plan is only one example of the bold, innovative, and community-based ideas the young mayor has up his sleeve. In

an already-crowded Democratic primary field filled with big names like Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, Mayor Pete is using one of his critics’ main refrains—that he’s too young and inexperienced to be President—as a means of standing out in the crowd.

In his widely-viewed CNN town hall on March 10, Buttigieg explained that being a mayor may be the “best preparation” a presidential candidate can have. “It’s more traditional to maybe come from Congress, to have a background in Washington, but I would also argue that we would be well served if Washington started to look more like our best-run cities and towns rather than the other way around,” he said.

Ideologically, Buttigieg is a progressive.

He has called for expanding the Supreme Court, abolishing the Electoral College, and even implementing a guaranteed basic income for all Americans. However, the main theme of his campaign is generational change, and using this idea to win back Rust Belt voters who supported Trump in 2016. By orienting his campaign around a generation instead of an ideology, Buttigieg humanizes politics in a way that has been largely lost in the fray of liberal and conservative politicians alike showboating on Capitol Hill.

This is what really sets Buttigieg apart in my mind. The philosophical underpinnings of his belief system are unlike those of any other presidential candidate in the 2020 field. At his core, Buttigieg believes that the whole point of politics is its impacts on everyday life. As one of the few candidates without experience in Washington, Buttigieg rejects what he calls the “show” of political coverage today.

He refuses to cave to the pressure of aligning himself on a fixed ideological line and resides outside of the culture wars and ideological battles of the Trump era, which he argues in an interview with Vox,“[have] a tendency to play into a construction that’s mostly there for the benefit of conservative politicians.” Instead, he astutely observes that the average American voter behaves largely non-ideologically, and thus his campaign is focused on attracting Republican voters, not Republican legislators.

Nearly every part of the young mayor’s vision for our country is grounded in a belief that government can have a positive impact on the lived experience of each individual in this country. This vision of a government free from in-fighting and focused entirely on personto-person service may seem naive given our current climate, but Buttigieg’s entire political career is centered around his belief that at its core, government can and should help.

His most compelling arguments for this vision shine through when he talks about his marriage to his husband, as he ties it to Americans’ embrace of strong families and equality.

To illustrate impact of policy on individuals, Pete often explains,, as he did in his CNN town hall, that “the most important thing in my life––my marriage to my husband––exists by the grace of a single vote on the U.S. Supreme Court… That really important freedom in my life, the freedom to marry, came about because of choices that were made by policymakers who had power over me and millions of others.”

The way he manages to so thoughtfully and eloquently explain the raw, emotional connection at the heart of the relationship between policy and the people it affects is what originally drew me to him as a candidate. I wasn’t even aware he was in the race until my mother sent me the link to his town hall with just one line: “watch this NOW.” Something about his authenticity and his clear-eyed perception of the inherent good in our political system so evident in this widely viewed moment deeply resonated with my own beliefs, and if the polls are any indication, many Americans agree.

Additionally, the 37-year old Buttigieg has his finger on the pulse of the younger generations of Americans who are just beginning to come of age politically in a way that 77-year-old Bernie Sanders or 76-yearold Joe Biden simply cannot understand. An example of this rift lies in Buttigieg’s assessment of the “socialism vs. capitalism” debate that has roiled the Democratic Party in recent years.

Buttigieg told Vox’s Zach Beauchamp that he believes “part of the problem here is that you have one generation that grew up associating socialism with communism like they’re the same thing, and therefore also assuming that capitalism and democracy were inseparable. I’ve grown up in a time when you can pretty much tell that there’s tension between capitalism and democracy, and negotiating that tension is probably the biggest challenge for America right now.”

Above all, Buttigieg manages to harness the topic of his generational perspective, what many critics view to be one of his weaknesses, and turn it into a strength. As he declared in his town hall, “I also think that age can be an advantage here, if only because it allows me to communicate to the country a vision about what our country is going to look like in 2054.

That’s the year I get to the current age of the current president... I think it gives you a different sense of urgency.”

APRIL 8, 2019 Tufts Observer 25

Feature Voices

IN Silence

By Myisha Majumder The BBC News notification showed up on my phone during my 20th birthday party: a Thursday night before spring break, after a hellish exam week that began with my great aunt dying. Sadness didn’t hit me immediately. Numbness came first, and lasted for hours— days—still.

A few seconds later, I turned to one of my best friends and pointed at the notification, unable to speak. It felt like something was lodged in my throat. The music was too loud. She looked at me and shook her head, reached over and squeezed my arm. I put my phone face down and tried to forget.

The notification screamed at me in big, bold letters:

New Zealand PM announces death toll: 49 people

A few hours later, at 2:36 AM, I texted my sister and brother-in-law: Guys

I can’t stop crying I just woke up bc of that news update about the mosque shooting

in New Zealand

Islamophobic America was the America I was raised in—I was only two years old when the 9/11 attacks occurred. America taught me how to be like a chameleon, to reveal parts of my identity only circumstantially, to avoid getting hurt, to avoid the unavoidable branding.

In high school, I took a class called World Crises, an introductory International Relations class. We spent a whole month learning about the concept of practical nuances—the differences between terms like Islam, Muslim, Islamist. Every time any of those words accompanied some mildly controversial sentiment, I felt the eyes of other students shift to me.

Eyes that would never experience what I had, eyes that had never been forced to look down, shut tight, as people holler at you: “You’re a terrorist.”

When I was in sixth grade, we shared the cafeteria with the eighth graders at lunch time. My best friend’s brother was an eighth grader. Him and his friends would taunt me as I walked by: “I bet your dad is a terrorist—does that mean you’re one too?”

That same guy went on to graduate from high school and take two gap years working for Bernie Sanders’ first presidential campaign in Vermont. We finally spoke again, years after the numerous altercations between us in middle school. He seemed nervous to see me. He tread lightly. Even now, I can see his eyes scanning my face, wondering if I remember. I can tell he’s convinced himself that I’ve forgotten—and maybe that’s why he never apologized.

Whenever our conversation shifted to politics, I got the same question I always do: “What’s your story, Myisha? You know… as a Muslim Bengali female-identifying American in a time like this?”

What’s my story?

My story is I cry and shake in fear every time a notification comes up on my phone that another mass shooting happened, because what if the assailant was a Muslim?

I cry when I read about the atrocious hate crimes committed against us. I cry for those who believed what I do—that a shooting like this was inevitable, only a matter of time.

I cry for the ones caught in the crossfire. I cry because it could so easily have been me.

When you’re practicing Salah, you are in your most vulnerable state. Your back is to the door, your heart is to the Kabah, and you get down on your knees, press your forehead into the ground, and close your eyes.

In our most vulnerable state, we pray for guidance and grounding.

26 Tufts Observer april 8, 2019

voices

In our most vulnerable state, White supremacists will kill us.

What’s my story?

Every prayer I’ve ever done—in the same mosque I’ve been praying in since I was five years old—is practiced with fear in the back of my mind. The only time I can remember being eased of that fear is when the neighboring churches and synagogues came to visit us. These White faces would protect me.

Except they weren’t there to protect me. The usual distress was gone and only replaced with something else: judgment. And more eyes. Eyes watching me as I engaged in something deeply sacred. I wonder how many of these people showed up at my mosque the first Friday prayer—Jummah—following the New Zealand attacks.

In Muslim countries, we take Friday off in order to attend Jummah, the most important prayer of the week. In countries like the United States—like New Zealand—we take time off of our work or school day and congregate together. Those who prayed in New Zealand had taken an hour off from their daily lives—and they were shot to death for it.

On Jummah that following Friday, we praised the local police who showed up and guarded our mosque as a sign of solidarity. But what about my brothers and sisters at the Roxbury Mosque with a majority Black Muslim population? Will they ever feel safe?

I am searching for a balance between the two extremes that we face when horrible things happen: fascination and disassociation. I can’t stand to hear my mother recite details of the newest terrorist massacre, stolen from Facebook anecdotes: “Did you know the man at the front of the door said ‘hello, brother’ to the terrorist before he was shot to death by him?” I don’t want to listen to this man tell the world why he did what he did, listen to others immortalize him by discussing how sick he must be. But I can’t look away either, right? I can’t go on pretending this can’t happen—will happen again. And amidst all of this, I think of the people who call themselves allies and the ones who texted me saying they were with me today and the ones who didn’t and— The next day, my family went to Vermont. At midnight it would officially be my birthday. The kids went to pick up dinner while the parents stayed in, and when we returned, the air had shifted. My dad cleared his throat at the dinner table. “Your mother is worried about how you all are coping with what happened in New Zealand.”

I was quiet. I listened to my sister and her husband explain their feelings. I didn’t know what to say—maybe for once, I didn’t have anything to say. I found myself silent.

In silence, I blend in to protect myself. In silence, others will continue to be victims of hate crimes.

And so in silence, I pause. In silence, I mourn. In silence, I try to find my strength again.

ART BY JANIE INGRASSIA

april 8, 2019 Tufts Observer 27

cartoon

NASRIN LIN

28 Tufts Observer april, 8 2019

JOSIE WAGNER

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