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TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2010

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Editorial | Letters 10Op-Ed 11 Classifieds 13Sports Back

see SPORTS, back

Following a pair of late-game comebacks, hockey team secures playoff spot.

see ARTS, page 5

Strong performances and cinematography lift “Wolfman” above horror genre.

This article is the first in a two-part series examining college endowments. Today’s installment focuses on the findings of a report detailing major endowment losses. The second article, to appear in tomorrow’s Daily, will look at the possible reasons for these losses. University endowments across the country, includ-ing that of Tufts, suffered huge losses in the past fiscal year, according to a Jan. 28 National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO)-Commonfund Study of Endowments (NCSE) report. The NACUBO and the Commonfund Institute surveyed 842 institutions and found that endowments fell by an average of 18.7 percent during the 2009 fiscal year, which ended June 30. These losses coincided with the economic recession and have led to a review of finan-cial management. While these losses appear quantitatively drastic, com-parisons reveal that university endowments over the course of the year performed relatively better than the overall financial market, according to NACUBO Director of Research Policy and Analysis Ken Redd. Redd pointed out that while university endowments’ losses were on average below 20 percent, the Standard and Poor’s 500 Index dipped nearly 26 percent during the same time. Still, schools like Harvard and Yale suffered egregiously, losing nearly 30 percent of their endow-ments, while Tufts’ endowment declined by 23.7 percent. The outlook for university endowments may not be as bad

as the numbers indicate, however, in light of the fact that the 10-year national average for net endow-ment returns is four percent. Tufts’ endowment has nearly doubled since 2000, a statistic that university officials are quick to highlight at a time when short-term financial news tends to be overly emphasized. Chairman of Tufts Administration and Finance Committee Andrew Safran (A ’76) emphasized the importance of this long-term growth trend over the temporary losses of the past year and pointed out that since 1999, the university endowment’s value per student has increased from $62,000 to about $120,000. Still, the losses of this past year will likely force universities like Tufts to make adjustments to both their annual financial budgets and long-term investment strategies, according to a press release sum-marizing the NCSE report.

These changes will likely revolve around issues of governance, such as managerial malpractice and portfolio rebalancing, according to Redd. “I guess you could say institu-tions are making sure their plans and policies are being strongly adhered to and that investment managers are monitoring things,” Redd told the Daily. Exactly what those changes are, however, remains to be seen and Tufts officials main-tain that despite the size of the recent loss, no significant changes are anticipated. “No major strategic or poli-cy changes have been made in response to market conditions; marginal changes are made on a regular basis,” Tufts’ Director of Public Relations Kim Thurler said in an e-mail to the Daily. Safran did not point out any

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VOLUME LIX, NUMBER 12

Where You Read It First

Est. 1980

JENNA LIANG/TUFTS DAILY

University President Lawrence Bacow and his wife Adele Fleet Bacow delivered a toast to the Class of 2010 at Friday’s celebration in Dewick-MacPhie Dining Center. The event commemorating the 100-day mark until the seniors’ graduation was sponsored by the Senior Class Council.

Seniors count down to graduation at 100 Days Celebration

Universities’ endowments saw major losses last year, report shows BY MICHAEL DEL MORO

Daily Editorial Board

see ENDOWMENT, page 2

Dartmouth policies tackle rise in drinking BY SAUMYA VAISHAMPAYAN

Daily Editorial Board

Tufts students are no lon-ger alone in facing harsher measures targeting alcohol abuse, as Dartmouth College’s local police department has unveiled a new enforcement strategy to combat a per-ceived rise in underage drink-ing on campus. In a Feb. 4 meeting with Dartmouth’s Greek life com-munity leaders in Hanover, New Hampshire, Hanover Police Chief Nicholas Giaccone announced a new strategy of instating compli-ance checks at fraternities to reduce underage drinking. The proposed checks would allow the Hanover Police Department to send unaffili-ated undercover agents into Dartmouth fraternities to pose as underage individuals attempting to procure alcohol. In the event that their attempts succeed, the agents can give evidence to the Hanover police and create grounds for prosecuting the implicated fraternity. The new policy met with strong opposition from the stu-dent body and Greek organiza-tions on campus in the days following the announcement. The Dartmouth Student Assembly on Feb. 9 passed a resolution stating the need for a reevaluation of the Hanover Police Department’s proposed enforcement strategy. Giaccone announced the next day a delay in the exe-cution of the policy and the compliance checks in order to allow different community groups to engage in a dialogue

about underage drinking. “The town shares with the College the goal of reducing the risks to student health and safety posed by excessive alco-hol consumption,” Giaccone said in the Feb. 10 press release. “From the statements made in recent days, it is clear that the Greek Leadership Council and other involved student groups also share this goal and are committed to working energetically to achieve harm reduction.” Zachary Gottlieb, president of the Interfraternity Council at Dartmouth, highlighted the proactive approach taken by the Greek community in engag-ing with the Hanover police. “There are a lot of conversa-tions happening,” Gottlieb told the Daily. “Many are internal, but we have also branched out to the student assembly. This is an issue that will affect the entire student body.” Gottlieb added that many fraternities are now consis-tently requiring students to show their Dartmouth identi-fication cards to gain entrance into an event. “Individual organizations are being more vigilant, mak-ing sure that they’re on top of everything, and taking greater responsibility for students and guests,” Gottlieb said. Dean of Student Affairs Bruce Reitman pointed out that although changes in official alcohol policies can help to curb student drinking, these are just stopgap measures, and a change in the drinking culture itself is the only way to permanently decrease unsafe drinking.

see DARTMOUTH, page 2 Senate to bring discussion on the body’s diversity representation to wider community BY BRENT YARNELL Daily Editorial Board

The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate this spring will launch a campus-wide dia-logue on the future of diversity representa-

tion in the Senate, continu-ing an ongoing discussion about the role of community representatives in the body. The Culture, Ethnicity, and Community Affairs Committee (CECA) met Friday with the directors of

the six culture centers to seek feedback on proposed changes to the Senate’s commu-nity representative position. Community representatives are internally elected members of TCU-recognized student groups who are meant to provide a voice on the Senate for their respective constituencies. Currently, four student organizations have representatives on the Senate: the Asian-American Alliance, Queer Straight Alliance, Pan-African Alliance and the Association of Latin American Students. CECA’s favored proposal would tie the

position to the individual culture centers, while another would eliminate the posi-tion altogether. TCU Vice President Antonella Scarano said that the meeting was intended to shape the scope of future conversations about the subject. “The proposals were just a conversation starter,” Scarano, a senior, said. “We just wanted to make sure that we had all sides fleshed out so we can have an organized discussion about it going forward.” CECA Chair Nedghie Adrien, a junior, said the directors’ feedback helped re-direct the committee’s focus. “I would say the discussion is going to go more toward what the change should accomplish, rather than what the change should be,” Adrien said. The center directors also emphasized to CECA the need to incorporate the larger stu-dent body in the discussion. “Whatever we do is going to impact [the students] directly and impact the larger Tufts community,” Adrien said. “We need to make

see COMMUNITY, page 2

DAILY FILE PHOTO

Harvard University, like many institutions across the country, has suffered a huge loss in its endowment.

2 THE TUFTS DAILY NEWS Tuesday, February 16, 2010Tufts emphasizes long-term goals over current losses ENDOWMENT continued from page 1

New Dartmouth strategy met with opposition DARTMOUTH continued from page 1

Senate reevaluating the role of community representatives COMMUNITY continued from page 1

specific changes but said that the universi-ty’s investment officers have always and will continue to practice prudence and ensure that investment allocations will meet Tufts’ long-term needs. “We constantly evaluate our asset alloca-tions and constantly review the managers of our university endowment funds and make changes if appropriate,” Safran said. While the financial crisis has hurt endowments significantly, Redd noted that universities on average actually increased spending rates and were able to support students and faculty through these increas-es. According to the NSCE report, 43 per-cent of the institutions surveyed increased their spending. Investment managers “did everything that they could” to continue to provide financial aid packages to support students and families, Redd said.

Visiting the Hill this weekTUESDAY“Managing Without Growth: Slower by Design, Not Disaster”Details: Economist Peter Victor will present his reasoning for challeng-ing the idea that economic growth should be an economic policy priority of wealthy nations.When and Where: 3:30 p.m. to 5 p.m.; Cabot 702Sponsor: The Global Development and Environment Institute

WEDNESDAY“Challenges to the UN: Institutions and Issues”Details: Peter Maurer, permanent repre-sentative of Switzerland to the United Nations (UN) will discuss the issues he dealt with during his experience with the UN.When and Where: 7 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.; Cabot seventh FloorSponsors: Swiss Consulate, The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and The Fletcher United Nations Club

“Socialism in a Top Hat”Details: Elisa New, professor of English at Harvard University, will discuss her new book “Jacob’s Cane: A Jewish Family’s Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore.”When and Where: 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m.; Center for the HumanitiesSponsor: Center for the Humanities

“Is God the Problem or Solution to Racial Injustice?”Details: Dr .Anne C. Bailey, social his-torian in the departments of history and Africana studies at Binghamton University, will discuss the role of faith in racial reconciliation.When and Where: 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.; Pearson 104Sponsors: Tufts Christian Fellowship, Office of the University Chaplain

“Israel 101: Yaakov Katz”Details: Yaakov Katz, military corre-spondent and defense analyst for The Jerusalem Post, will discuss his experience

reporting on Israel’s military endeavors.When and Where: 12 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.; Eaton 206Sponsor: Friends of Israel

THURSDAY“Chaplain’s Table: A Look at Religion”Details: Father Nick Kastanas from the Greek Orthodox Church in Arlington will speak on the Greek Orthodox Church today.When and Where: 5 p.m. to 7 p.m.; Goddard ChapelSponsor: Office of the University Chaplain

FRIDAY“Just Because I’m Nice, Don’t Assume I’m Dumb”Details: Harvard Business School Professor Amy Cuddy will discuss the effects of the outcomes of warmth and competence judgments in people’s social perceptions.When and Where: 4 p.m. to 5 p.m.; Paige Hall, Crane RoomSponsor: The Diversity and Cognition Lecture Series

“While we can control the pub-lic distribution of alcohol to a great extent, the choices that students make in the privacy of their own rooms will always be there for them to make,” he said. Dartmouth, unlike Tufts, does not have its own campus police force. It has a Department of Safety and Security, which is not made up of sworn police officers. This factor makes a significant difference in dealing with alcohol-related issues, according to Tufts University Police Department (TUPD) Captain Mark Keith and senior Sam Pollack, president of the Tufts Interfraternity Council. “Having fully trained police offi-cers on campus [is] a great benefit to the community in all areas of public safety,” Keith said. Pollack added that cooperation between TUPD and members of Greek organizations on campus is integral to student safety at Greek events. “At Tufts, we benefit a lot by hav-ing a police force that works closely with Greeks and the administration … Cooperation allows for success,” Pollack said. “TUPD and the adminis-tration are very supportive of us, and their main goal is to cooperate with us in a realistic fashion to ensure that everyone is safe.” Keith also pointed out that TUPD has a certain amount of discretion in handling cases involving under-age drinking. The internal possession law in New Hampshire allows the police to charge intoxicated underage individuals with illegal possession, which often leads to arrest. Giaccone cited statistics of alcohol-related arrests on campus in his Feb. 4 announcement as an impe-tus for the new enforcement policy. There is no internal possession law in Massachusetts. “If you are under the influence, you cannot be arrest-ed,” Keith said. In cases of extreme intoxication, however, students can be sent to the hospital and will face disciplinary actions by the university. Although there has been a rela-tively steady increase in the num-ber of Tufts Emergency Medical Services (TEMS) calls over the past five years, the increase in severity of the calls is more troubling, accord-ing to Reitman. “What is more alarming is the per-centage of those TEMS calls where the level of dangerous drinking has been dramatically high and where my staff has had to call families because we were worried about the student’s well-being,” he said.

this everyone’s issue.” According to TCU President Brandon Rattiner, a senior, the Senate will bring the issue before the student body in the spring in the hopes of putting a proposal to a campus-wide vote in April. Rattiner said the Senate plans to put together a task force composed of adminis-trators and students, similar to the alcohol task force, to study the issue. Senators, CECA members and culture center directors stressed that proposals have not yet been finalized and that the final out-come was very much undetermined. “It’s not an easy answer,” Latino Center Director Rubén Salinas-Stern said. “It takes a lot of talking, and hopefully these kinds of discussions can continue.” Rattiner said the discussion was not just about community representatives, but the broader issue of minority representation on Senate as a whole. “The community rep is just a focal point,” he said. “It’s a conversation on representation and fair governance. If the solution includes a community rep, fine. If it doesn’t include a community rep, that’s fine too.” Rattiner said the conversation must find a better system for representing the interests of minority groups in Senate and stressed that the question at hand concerned the

bridge between diversity and governance. “It’s really important not to confuse this conversation with diversity on campus,” he said. “Senate has an interest in representing the needs of every single minority that’s at this school, but we can’t do that without the proper infrastructure.” Some see tying the community represen-tative position to the culture centers as a way to connect them more directly to the groups they represent. “As a director, I do get to see more people who are part of the communities,” he said. “I’m aware of more issues than a student might be,” Salinas-Stern said. “So I think I would give a perspective that’s a bit broader.” Asian American Alliance Representative Rob Siy noted, however, that tying commu-nity representatives to culture centers would still leave minority groups without a center, such as Muslim students, unrepresented in the Senate. Adrien said that the eventual solution should allow minority groups to share their experiences with Senate, which is mostly comprised of students from majority groups. Siy, a senior, feels that relying solely on TCU-recognized student groups to repre-sent the needs of minorities is insufficient. “It’s practically equating entire minor-ity communities with student-formed groups,” he said. Adrien raised one of the issues that

initially prompted the current reevalu-ation of the community representative position, saying that the community rep-resentatives’ jobs are made difficult by the lack of a clearly defined role. “If you don’t know what your role should be, you’re kind of stuck in limbo,” she said. This ambiguity is partly the result of the lack of full voting rights for community rep-resentatives. Under the TCU constitution, community representatives may now vote on all matters “that do not pertain to the disbursement of the Student Activities Fee.” “If you don’t have full capabilities, you don’t feel like a full senator,” ALAS Representative Lisnerva Nuez, a sophomore, said. Junior Nadia Nibbs, who attended the meeting, said the consensus was that the issue needed a lot more consideration. “It’s a discussion that needs to continue, certainly,” she said. “By the end of the meet-ing, I felt as though it was unanimous; every-body felt they needed to do some reevalua-tions, rethinking.” Adrien noted that CECA remains open to new ideas and proposals. Junior Chartise Clark, who also attended the meeting, was encouraged by the knowledge that the discussion will be brought to the whole campus. “I definitely believe that Senate and CECA will see a strong attendance from students of color, especially in meetings where com-munity reps will be discussed,” she said.

DAILY FILE PHOTO

The TCU Senate is considering tying community representative positions to the culture centers, including the Asian American Center.

3

tuftsdaily.comFeaturesFeatures

As we wave goodbye to this century’s early childhood and think back on the last 10 years, it is clear that the past decade was the one of the mash-

up. Danger Mouse released his historic Grey Album in 2004; Girltalk brought his laptops to Dewick in 2007; and, thanks to a recent Miley Cyrus hit, Biggie’s “Party and Bulls--t” made a comeback in the form of the ever-popular 2009 mashup, “Party and Bulls--t in the USA.” The art of the mashup has not evolved with-out resistance. The style has always been sub-ject to complaints about its “unoriginal” and “exploitative” nature and, more dangerously, to strict copyright laws that were instituted to promote creativity but, in failing to change along with technological advancement, have begun to do the opposite. Even so, mixers of the world have worked hard to prove that the basis of their medium has worth and that, when put together, two pieces of art have the potential to create new meaning or value that is not present in either piece individually. Basically, that when you mix two things, you’re not just copying: You’re creating. To get to my point, though, it seems bizarre that contemporary mashup artists have to struggle to win merit for their practice because the concept behind it had been around well before some DJ realized that every one of Jay-Z’s song fit perfectly with another song you know. Forget even that musical artists in the ’70s, ’80s and ’90s experimented with similar con-cepts of mixing; we’ve been doing it for centu-ries with words. You witness word mashups every day. They’ll come out when we jumble our words or thoughts by accident and utter what is linguistically known as a “blend,” a common speech error (e.g. “great” and “cool” become “grool”). But even more frequently, we create them intentionally to talk about a concept that lacks an existing word to describe it. In such cases, we have two practical options. We can create words by compounding existing words, as we do with “thumbtack,” “cartwheel” and “eye-brow,” etc., or we can get a little more creative and form new words by compounding only segments of existing words. Portmanteaus, as these words are called, are perfect to describe new concepts formed by the synthesis of existing ones because the word structure does just that; “smog” is the combination of “smoke” and “fog;” “brunch” is the combination of “breakfast” and lunch;” “Jazzercise” is the combination of “jazz” and “exercise.” So while you may be inclined to name Danger Mouse the father of mashup, the title seems more appropriately reserved for the man behind the portmanteau itself, the author Lewis Carroll. In the first chapter of “Through the Looking Glass, and What Alice Found There” (1872), the sequel to “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” (1865), Alice reads a poem titled “Jabberwocky” that is not only written in mirror image but also in completely made up words, many of them portmanteaus. Some of the more entertaining ones in the poem include “slithy” (slimy + lithe), “mimsy” (miserable + flimsy) and my personal favorite, “chortled” (chuck-led + snorted). Later on in the book, Carroll has his charac-ter Humpty Dumpty use the word “portman-teau” (which is a traveling bag, generally one that opens into two compartments) to explain the meaning behind the poem’s silly words to Alice: “You see, it’s like a portmanteau — there are two meanings packed up into one word.” So while mashup artists may fail to see the relation between their work and that of Lewis Carroll, I think it’s safe to say that critics of the remix should reacquaint themselves with their Mother Goose Rhyme characters; Humpty Dumpty certainly would have seen the value of the Grey Album.

Romy Oltuski is a junior majoring in English. She can be reached at Romy.Oltuski@tufts.edu.

Man of the decade

ROMY OLTUSKI | WORD UP

Volunteer-driven Ushahidi Web platform contributes to relief eff orts in Haiti When Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy student Patrick Meier first heard about the earthquake in Haiti, he didn’t waste time. “I immediately called my tech team and said we needed to roll ASAP,” he said. But Meier wasn’t headed out on the next flight to Port-Au-Prince. Instead, he was putting together a powerful tool for disaster relief that could be useful from any part of the world — including the basement of the Fletcher School. That tool is Ushahidi.com, a Web plat-form — originally created during a political crisis in Kenya — that can be customized for various purposes and is used to map GPS coordinates for workers on the ground. Having worked with Ushahidi since its inception, Meier knew that the ability to map areas of critical need could be impor-tant for Haiti. Using sources like news reports, text messages, phone calls and Twitter.com “tweets,” volunteers use Ushahidi to map and categorize areas of critical need so that relief workers on the ground can mobilize and provide help. The sheer number of reports coming in meant that Meier had to take action quickly. “Ushahidi doesn’t tend to take the lead in deployments,” Meier said. “We’re more like a tech group than a humanitarian organiza-tion. Within 24 hours it was clear I couldn’t keep up with the tweets, so I sent an e-mail to the Fletcher listserv, and people really rallied … We continued to scale. Not only did we have to monitor and map, but we also had to take people and train them. That was really challenging, trying to keep this operational situation room up and run-ning while training hundreds of people.” Since that time, the basement of the Cabot Intercultural Center has been occu-pied by full-time volunteers mapping the GPS coordinates of the needs of Haitians located thousands of miles away. Although initially mostly Fletcher students managed Ushahidi, undergraduates and community members have been integrated to keep up with demands. Seniors Sabina Carlson and Helaina Stein are two undergraduates who have taken an active role in Ushahidi. They had both already been involved in health and devel-opment projects in Haiti after co-founding the organization RESPE: Haiti, which is run through the Institute for Global Leadership. With such strong connections to Haiti, they felt compelled to get involved. “There’s only so much money and fund-raisers, but this was a way that I could devote my time to real-time relief work,” Stein said. “It’s really revolutionary that all you need is a computer and you can help

aid agencies get help where it’s needed.” Knowing that there was a way to be use-ful from afar was important for Carlson. “There was this disconnect because we couldn’t be there, we couldn’t see anything,” Carlson said. “You want to go and help, but realistically, the people they need on the ground are not undergrads running a health project. You know your place … but there’s a gap between people you care about going through pain and the fact you can’t be there. It’s a frustrat-ing and painful gap.” When she heard about Ushahidi, Carlson knew that she could help close that gap. “[Ushahidi] is a way to be helpful to this community that I love so much. I can help out from a distance,” she said. “Some people shied away because it was too hard, but that was exactly what I needed; just to be able to put myself with this incredibly innovative organization and tool. The more I heard about what they were doing, the more I was blown away.” As of press time, Ushahidi has mapped more than 2,900 reports in Haiti. Meier said that these efforts have been utilized by a wide variety of organizations such as the U.S. Marine Corps, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Office of U.S. Foreign Disaster Assistance (OFDA) and have garnered plenty of press and recognition from government officials. “We’ve put out information and human-itarian organizations have contacted us, because within a few hours, we had the most comprehensive information, so they are tracking the map,” Meier said. But because those on the ground are busy responding to so many reports, feed-back for Ushahidi is limited. “They don’t have time to let us know,” Meier said. “A military official said, ‘Your site is saving hundreds of lives, and I wish I could document to you every single example.’” That impact has been a powerful driver for those working in the Fletcher headquar-ters, but the lack of feedback also can take its toll. “It’s been one of the most emotionally difficult things for me to do, and speaking with many of the volunteers, it’s really dif-ficult,” Meier said. “[For example], we get a text about a baby, you map it, you get the U.S. Marine Corps involved, but you don’t have closure. Is the baby still OK? I don’t know. You have an intimate immedi-ate connection, because you literally get the text of someone on the ground.” Stein said that reading personal texts, rather than reading news reports, has made the situation in Haiti personal. “It’s challenging to read messages that are really painful,” she said. Only a few days into the Ushahidi project, a FEMA task force member

suggested to Meier that he look into counseling services. “When I realized how traumatic this was for myself and everyone else involved, there was a moment where I was like, ‘What have I done?’” he said. “We have these amazing undergrads and volunteers. Are we really cut out for this? This guilt has also been there, so I’ve been really proactive about counseling and getting a therapist. We have group meetings to talk about emotions and a therapist on call. It’s something that needs to be addressed, and people need to know it’s not easy.” Over time, most of the reports being mapped by Ushahidi have transitioned from life-threatening situations to requests for food, water and supplies. Nevertheless, the organization’s commit-ment to maintaining its service means they will need even more volunteers. “Right now at current capacity we can go through about 500 text messages a day,” Meier said. “We triage for the most urgent and actionable and then map them, and maybe 100 get mapped. If we scale up and expand our dissemination of this informa-tion and tell more people, we better make sure we have that capacity. This is some-thing we’re setting out to do, and we’ll do another big training soon for volunteers.” Stein and Carlson each have large roles in training new volunteers and are seek-ing more undergraduates to help. They encourage interested students to come to the basement of Cabot to find out more. The two seniors have also been involved in reaching out to members of the Haitian diaspora communities located in Somerville and the Boston area. Because some of the cities in Haiti are not well mapped, those with local expertise have been essential in making sure help goes where it is needed. “The technology depends on the map-ping of this country that frankly has been ignored for a long time,” Carlson said. “The streets have very informal names. When someone texts from a street that no one has named before, we can’t map it. That’s a fundamental part of our system … When you bring in Haitians, they know the com-munities so well. It takes them no time at all for them to say, ‘Oh it’s right here.’” It might be surprising to many that a significant part of Haiti response efforts are taking place on an ad-hoc, volunteer basis, right beneath the Fletcher school. “This is completely unprecedented,” Meier said. “We’ve had the military peo-ple say that ‘You have changed humani-tarian response.’ Anyone could have used it, but it’s the community of volunteers that has sprung up and has really gone above and beyond. I’ve never been a part of such an amazing group of volunteers, and that has been the most rewarding, awe-inspiring thing.”

BY ROBIN CAROL Daily Editorial Board

DILYS ONG/TUFTS DAILY

Crisis-mapping volunteers process information online for aid and rescue workers.

4 Tuesday, February 16, 2010THE TUFTS DAILY ADVERTISEMENT

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5

Joe Johnston’s “The Wolfman,” a remake of the classic 1941 horror film of the same name, is a movie that acknowledges its limitations.

By accepting its status as a remade, unapol-ogetically B-grade flick, “The Wolfman” eschews the prestige it might have obtained as an innovative or psychological thriller. The result is a dark, gory and visually decadent film that promises to heartily entertain audi-ences before being banished to the realm of televised Halloween movie marathons. When Lawrence Talbot (Benicio del Toro) receives a letter from his brother’s fiancée informing him that his brother, Ben (Simon Merrells), is missing, Lawrence returns to his childhood home to help locate Ben. Upon Lawrence’s arrival, his long-estranged father informs him that his brother is dead, the hapless victim of an unknown, savage beast. Lawrence then meets Ben’s fiancée, the love-ly and disconsolate Gwen Conliffe (Emily Blunt), and her distress cements his resolve to discover and kill his brother’s murderer — a decision that leads him to a fate infinitely

more horrifying than his brother’s. At a local pub, Lawrence hears whispered rumors that a half-wolf, half-man creature is behind a string of local murders. He seeks confirmation of this supernatural specula-tion at a gypsy camp, but his efforts are interrupted by the lycanthrope itself. After the werewolf pillages the village, Lawrence chases it deep into the forest, emerging with a bite wound that, come next moon, will awaken the brutal fiend within him. The film benefits enormously from an incredibly talented cast. Lawrence’s character is a complex one. A number of references to Shakespeare in the film paint Lawrence as a sort of supernatural Hamlet — a good man driven to animalistic madness. Like Hamlet, Lawrence is complicated: trauma-tized at a young age by the apparent suicide of his mother, and later institutionalized for unspecified reasons, he certainly does not want for skeletons in his closet. Del Toro’s performance is accordingly pris-matic. Quiet, timid and virtuous, Lawrence is the quintessence of a man trying to heal but still seemingly sane — except for one day of the lunar cycle, of course. Cast in the role of Lawrence’s outwardly eccentric and inwardly psychopathic father, John, Anthony Hopkins raises hair on the back of even the bravest filmgoer’s neck. As his son awakens from his first night as a wolf, disoriented and stained with the blood of innocents, John looms over him, his eyes deadened and smile eerily calm. He informs his horrified child, “You’ve done terrible things, Lawrence. Terrible, terrible things.” So powerful is Hopkins’ portrayal of a con-

scienceless madman that the flat, mocking tone of his voice is even more bloodcurdling than the film’s grisliest murder. Even more delightful than the commend-able acting is the film’s veritable inunda-tion of neo-noir eye candy. The ornately gothic and highly stylized scenery serves the audience a savory visual meal. The Talbots’ run-down estate is one instance of those above-and-beyond aesthetic treats. With its eclectic menagerie of ostentatious and expensive-looking knickknacks, the mansion is an archeological dig site of dilapidated splendor. The nightmarishly beautiful special effects are a guilty pleasure in their own right. As Lawrence sinks deeper into the horror of a werewolf’s life, he has a string of fear-begot-ten delusions that include a deformed and feral lycanthropic child, ready to pounce, and the coming-to-life of a statue of his dead mother. With her white, marble throat slit, she reaches imploringly toward her cursed son with surreally exquisite arms. Somehow, the fruitlessness of her efforts makes Lawrence’s anguish increasingly palpable. These elaborate backdrops and special effects are amplified through the use of stra-tegic lighting. Often in the film, light strikes only a section of the shot, condemning the rest of the picture into a disquieting dark-ness. The selective lighting technique both enhances the museum-like quality of the opulent Victorian setting and emphasiz-es the undercurrents of uncertainty and

Arts & LivingArts & Livingtuftsdaily.com

CARYN HOROWITZ | THE CULTURAL CULINARIAN

Scout’s honor?

February is the time of year for one of our nation’s greatest traditions. No, I am not talking about Punxsutawney Phil and his psychic abilities, nor am

I referencing the sap-fest that is Valentine’s Day. I am referring to the time of year when hordes of little girls put on their brown, green or blue uniforms and set up shop everywhere from grocery stores to subway stations to sell boxes of baked goods. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Girl Scout Cookie time. As an award-winning seller myself, I am sort of an expert on Girl Scout Cookies. I sold over 200 boxes a year from second grade through eigth, and I still have sweet patches on my Brownies, Juniors and Cadettes vests as proof. And yes, I did just admit that not only was I a devoted Girl Scout — I got my Silver Award and now am a lifetime member — but I still have my old vests hanging in the back of my closet next to my dance and Halloween costumes from years past. Moving on. Different Girl Scout councils sell their cookies at different times during the fall and winter, but it just so happens that the local Girl Scouts of Eastern Massachusetts and the Girl Scouts Heart of New Jersey, my council at home, both sell from the end of January to the beginning of March, with the biggest push around Valentine’s Day. The process of selling Girl Scout Cookies has drastically changed since I sold my first box back in 1995. The price of a box has gone up, and there are more varieties to choose from. With the help of their troop leader or parent, girls can now track their orders online, and older scouts are encour-aged to use online cookie marketing, such as advertising on Facebook.com. The one thing that hasn’t changed, how-ever, is the ingredients list. I am ashamed to admit it, but Girl Scout Cookies are extreme-ly unhealthy, and I think something should be done about it. If you look at the nutritional panels on a box of the two top-selling cookies, Thin Mints and Caramel deLites (none of that Samoas business, please — they have car-amel and are delightful and their name should reflect that), you would not think you were looking at a little-girl-friendly product. Thin Mints come in at 160 calories and eight grams of fat for four cookies. The first ingredient on the list is enriched flour, but the second and third are sugar and vegetable shortening (aka palm oil and/or partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil), respectively. And of course there is some high fructose corn syrup thrown in there for good measure. Caramel deLites have 140 calories and seven grams of fat for just two cookies, and sugar is the first ingredient. For comparison, Oreos contain 160 calories and seven grams of fat for four cookies with sugar as the first ingredient. Selling Girl Scout Cookies is supposed to teach young girls about leadership, fund-raising and responsibility. I think it should also teach them about good nutrition. Doesn’t it make sense for a product sold by young girls to be more health conscious or wholesome? The cookies are made by large-scale commercial bakeries, ABC Bakers and Little Brownie Bakers, and as seen with the nutritional information of an Oreo, are comparable to other mass-market baked goods. But even Oreos don’t have partially hydrogenated oils. The FAQ section of the Girlscouts.org Web site addresses a lot of questions about the nutritional value of Girl Scout Cookies, making me think that the organization has come under fire for this before — a few years ago they added the reduced-fat Daisy Go Rounds to their repertoire. I will probably always support my local Girl Scout troop and purchase its cookies, but I think the umbrella organization needs to look closely at what it is asking their girls to sell.

Caryn Horowitz is a senior majoring in history. She can be reached at Caryn.Horowitz@tufts.edu.

MOVIE REVIEWPowerful performances and dazzling cinematography carry ‘The Wolfman’

MOVIE REVIEW

Romanian film changes meaning of ‘cop flick’

ALBUM REVIEW

Hot Chip ventures into new territory with ‘One Life Stand’

BY REBECCA SANTIAGO Daily Staff Writer

The Wolfman

Starring Benecio del Toro, Anthony Hopkins, Emily BluntDirected by Joe Johnston

Hot Chip’s new album, “One Life Stand,” progresses from its previously more upbeat, stimulating music. One

might think it would be difficult to dis-tinguish Hot Chip from the multitudes of electropop bands, such as Cut Copy and LCD Soundsystem, clogging the airwaves at the moment. Hot Chip, however, differentiates itself through a distinct style and front man Alexis Taylor’s unique voice. Having become famous for songs such as “Over and Over” from its best-

known album, “The Warning” (2006), and “Ready for the Floor” from “Made in the Dark” (2008), Hot Chip’s new album plays as a more disco-influenced, mel-ancholy encounter. Alexis Taylor has always been the driving force behind the band, but the fact that each mem-ber is a renowned DJ in his own right lends a more polished sound to the group’s albums. Lyrics do not usually take the spot-light for electronic bands, but Alexis Taylor adds a more heartfelt element to the songs on “One Life Stand” through lines such as “Don’t I know there is a God?/ Now I know there is a God in your heart,” from the song “Slush.” There is a distinct difference from previous records in the depth of the subject matter. This emphasis on a song’s content demonstrates the band’s commitment to writing more

“Police, Adjective” (2009) is a sparse, slow-moving, socially critical comedic drama. While “comedy” may not generally

be associated with those words, “Police, Adjective” astutely combines extreme deadpan with elements of a detective film to tell the story of a young police officer assigned to gather evidence to arrest a hash-smoking high school student. The strange combination of rigid procedural steps and subtle visual and linguistic puns allows “Police, Adjective” to break out of traditional genre tropes associated with cop movies and make some pointed observations about life in contemporary Romania. The director, Corneliu Porumboiu, chooses to remain stylistically dis-tanced from the narrative throughout the film. Rather than try to create ten-sion through the breakneck pace that so often characterizes crime flicks, Porumboiu films the story at what is, at times, an excruciatingly slow pace, giv-ing attention to every detail about his protagonist’s day-to-day surveillance of his suspect. The meticulousness with which the young policeman, Cristi (Dragos Bucur), goes about his investigation is meant not only to show the precision with

see WOLFMAN, page 6

PITCHFORK.COM

For fun, the band drew straws to see who would wear the fireman’s outfit.

BY ALLEN IRWIN Daily Staff Writer

Police, Adjective

Starring Dragos Bucur, Vlad Ivanov, Irina SaulescuDirected by Corneliu Porumboiu

One Life Stand

EMI

Hot Chip

BY KATHERINE GRIFFITHS Contributing Writer

see POLICE, page 6see HOT CHIP, page 6

6 THE TUFTS DAILY ARTS & LIVING Tuesday, February 16, 2010

madness that pulse through the script. For Lawrence’s character, this use of partial illu-mination also evokes the feeling that his environment harbors openly hostile feelings toward him, and a viewer feels that at any moment a tree or a statue might spring alive to attack the forlorn antihero. That sinister mood elevates each terrify-ing action from merely frightening to viscer-ally unsettling. Of course the blood-spurting wounds inflicted by gnarled werewolf claws should elicit an easy scream, but because the audience is already on edge beforehand, each bite and laceration strikes its senses like a mal-let does a gong. The psychological connection to the viewer is remarkable. When Lawrence is subjected to waterboarding torture as a treatment for his alleged insanity, the air in the movie theater actually seems to deplete. The gap between the characters and the viewers is adroitly, if sometimes painfully, bridged. With its fantastic cast and dazzling cine-matography, the film promises an uncritical viewer a good time. What the movie does, it does well. Unfortunately, it still settles com-fortably in its B-grade mold instead of trying to break free. “The Wolfman” can only do so much and is unlikely to ever be knighted a classic film.

which he executes his work, but also to mirror and comment on the stringent laws that Romanian society demands that its citizens follow. Cristi himself is constantly struggling against both the incompetence of his fel-low police officers and the mindset held by his superiors that the law must be fol-lowed to the last word. The student about whom Cristi is gathering information is soon revealed to be a harmless kid relax-ing with his friends — not quite the sup-plier that Cristi’s boss believes him to be. The dichotomy between real-life obser-vation and the infallible law delivers the film’s central problem, and the one that torments Cristi. The protagonist is newly married and has just returned from a honeymoon in Prague, where hashish is smoked openly in the streets. After watching the student and pondering the ramifications of his investi-gation, Cristi arrives at a moral dilemma. Cristi knows through his own observa-

tions that the student is harmless, and that in Romania’s quickly developing society, the law will probably be more permissive in a few years’ time. On the other hand, he feels pressure from his captain to unques-tioningly follow his orders and arrest the kid — a decision that Cristi believes will ruin the adolescent’s life. While Cristi goes about his paper-work and investigation, it becomes clear that the tension between signi-fiers and their true meaning is an issue that occupies more than just the police in Romania. Cristi and his wife discuss the meaning behind ambiguous pop song lyrics, and he bemoans the fact that words are not taken by their lit-eral, most simple meaning. The film’s title hints at this questioning of word meaning, and it comes back again at the conclusion. Cristi’s boss makes him look up dictionary definitions for words like “conscience” and “police,” which are decidedly different from Cristi’s personal interpretations of them. Cristi’s final deci-sion regarding his orders reveals much

about both his character and the society in which he is forced to live. An underlying current of satire runs through “Police, Adjective,” and the film contains small but calculated bits of humor. In his endless tracking of the stu-dent, Cristi becomes a source of visual comedy, stepping in and out of frame, appearing unexpectedly from behind cars and walls and even poking his head out from behind a pillar. Small, realistic moments occur when Cristi reveals his frustration with his bor-ing job in amusing double-takes and con-fused glances. All of the subtle, personal humor helps align the audience with Cristi’s point of view, so that when the conclusion comes, it smarts. As its title suggests, “Police, Adjective” is concerned with words and the way that their definitions can morph and vary. Cristi’s struggles and the subversive come-dic bits spotting the film seem to be a per-sonal protest against a society that refuses to use its imagination — and one that won’t let its conscience get the better of it.

emotionally invested lyrics; whether or not the raving, glow-stick-waving masses will find this change accept-able remains to be seen. On the song “I Feel Better,” the addi-tion of violins demonstrates a bit of classical influence, representing the band’s maturity on its fourth album. The lyrics “Nothing is wasted and life is worth living/ Heaven is nowhere, just look to the stars” show a progression in the development of the group, yet the new sound is almost too mellow to be recognized as Hot Chip. With any other genre of music, such an evolution would be a welcome change to some; Bloc Party’s vast trans-formation from “Silent Alarm” (2005) to “Intimacy” (2008) won it a generally

favorable response from critics and fans alike. But in the electronic pop genre, changes can be more difficult for fans to accept. Bands like The Knife, to which Hot Chip has borne a striking similarity, keep a consistent style from album to album and have seldom received criti-cism from reviewers and listeners. The last track on the album, “Take It In,” plays more like a regression to Hot Chip’s prior work, ending the album on somewhat of a nostalgic note for the more traditional Hot Chip fans out there. Yet even this song features a more melod-ic chorus, with softer lyrics like, “And oh, oh, my heart has flown to you just like a dove/ It can fly, it can fly,” reveal-ing a more romantic side to the band. Electronic bands are not often known for their sincere lyrics, but with the level of attention to the harmonies on this

album, the lyrics achieve a remarkable synchronicity with the melody. In comparison to its earlier albums, Hot Chip has yet to top “The Warning” in regard to individual singles and lyrics, but “One Life Stand” shows a branching out that should be wel-come in any band. This change should hopefully signal more experimen-tal songs in the vein of “Hand Me Down Your Love” and the melancholy electro-ballad “Brothers,” which use Taylor’s individual vocals to the best of his abilities, something the previous albums have not achieved. Every song on “One Life Stand” exceeds four min-utes, and the album requires several listens before an accurate appraisal can be made of it, but it’s worth the time for Hot Chip fans or those who appreciate dreamy electropop.

Hot Chip’s ‘One Life Stand’ reveals softer, more romantic side HOT CHIP continued from page 5

‘Wolfman’ remake off ers visual feast WOLFMAN continued from page 5

‘Police, Adjective’ shows moral, linguistic dilemmas POLICE continued from page 5

Sponsored by the Vietnamese Students Club and Asian American Center, through funding from the AS&E Diversity FundCo-sponsored by American Studies, Anthropology Department, Sociology Department, Asian American Alliance, Anthropology Collective, Filipino Cultural Society, Japanese Culture Club, and Tufts Association of South Asians

For more info: asianamcenter@tufts.edu, 617-627-3056

Friday, February 19, 5:30pm-7:30pmScreening: 5:30pm, Braker 001

Dinner and Speaker to follow

“A Village Called Versailles” documents the underrepresented perspective of the Vietnamese refugee community in New Orleans East in the wake of Hurricane

Katrina. It traces the historical trajectory of their migration from villages in North

Vietnam to urban America, and the relief, return, and rebuilding efforts after

through the eyes of local leaders, the questions of immigrant political

empowerment, interracial relations, and intergenerational community formation.

Associate producer LOAN DAO, who will be speaking after the screening, was awarded the May 2009 Yamashita Prize from University of California-Berkeley’s Institute for the Study of Social Change. From an early age, she has been involved in creating social networks and locally-based organizations that provide sites of healing and support for Southeast Asian American communities. She co-founded “VietBAK” (Vietnamese Bay Area Katrina Relief Group) and frequents the Gulf Coast to help with rebuilding and relief efforts, provide

translations, and advocate for more resources for the Vietnamese communities.

ROTTENTOMATOES.COM

“BENICIO WANT FOOD!!!!!”

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 7THE TUFTS DAILY ADVERTISEMENT

SOCIALISM IN A TOP HAT Professor Elisa New

Wednesday February 17 Center for the Humanities

48 Professors Row 4:30– 5:30pm

Q&A and Reception to follow

Center for the Humanities At Tufts

Presents

Department of English, Harvard University

will discuss her new book Jacob's Cane: A Jewish Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the ports ofLondon and Baltimore.

Thurs, Fri, SatFeb. 18-20 & 25-27, 2010

8:00 PM

$7 Tufts ID/Seniors$12 General Public

$7 on February 18th$1 on February 25th

Balch Arena TheaterTufts University

617-627-3493 for tickets & information

ADAPTATION BY CHRISTOPHER SHINNBASED ON A LITERAL TRANSLATION BY

ANNE-CHARLOTTE HANES HARVEY

DIRECTED BY SHERIDEN THOMAS

BY HENRIK IBSEN

Tufts University Department of Drama and Dance presents

ARTWORK BY MAGRITTE, DESIGN © MELISSA YASKO

8 THE TUFTS DAILY ADVERTISEMENT Tuesday, February 16, 20108

“Lunch and Learn”

Syria, Turkey, Iran, Hamas, and Israel Who: CAMERA (The Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America) is hosting YAAKOV KATZ,Military Correspondent and Defense Analyst for the Jerusalem Post and Israel correspondent for USA Today

Where: Eaton 206

When: Wednesday, February 17th at NOON (open block)

Food: YES! There will be a FREE DELICIOUS LUNCH!

Contact ariella.charny@tufts.edu or 781 789 5816

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 THE TUFTS DAILY COMICS 9

NON SEQUITUR BY WILEY

LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY

SUDOKU

MARRIED TO THE SEA

Please recycle this Daily

DOONESBURY BY GARRY TRUDEAU CROSSWORD

Sapna: “She tickled me to death and made me smell her farts.”

Level: Watching the Olympics from your couch

www.marriedtothesea.com

FRIDAY’S SOLUTION

10 THE TUFTS DAILY EDITORIAL | LETTERS Tuesday, February 16, 2010

ADVERTISING POLICY All advertising copy is subject to the approval of the Editor-in-Chief, Executive Board and Executive Business Director. A publication sched-ule and rate card are available upon request.

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR Letters must be submitted by 4 p.m. and should be handed into the Daily office or sent to letters@tuftsdaily.com. All letters must be word processed and include the writer’s name and telephone number. There is a 450-word limit and letters must be verified. The editors reserve the right to edit letters for clarity, space and length.

EDITORIAL POLICY Editorials that appear on this page are written by the editorialists, and indi-vidual editors are not necessarily responsible for, or in agreement with, the policies and editorials of The Tufts Daily. The content of letters, advertisements, signed columns, cartoons and graphics does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Tufts Daily editorial board.

ALEX MILLER

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Dear Editors, Former Tufts Community Union (TCU) Judiciary Chair, junior Lindsay Helfman, and I wrote in a Tufts Daily op-ed on Nov. 11, 2009, “The TCU Judiciary (TCUJ) has no intention of undermining the TCU Senate Treasury in its capacity and abil-ity to allocate our student activities fund. In the same way that the TCUJ holds group recognition (both old and new) to be our area of expertise, we so view the Senate with regard to funding. We wish to make clear that by practice and by our understanding as arbiters of the TCU Constitution, the Senate retains the sole right and ability to fund or not fund groups — regardless of their TCU recogni-tion status — as it sees fit.” These words continue to express what we referred to as “the reality of recog-nition,” and do much to correct some

errors made in the article published on Feb. 12, 2010 entitled, “Student groups go through various campus organizations to receive funding.” The article begins by saying, “Many groups obtain this funding through the Tufts Community Union Judiciary (TCUJ).” With the exception of the Judiciary’s inter-nal budget ($1,268.56 this year), there is no such thing as “TCUJ funding,” a phrase that is used (with several variants) multiple times in the article. Almost all TCU fund-ing is disbursed by the TCU Treasury, the financial branch of the TCU Senate. The Senate is a completely separate body from the TCU Judiciary. Recognition is given to active groups by the TCU Judiciary, and it confers a limited set of privileges, includ-ing, among others, the ability request funds from the TCU Senate through the alloca-tions process used by student groups.

We on the TCU Judiciary are always eager to help our fellow students under-stand how we work; anybody and every-body should feel free to e-mail john.kay-trosh@tufts.edu, gregory.bodwin@tufts.edu or adam.sax@tufts.edu with any ques-tions they might have.

Thank you,

John Peter KaytroshClass of 2012Chair, TCU Judiciary

Greg BodwinClass of 2013New Group Recognition, TCU Judiciary

Adam SaxClass of 2013Judicial Advocacy Chair, TCU Judiciary

Community reps system should be standardizedEDITORIAL

The Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate has struggled this year with the question of how best to represent minor-ity students’ interests. Currently, four community representatives from differ-ent cultural groups sit in on Senate meet-ings and vote on matters not related to the allocation of funds. These four rep-resentatives — who stem from the Asian American Alliance, the Queer Straight Alliance, the Pan-African Alliance and the Association of Latin American Students — were appointed after their respective groups petitioned for representation, and they were subsequently approved by the Senate. The community representatives model is beneficial in that it pushes the Senate to consider the specific needs of minority groups on campus; but given the arbitrary manner of appointing them, community representatives currently do not fully represent the range of diver-sity at Tufts. The system of community representatives on the TCU Senate has to be standardized and broad-based to represent the various minority interests on campus. The Culture, Ethnicity, and Community Affairs (CECA) committee is currently supporting a proposal in the Senate that

would tie the community representa-tives to their respective special inter-est centers. This proposal would be a step in the right direction toward more fair, organized minority representation. The Culture Centers at Tufts, organized as the Group of Six, are well-defined, far-reaching diversity groups repre-senting the Africana; Asian American; International; Latino; Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender (LGBT); and Women’s Centers. Using the Group of Six as a template for community repre-sentatives on Senate would standardize and organize minority representation in a more effective manner than the arbitrary petitioning for representation currently in effect. However, there are many student minority groups not represented by offi-cial cultural centers. For example, the Muslim Students Association is a major student group, but it is not an official member of the Group of Six. In order for these and other student interest groups to be fairly represented, community rep-resentatives from these groups could be tied to their corresponding student orga-nization rather than an official Tufts cul-tural center. It is vital that these minority

groups also be allowed representation on Senate, as their needs may not be met by the Group of Six. Given the influential role of commu-nity representatives, it is important that the decision to change the system by which representatives are appointed not be made by the Senate alone. Under the current system, Senators vote to approve community representatives. However, the entire Tufts community feels the impact of community representatives’ presence, since they have the right to vote on all matters not related to allo-cation of Senate funds. Therefore, the greater Tufts community should have a say in how community representatives are chosen. TCU President Brandon Rattiner is conscious of this and hopes that the proposal will be brought to a student-wide vote later this spring. This step is crucial in ensuring that the voices voting and influencing Senate decisions are truly representative of the interests of the student population. Minority and culture groups at Tufts should have a voice in the TCU Senate, but it is also crucial that the system for appointing community representatives to Senate be standardized.

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THE TUFTS DAILY

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The Feb. 12 article titled “Student groups go through various campus organizations to receive funding” incorrectly stated that the Tufts Community Union Judiciary (TCUJ) funds student groups. While the TCUJ recognizes student groups, the TCU Senate's Allocations Board and TCU Senate are responsible for funding student groups. Also, the Tufts Quidditch Team's position as an offshoot of the Harry Potter Society has no bearing on its ability to get TCU funding. The Quidditch Team recently received buffer funding to pay for new brooms. The article has been updated on tuftsdaily.com.

Correction

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 THE TUFTS DAILY OP-ED 1111

OP-ED POLICY The Op-ed section of the Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. Op-ed welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length. All material is subject to editorial discretion, and is not guaranteed to appear in The Tufts Daily. All material should be submitted by no later than 1 p.m. on the day prior to the desired day of publication. Material must be submitted via e-mail (oped@tuftsdaily.com) attached in .doc or .docx format. Questions and concerns should be directed to the Op-ed editors. The opinions expressed in the Op-ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Tufts Daily itself.

In the 2009 debate over health care reform, it can be argued that there was one particular factor that con-tributed to the current situation. It was not conservative opposition to liberal legislation or complex health-policy questions. In any substantive debate those problems would have existed, no matter which way the sides or issues were rotated. Rather, what failed in one of the first significant policy debates of the 21st century was the news media. Between the weblogs, television and news-papers, the amount of disinformation and gossip that was produced swallowed any substantive discussion that could have taken place. Cable television and the Internet have increasingly led to the segregation of individuals toward media sources that espouse their own political, social or cultural view-points. This is dangerous for a democratic society that requires engagement with opposing perspectives. During the health care debate this trend was exacerbated, in part, by a lack of journalistic rigor by the media and the decline of serious media, like newspapers. While reading or watch-ing the news, the majority of the public could expect to find stories about backroom deals and the spectacle of the legislative process. When stories covered the debate in depth, as some newspapers did, readers were more likely to learn what a legislator’s political point or a policy sug-gestion was, rather than what the purpose of that policy was or how it would affect the public. Readers and viewers learned about politics, not health care reform. This failure of media coverage was certainly no dif-ferent from the 1994 reports on the Clinton health care reform effort, which was practically more difficult than reporting today’s health care reform efforts. The current legislation was by that standard simpler to understand, but received worse coverage. The 24-hour news cycle that was still developing in the 1990s had come into full bloom by 2009. It is now easier to report on the minute events rather than provide actual substance. So there was a great deal of coverage in 2009 on health care reform, except nothing was actually said during most of it. Yet a great deal of the current opposition to the legisla-tion was based upon the premise that the American pub-lic categorically rejected the legislation. This is premised on the concept that Americans knew what was in the legislation. But a January 2010 Kaiser Family Foundation poll run prior to the Massachusetts election demonstrat-ed that not only did individuals polled have a poor idea

of what was in the legislation, but that when told about 27 separate provisions of the bills, 17 provisions made a majority of individuals more likely to support the legisla-tion and only two provisions less likely. Some of the provisions that made the legislation more palatable to opponents of the bill included provi-sions in the legislation to provide tax credits for busi-nesses to buy insurance, protect current insurance policies, prevent federal funding for abortion services and health care for illegal immigrants, create health insurance exchanges and close the Medicare dough-nut hole. Seniors found this last provision especially appealing — except many did not know that it existed in the bills. Interestingly, one of the least known effects of the legislation was the Congressional Budget Office’s (CBO) prediction that the bills would reduce the federal deficit. Only 15 percent of those polled believed that the legislation would achieve this goal, but 56 percent upon learning that it would, based on CBO estimates, became more supportive of the legislation. The poll revealed expected discrepancies between Republicans, Democrats and Independents in terms of support for the legislation. Both Republicans and Democrats knew about the same amount of informa-tion regarding the bills. There were some differences in that more Republicans than Democrats knew about the individual mandate provisions, and more Democrats than Republicans knew about the doughnut-hole provi-sions. Independents were three times more likely than Republicans to support the bill because it covered the uninsured, while Independents worried more about the costs of the legislation than Democrats. There were, how-ever, two key questions at stake in the legislation that indi-viduals had a difficult time reconciling: cost in the form of the approximately $870 billion 10-year price tag, and access to coverage through the individual mandate. These are invariably two of the most difficult issues to resolve. Cost in the legislation is tied to the premise that in order to cover the insurance expansion for most of the uninsured there must be subsidies to pay for the expan-sion. Here there are no easy answers because the issue is one of ethics and a social contract, rather than the cor-rection of insurance industry abuses or technical issues. What this brings up are social questions: Does American society share the belief that it is a necessity for everyone to have access to health care coverage and insurance? Or, is our society is willing to accept the current, tiered health care system? These are the questions that should have

been debated and explored, not the circus of death panels or the by-the-second accounts of the latest outrageous statement. But the news media chose the path of least resistance and did not discuss these issues, or evidently most of the actual provisions of the legislation. Some specialized resources dedicated to covering the health care debate and policy did emerge during the debate, including Kaiser Health News and the New England Journal of Medicine’s (NEJM) Health Care Reform Center. Among the standard general media, The New York Times, National Public Radio and The Washington Post did a good job of covering both sides of the debate and what the legislation meant for the public. But the question remains — with fewer journalists, more polarized media and the decline of print media, what can be done to pre-vent a repeat of the 2009 debacle? One potential solution would be for more academic journals to step in like NEJM did to fill in the gap created by a lack of discourse. During the debate, journals from the Journal of the American Medical Association ( JAMA) to Health Affairs largely ignored coverage of the issues. Even NEJM’s coverage was not necessarily accessible to the general public. But if NEJM, JAMA or Health Affairs were to partner with organizations like Kaiser Health News to distrib-ute perspectives and commentaries, the distribution range of their content would be greatly increased. This model could be extended to topics beyond health care reform, including swine flu or cancer screenings. Having access to commentaries published in JAMA on the breast cancer screenings is more valuable than a dozen aggregated news stories. Yet the information remains locked behind the academic firewall. In the end, though it may be pessimistic to consider the possibility, it seems that if current trends continue we can continue to see more of what happened with health-care reform in future policy debates. Opinion will continue to be shaped by distorted messages, the public will remain woefully misinformed, and the democratic process will suffer. In 2009, both the traditional and new media failed the public in the health care debate. Alternative strategies are necessary to disseminate information, but what these would be is currently unclear.

Seth Jones retells in his book “In the Graveyard of Empires: America’s War in Afghanistan” a joke heard across Afghanistan today: “An Afghan goes in to see the Minister of the Interior. ‘Minister,’ he pleads, ‘you need to fix the growing corruption problem in our government. The people are becoming increasingly frustrated with government officials who are corrupt and self-serving.’ After listening carefully, the minister responds: ‘You have convinced me there is a problem. Now how much money will you give me to fix it?’” Unfortunately, if this were a true story, most Afghans would believe it. By almost any measurement, the Afghan government has failed its people. Today, commanders and U.N. diplomats have declared that the principal threat to the stability of Afghanistan is its own govern-ment. President Hamid Karzai has decomposed from a national leader into the “mayor of Kabul.” Systemic corruption in the ministries has undercut the rule of law and economic prosperity. Alongside minimal population security, this has empowered the Taliban insurgency. Preventing failure in Afghanistan requires a comprehen-sive approach that decentralizes power down to the tribal level while giving Afghans enough confidence in the cen-tral state that they do not seek to overthrow it. First, the United States and NATO International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) must provide population security in Afghanistan. While the inefficacy of the government has turned Afghans to the Taliban, much of that support is the result of coercion. The cost of aligning with the government and international forces is death. Security forces have not been able to hold onto territory and pro-tect the population. The result is that Afghans assume the international community is complicit in the failures of the government and does not actually wish to defeat the Taliban. International troops must maintain a long-term presence within the country. This will aid governmental reform, as officials know that the international com-munity will not be leaving soon. While a stated date for withdrawal can be used as leverage, it is crucial to change the conventional wisdom among the Taliban that “NATO has all the watches, but we have all the time.” The United States and NATO ISAF must also present a cohesive message for the Afghan government. Like many other aspects of the mission in Afghanistan, coordination with President Karzai has been fragmented by the diversi-ty of interests. Often, the president is given contradictory messages by the different nations of the coalition. For example, when Karzai tried to arrest Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum for assaulting a political rival, Turkey — a

major donor supporting Dostum — opposed the move, and today Dostum is a member of the Karzai adminis-tration. Likewise, the Americans have supported former Minister of the Interior Zarar Ahmad Muqbil even though he is notorious for kickbacks and graft. While the inter-national community speaks of transparent democracy, it has consistently supported its own strongmen at the expense of Afghans. Reform entails a unified approach among the coalition that does not place Karzai in a posi-tion in which in order to satisfy everyone, he dissatisfies the Afghan people. One option discussed by the U.N. recently was to replace Karzai outside of the electoral process. By forcing out Karzai, the U.S. and NATO ISAF would have a clean slate to work with. They would also be able to install a leader who aligns with their interests. However, simply removing the president would not change the inherent problems within the government today. In fact, over-throwing Karzai through extralegal means and replacing him with a Western puppet may only alienate Afghans further. Additionally, Karzai’s “big tent” style of gover-nance makes him the only leader who can reach out to the political factions. While this policy has accommo-dated and empowered the warlords, there is no guarantee that a Western technocrat could resolve the myriad of tribal divisions of Afghanistan. One crucial program that may bring Karzai desper-ately needed legitimacy is a long-sought action plan for transitional justice that would finally examine the human rights crimes of the past thirty years. Such a process would involve the central government and judicial sector as well as the United Nations in a vetting process, truth commissions and possibly prosecutions. At the very least, an action plan could begin to remove the cynicism that Afghans have towards their government. There must be a focus within government ministries on locating and correcting corruption. The U.S. and international communities should institute Offices of Inspectors General and create ombudsmen who report to the people and record their complaints. The Taliban have already established this position in areas they control. At the national level, the Ministry of the Interior is crucial for reform efforts, since it is responsible for internal security and counter narcotics. Donor aid must be conditional on comprehensive reform of the Ministry of the Interior, and there must be a unified vision for the Afghan National Police as either law and order or coun-terinsurgency units. The capacity-building of these institutions must be relevant to the Afghan environment. For police work to be productive, the justice system should be strengthened

and built on tribal practices. Likewise, Western contrac-tors like DynCorp International cannot train police-men based on tactics learned in American metropolises. Rather, capacity-building must be congruent with cul-tural norms and constraints. Any minister or police chief in Afghanistan is in power today because he knows how to work the system. Imposing Western standards upon them is a failure to recognize the reality in which the international community must operate. Ultimately, any political solution that accommodates Western interests will have to distribute power outside of Kabul. While still supporting measures to improve the central government, the U.S. and NATO must also empower informal tribal networks. A connection with the government is necessary, but these local power brokers should be given autonomy. An example of a successful program is the National Solidarity Program (NSP), which disperses grants to village-level elected councils who determine priorities for the community and distribute the grants for micro-development projects. Through the NSP, over 19,000 project plans have been implemented. Another example is the National Rural Access Program, which has restored 9,000 km of roads, bringing infrastruc-ture and employment to communities. David Kilcullen writes that “roads ain’t roads,” but instead represent a long-term commitment by international forces and the government to the people. By securing an area, work-ing with the people to identify needs, employing and empowering them, roads projects “generate progress across all the dimensions of counterinsurgency.” When they know that the government is funding projects that satisfy needs, Afghans are more likely to turn away from the Taliban. Transparency International recently named Afghanistan the second-most corrupt country in the world, behind only Somalia. This is primarily a result of neglect, myopia and hypocrisy on the part of the inter-national community. The duty now is for Western lead-ers to acknowledge those failures and correct them with a coherent plan. Otherwise, if “‘Karzai Incorporated’” is tolerated, then the West will soon fail in Afghanistan. The Education for Public Inquiry and International Citizenship (EPIIC) program at Tufts University especially focuses on these great issues. If you wish to continue this discussion and learn more about the South Asian region, attend the EPIIC Symposium 2010 from Feb. 17-21 in Cabot Auditorium.

OP-ED POLICY The Op-Ed section of the Tufts Daily, an open forum for campus editorial commentary, is printed Monday through Thursday. Op-Ed welcomes submissions from all members of the Tufts community. Opinion articles on campus, national and international issues should be 600 to 1,200 words in length. All material is subject to editorial discretion, and is not guaranteed to appear in The Tufts Daily. All material should be submitted by no later than 1 p.m. on the day prior to the desired day of publication. Material must be submitted via e-mail (oped@tuftsdaily.com) attached in .doc or .docx format. Questions and concerns should be directed to the Op-Ed editors. The opinions expressed in the Op-Ed section do not necessarily represent the opinions of the Tufts Daily itself.

BY ARJUN VERMA

Governance in Afghanistan

Arjun Verma is a junior majoring in International Relations. He is a student in this year’s EPIIC colloquium.

The news media failed on health care reformBY MICHAEL SHUSTERMAN

Michael Shusterman is a senior majoring in biology and history. He is editor-in-chief of TuftScope Journal of Health, Ethics, and Policy.

12 Tuesday, February 16, 2010THE TUFTS DAILY ADVERTISEMENT

Erin Gruwell's appearancearranged through GothamArtists, LLC

Two-time Academy Award

winner Hillary Swank stars

as Erin Gruwell, a teacher

who's diverse group of

students hate her more than

each other. Erin gives them

respect, something no other

teacher has ever given them.

She gives them hope and inspires them to believe in

themselves, showing them that their lives matter.

Come see this inspirational film beforeErin Gruwell's appearance in CohenAuditorium at 8PM on February 24, 2010.

FILM SCREENING OF

FEBRUARY 16, 20107:30PM IN BARNUM 008

Freedom Writers

FREE Tickets will be available at Cohen box officestarting Tuesday, February 16 at 10AM – one ticketper ID, two IDs per person.

Erin's appearance is part of the Merrin DistinguishedLecture Series presented by Tufts Hillel.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 THE TUFTS DAILY SPORTS 13

again in the opening stanza — this time on a power play — to give the hosts a 2-0 lead.

The Jumbos scrambled to get back in the game, and with only two seconds left before the first intermission, Cooper fed junior forward Tom Derosa for a power-play goal that cut the Huskies’ lead in half. But unfortunately for the Jumbos, Rutt continued his

streaky shooting, potting his third goal of the night on a two-man advantage. Rutt’s hat trick came just two minutes into the period, ballooning his squad’s lead up to two tallies. Giving up goals early has been a problem for the Jumbos all year long. Just last week, Tufts found itself down 3-0 early in the second period at home against Trinity and ultimately lost 4-1. On both Friday and Saturday, the trend of falling behind contin-ued. But this time, the Jumbos were able to claw their way back to two key victories. Versus the Huskies, the momentum started to turn with junior forward Zach Diaco’s team-best 14th goal of the sea-son on a power play midway through the second period, which moved Tufts back within one goal. Southern Maine freshman forward Tom Gosselin took a hooking minor early in the third period to give Tufts the chance to tie with the man-advantage, and the Jumbos’ red-hot power play unit quickly cashed in on the opportunity, as offensively gifted freshman defenseman

Trevor John tied the game at three goals apiece with a blast from the point. Four minutes later, sopho-more forward Matt Amico beat Huskies freshman goaltender Tim Gerrish to put the Jumbos ahead for the first time in the game. Cooper gave his team some breathing room, pick-ing up an insurance marker on the power play to extend the Jumbos’ lead to 5-3 with six min-utes remaining. At the other end, Barchard stood strong, making 20 of his 41 saves in the third period to keep Tufts’ two-goal lead intact. Senior forward Cory Korchin was not thrilled with the way the Jumbos played overall, but appreciated his team’s grit in its big win. “You don’t want to be down in the third period and have to come back and win a game,” Korchin said. “But it was a learn-ing experience and also good for team-building.” In another crucial game on Friday night, the Jumbos were also able to rally to overcome a 2-1 deficit in the third period and defeat the University of New England (UNE) Nor’easters, 4-2

behind 60 saves from Barchard. Following a scoreless first period, the Nor’easters struck first when UNE freshman for-ward Tyler Fleurent knocked in a rebound past Barchard to put the Nor’easters ahead 1-0. Later in the period, freshman forward Dylan Plimmer led an odd-man rush up the ice to set up Derosa for a game-tying power play goal. UNE soph-omore forward Justin Miner beat Barchard with a shot from the slot to send the Jumbos into the second intermission down 2-1. The teams combined for 26 shots on goal in the third period, but none was more important than Cooper’s shot off of his own rebound with 1:13 remaining in the game. After Korchin fired a wrist shot home past UNE first-year goaltender Dallas Ungurian to tie the score, Cooper’s strong individual effort put Tufts ahead 3-2. Plimmer then secured a 4-2 win with an empty-net goal. Barchard’s 60 saves tied the current record for single-game saves set by James Kalec (LA ’08) in 2005. The lofty total also boost-

ed Barchard’s total for the current season to 870, surpassing the program record he set as a fresh-man last year. After the Southern Maine contest, Barchard’s mark sits at 911 saves. Cooper was especially pleased with the team’s effort as a whole this weekend. “We got big plays from guys who haven’t necessarily been showing up on the score sheet every game, and we played with the urgency we needed to win,” he said. “In the third period, we won more battles, got to loose pucks, played an all-around better game.” The Jumbos’ four-point weekend was their first since Dec. 4-5, when the team was in the midst of their season-best six-game winning streak. With at least three contests remaining, one win would tie this year’s squad with the 2004-2005 Jumbos team for the most wins (12) in Tufts’ NESCAC-era history. Tufts will face ECAC East foes Saint Michael’s College and Norwich University at home this weekend before turning its atten-tion to the NESCAC Tournament the following week.

Anyone can be a Host Advisor!

Help new International and American students get adjusted to life at

Tufts and in the US at International Orientation (I.O.), August 29-August

31, 2010! You don’t have to be international to participate in I.O.

Sign up a mandatory info session. Applications due Monday, February

22nd. Sponsor: International Center, 20 Sawyer Ave., Medford Campus.

617-627-3458.

A Look at Religions

Chaplain`s Table - “A Look at Religions” - February 18, 2010 -

MacPhie Conference Room - 5-7 PM.

Father Nick Kastanas The Greek Orthodox Church today

two 4BR

1 four bedroom apartment in two family house-very close to school. Available September 1-May. Call

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4 Bedroom apartment. 1st floor. 62 Powderhouse Blvd. Call Charlie at

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CLASSIFIEDS POLICY All Tufts students must submit classifieds in person, prepaid with check, money order, or exact cash only. All classifieds submitted by mail must be accompanied by a check. Classifieds are $10 per week with Tufts ID or $20 per week without. The Tufts Daily is not liable for any damages due to typographical errors or misprintings except the cost of the insertion, which is fully refundable. We reserve the right to refuse to print any classifieds which contain obscenity, are of an overly sexual nature, or are used expressly to denigrate a person or group. Questions? Email business@tuftsdaily.com.

Around Campus Event Housing Housing Housing -

IN THE BOOKSAfter a 60-save performance in Friday’s 4-2 win at the University of New England, sophomore goalie Scott Barchard surpassed his own record for single-season saves. Friday’s effort also tied him for the top mark for most saves in a sin-gle game. The Daily looks at how Barchard is quickly etching his name across the record books.

Goalie (Season) Single-Season SavesScott Barchard (09-10) 911Scott Barchard (08-09) 862Ben Crasper (03-04) 698Ken Tondreau (59-60) 687Bunk McMahon (94-95) 617

Tufts looking to tie program record for most wins in NESCAC era HOCKEY continued from page 16

CHINESE NEW YEAR CONCERT

Boston Chinese Chamber Music

CHINESE PROGRAM

February 17th, 2010 Wednesday 7:30pm—9:00pm

Distler Performance Hall

Sponsored by

Diversity Fund, Charles Smith Fund, and Toupin-Bolwell Fund

FREE ADMISSIONFREE ADMISSION

ASH WEDNESDAY FEBRUAY 17, 2010

GODDARD CHAPEL SERVICES

CATHOLIC MASS – 12:15 PM

ECUMENICAL SERVICE – 5:15 PM

Liturgy of the Word andDistribution of Ashes

Goddard Chapel, Tufts University, Medford, Massachusetts 02155, (617) 627-3427 Website: www.tufts.edu/chaplaincy

Wheelchair Accessibility via Tower Door

14 THE TUFTS DAILY SPORTS Tuesday, February 16, 2010

The ExCollege:

You checked out our classes. Now see what we have for programs and opportunities this Spring.

Apply to join the ExCollege Board. Applications available on our website. Due Monday, March 1st.

Join us for Feedback: A Lunch with Faculty and Students on Friday, March 12th at Noon in the Chase Dining Room. RSVP to the ExCollege.

Watch an episode of LOST with Chad Matlin ‘08, the instructor of the ExCollege’s class on Lost and currently the Lost expert on the online magazine Slate.com. Tuesday, March 16th at 8:30pm in the Campus Center Lounge.

Lead an Explorations or Perspectives seminar for Fall 2010. Applications available on our website. Due Wednesday, March 17th.

Take a break from studying at the ExCollege Trivia Night on Wednesday, May 5th in Hotung.

www.excollege.tufts.edu excollege@tufts.edu 617-627-3384

Tuesday, February 16, 2010 THE TUFTS DAILY SPORTS 15

With a first-round home matchup in the NESCAC Tournament already locked up for the women’s basketball team, the No. 13 Jumbos were upset Saturday on the road by

Bates, 71-55. After last week’s loss to confer-ence rival Amherst, Saturday’s game marks the first back-to-back regular season defeats for the Jumbos since January 2007. “We were disappointed with ourselves, and, you know, [I give] credit to [Bates],” junior tri-captain guard Colleen Hart said. “I think they came out really strong on their Senior Day — they were really fired up for the game. We had faced them before, and I think they definitely were a different team. I don’t think we took them lightly; it just wasn’t our night.” “It definitely wasn’t the outcome we wanted,” sophomore forward Kate Barnosky added. “They controlled the game and just wanted it more than we did.” Bates junior center Jessie Igoe went 10 for 11 from the free throw line and finished with 22 points and 11 rebounds, while Hart led the Jumbos with a team-high 18 points. Bates took an early 29-15 lead with 7:31 to go in the first half and never looked back, but the Jumbos picked up the pace with an 8-1 run over the following two minutes to cut the lead to under 10 points. Despite the strong effort from Tufts, the Bobcats quickly responded with an 8-0 run of their own and headed into the break with a comfortable 40-28 lead.

“I don’t think we ever had control,” Hart said. “They went on a big run at the begin-ning of the game ... and we had to take an early timeout. They came out running and ran on us the entire game. We were tired, and we had a difficult time defending them. We came out strong in the second half, but it’s tough to recover from being down that much at halftime.” The Jumbos came out of the locker room strong as Hart quickly netted eight points to bring Tufts within four at 40-36. But Tufts could not keep up its renewed attack, as the Bobcats retaliated again with a 10-0 run. The Jumbos, though, never came close after that point, trailing by double digits for the remainder of the contest as Bates cruised to its first win over a ranked team since Jan. 13, 2006. “They had momentum from the start of the game and ran with it,” Barnosky said. “We fought hard, but we couldn’t climb back into it.” Senior forward Julia Baily recorded her fourth consecutive double-double and her 11th of the season for the Jumbos with 15 points, 10 rebounds and three steals. Meanwhile, Barnosky added nine points, five rebounds and five assists. With the win, the Bobcats finished the season with a 4-5 NESCAC record, landing the sixth seed in the upcoming NESCAC Tournament. The Jumbos, who finished 6-3, placed fourth in the standings and still earned the chance to play their first-round contest in Cousens Gym, in which they are 7-1 this season. “We were obviously hoping to get a higher seed,” Barnosky said. “But we have to take it one game at a time, and we’re happy we have a home game.” The Jumbos will match up against fifth-seeded Bowdoin — which they defeated 52-40 in their last contest on Jan. 23, when the Polar Bears were ranked No. 13 in the

country — this Saturday when the confer-ence playoffs kick off. “The NESCAC is very competitive this year — there don’t seem to be any weak teams in the playoffs,” Hart said. “There are no teams that I don’t want to face. No matter who we face, we’re not going to think it’s an easy game. I think in a way it was a blessing that we lost to Bates, because otherwise we might’ve faced them again, and it’s really hard to beat a team three times.” But before the Jumbos head into the NESCAC Tournament, they will play the final home game of the regular season tonight against Worcester State. “We’re just hoping to get better and gain some confidence so we can feel good about our game on Saturday,” Hart said. “[Tonight’s game] is definitely an opportunity to do that; we’re excited and glad we have an opportu-nity to play again before the playoffs.”David Heck contributed reporting to this article.

Athletes of the WeekNAKEISHA JONES, WOMEN’S TRACK AND FIELD

Like many across the country, men’s track senior quad-captain Billy Hale had a Valentine’s to remember — but his came in the Valentine’s Invitational on Saturday, not Valentine’s Day on Sunday. Hale set Tufts’ indoor track record in the 1,000-meter run 2:28.70, edging out the five-year-old record of 2:28.93 that was held by Aaron Kaye (LA ’05). Meanwhile, sophomore hockey goalie Scott Barchard added to his fast-growing legacy, as he racked up 101 saves over the weekend en route to a pair of Tufts victories. Barchard has now totaled 911 saves on the year and 1,773 for his career, putting him just 393 saves short of the Tufts career record. Barchard’s impact on the success of the team has been undeniable, as the Jumbos, with at least three games left, need only one more win to pass their highest total in the NESCAC era and have locked up a bid in the NESCAC Tournament.

BILLY HALE, MEN’S TRACK AND FIELD; SCOTT BARCHARD, ICE HOCKEY

Last year, then-freshman Nakeisha Jones burst onto the national scene of women’s track and field, quickly becoming known as one of the best triple-jumpers in New England as she worked her way toward All-American honors in the event for both the indoor and outdoor season. This year, she’s only further proving her abilities. At the Valentine Invitational at Boston University on Friday, Jones shattered her Div. III competitors with a jump of 39’1 1/4’’, making her the only athlete to have surpassed the NCAA automatic qualifying distance of 38’8 3/4’’ this year. The distance is also well past that of the next-closest mark, which Jones bested by over seven inches. Next week, the women’s track team will take part in the New England Div. III Championships at Southern Maine, where Jones will attempt to make up for her disqualification last season. Considering how she followed up that disappointment last year — with a school-record jump of 40’10” at All-New Englands — look for her to yet again place among the top finishers this weekend.

JOSH BERLINGER/TUFTS DAILY

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL(19-4, 6-3 NESCAC)at Lewiston, Maine, Saturday

Tufts 28 27 — 55Bates 40 31 — 71

ALEX PREWITT | LIVE FROM MUDVILLE

Live from Vancouver

Sorry, Tufts University, I’ve dropped out of school. Goodbye to Fall Ball, Spring Fling and Winter Bash. No longer will I have to walk up that devastating hill to

class. So long, Jumbo. Sayonara, NQR. Peace out, Bacow, I’m going all Beelzebubs on this school. Pax et lux, bros, because I’m gone. At the start of the 2010 Winter Olympics, the Tufts Daily graciously offered to send me to Vancouver to cover the games, over-flowing the city with poor jokes and hot and cold metaphors. From Friday’s Opening Ceremony — inci-dentally, Wayne Gretzky’s face when the torch-lighting malfunctioned is right up there with Macaulay Culkin in “Home Alone” (1990) and Derek Zoolander’s “Blue Steel” as one of the best expressions of all time — I have been captivated by these Games, learning far more than I ever could have toiling away in Tisch. For all the jokes about Canada’s failures I can make, though, the tragedy surrounding Georgian luger Nodar Kumaritashvili’s death outweighs all the fun I can have in Vancouver. Early Friday, Kumaritashvili crashed during a training run at the Whistler Sliding Center, barreling off the edge above turn 16 and into a metal pole, instantly losing consciousness and dying six hours later. He was 21 years old. I’m not here to memorialize Kumaritashvili, because the candlelight vigils across his home nation can do that. But I do want to address the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and International Luge Federation’s (FIL) reaction to this. Olympic officials did their best to com-memorate Kumaritashvili, as did the entire crowd at the BC Place Stadium, which cheered vigorously as members of the Georgian team entered the stadium, wearing black scarves and armbands to honor their fallen comrade. After that, the IOC and FIL moved on with their business like nothing had happened. Following the investigation, the FIL and the Vancouver Organizing Committee (VANOC) released this joint statement: “It appears after a routine run, the athlete came late out of curve 15 and did not compensate properly to make correct entrance into curve 16.” Um, are you kidding me? Let’s run that back for a quick second: After building the world’s fastest track in which rid-ers barrel down a 152-meter drop with almost no protection while the crowd cheers at every near-crash, the FIL is not responsible? You know what, three-letter groups, you’re completely correct. It was Kumaritashvili’s fault that he had only gone down the hair-raising track 26 total times before his fatal accident, simply because Canada wanted a competitive advantage and followed the time-honored tradition of limit-ing foreign access to the tracks before the Olympics. It was Kumaritashvili’s problem that he flew off the unpadded top of the track and vaulted into an unpadded pole. Kumaritashvili is to blame for an unsafe sport. This is a kid who never got the opportu-nity to take the ice for his country, to wave the Georgian flag around after he whipped down the track at speeds upward of 95 miles per hour. And they want to place all the blame squarely on someone who can’t physically shoulder it anymore. Kumaritashvili’s crash is by no means a flash in the pan at Whistler. People have crashed there before. American Steven Holcomb dubbed turn 13 as “50-50” to reflect the odds of making it through safely. Which begs the question: If the safety issues of the track were an issue, why were things not changed before the first luger went down in Vancouver? If there were no track deficiencies, then why did Olympic officials shorten the start-ing point and make the overall course much slower? Why was the ice modified? Do they really expect to be absolved of all respon-sibilities by saying it was Kumaritashvili’s problem? In the most dangerous facility in one of the most spine-tingling sports, why wasn’t something done to prevent this? Like South Park says, “blame Canada” for restricting access to the track, or even turn your nose upward at the IOC and FIL. At the very least, call for the installation of a safety net surrounding the track or further safety upgrades throughout. But shame on you for saying it’s Kumaritashvili’s fault.

Alex Prewitt is a sophomore who has not yet declared a major. He can be reached at Alexander.Prewitt@tufts.edu.

WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

at intermission. Anderson would finish the game with 15 points and seven rebounds, while senior forward Dave Beyel added eight boards but was held to only seven points — well below his season average of 16.5. Yet the Tufts bench combined for only four points for the Jumbos, while two start-ers — freshman point guard Alex Goldfarb and senior tri-captain Dan Cook — failed to score at all. Still, the Jumbos continued to look strong after the break, with Pierce and Beyel hit-ting back-to-back jumpers to put Tufts up 37-23 just under four minutes in. Two min-utes later, Bates senior guard Neil Creahan and Brust scored on consecutive plays, with sophomore forward John Squires adding two free throws to chip away at Tufts’ lead. Then the Jumbos’ lead unraveled. Brust knocked down his only three of the game, and then a jumper on the Bobcats’ next posses-sion. Bates junior forward Nick Schmiemann got involved with two three-point plays of his own during the run — one traditional and

one from behind the arc — on either side of another Brust lay-up. Brust then hit three jumpers during the next three possessions and picked up the ball after Pierce’s jumper was blocked from 15 feet out to grab his final two points, making the score 56-52 Bates before Tufts was forced to foul. Brust’s scoring spurt, combined with some tough defense on Pierce, was enough for Bates to pull out the victory. “The whole game we had been getting it to Jon [Pierce],” Anderson said. “And it was pretty consistent with him scoring every time, but later in the game they started front-ing and double-teaming him down low, so it was more difficult to get him the ball, which had been our option throughout the rest of the game. “They eliminated a lot of our post options, and we started taking a lot of out-side shots that maybe we shouldn’t have. If those shots had gone in, it would have been a very different game.” The season finale had a similar theme with many of the team’s disheartening loss-es this year: an inability to stay consistently

strong for 40 minutes. Out-rebounded 45-31 and shooting at just 37.3 percent on the day, the Jumbos struggled once again down the stretch. The loss dropped the Jumbos into last place in the conference and marked the end of the careers of Pierce, Beyel, Cook, tri-captain Tom Selby, guard Reed Morgan and forward Bryan Lowry on an unfortunate, yet familiar, note. “I think any time a season ends, you take what you can from it,” Galvin said. “You think about it for a couple weeks, learn what you can, take the experiences with you and forget the rest. We had the potential this year; it just never developed the way we wanted. Next year is going to be a fresh start.” “We’re going to work hard and get bigger, because we’re losing a lot of our offensive threats,” Anderson added. “I think every-one has that in mind; getting in the gym [and] playing all summer … just getting better. We’re definitely going to miss what the seniors brought us, but we’re all excited about next year and to hopefully improve on the [team’s] record.”

Jumbos look to put loss, and season, behind them MEN’S BASKETBALL continued from page 16

Bobcats upset Tufts, Jumbos fall to fourth seed BY SARAH NASSER

Daily Staff Writer

SNAPPEDThe women’s basketball team’s stunning loss to Bates over the weekend did more than just hurt its position in the NESCAC standings. The Daily looks at several notable streaks that came to an end for the Jumbos on Saturday afternoon:

Streak snapped Span of: Last Loss

Wins vs. Bates 7 Feb. 4, 2006(inc. postseason)

Games without 58 Feb. 9, 2008double-digit loss (inc. postseason)

Regular season 79 Jan. 9, 2007games without consecutive losses

Games without 111 Jan. 27, 2006consecutive NESCAC losses

16

tuftsdaily.com

INSIDE Women’s Basketball 15

Live from Mudville 15Athletes of the Week 15SportsSports

Country Gold Silver Bronze Total

1) United States of America

2) Germany

3) France

2

1

2

2

3

0

4

1

2

8

5

4

2010 Winter Olympics

Medal Count

ICE HOCKEY(11-8-3, 7-7-3 NESCAC)at Gorham, Maine, Saturday

Tufts 1 1 3 — 5So. Maine 2 1 0 — 3

at Biddeford, Maine, Friday

Tufts 0 1 3 — 4UNE 0 2 0 — 2

Strong third periods help Jumbos clinch playoff spotICE HOCKEY

BY ADAM PARDES Daily Staff Writer

With a NESCAC Tournament berth on the line this past weekend, the hockey team delivered.

Thanks to a pair of three-goal third periods which cemented late-game comebacks against ECAC East opponents University of New England (UNE) and University of Southern Maine, the Jumbos clinched their spot in the tournament, the second such berth in as many years. Spectacular goaltending from sopho-more Scott Barchard and clutch offense from junior tri-captain and forward Dylan Cooper combined to give Tufts some much-needed momentum before head-ing into its final two regular season games next weekend. On Saturday night, Southern Maine junior forward Jon Rutt scored just 1:02 into the game, rattling Tufts and giving the Huskies an early edge. Rutt lit the lamp ALEX DENNETT/TUFTS DAILY

Junior Tom Derosa helped give the Jumbos a pair of comeback victories this weekend, recording one goal in each game as Tufts earned a berth in the NESCAC Tournament.

VIRGINIA BLEDSOE/TUFTS DAILY

Members of the men’s lacrosse team took Bello Field for the official start of spring practices over the weekend. Last year’s NESCAC Tournament runner-up was just one of several Jumbo squads to commence practices. Season start dates vary from team to team, with the majority of spring sports beginning mid-March.

Spring teams begin practices over weekend

MEN’S BASKETBALLBobcats claw their way back, end Tufts’ season BY CLAIRE KEMP

Daily Editorial Board

All good things must come to an end. And the high the men’s basketball team felt last week after upsetting Amherst for the first time since 2003 was no exception.

Though the Jumbos did not have a chance at the playoffs entering the game on Saturday — a Wesleyan victory on Friday over Bowdoin eliminated that possibility — the team was still

looking to triumph over Bates and send its six seniors off on a high note. But the Bobcats put an end to Tufts’ frustrating 6-17, 2-7 NESCAC season in an unceremonious fashion, putting down the Jumbos by a score of 64-55. In an almost-exact replay of last year’s Valentine’s Day matchup in Bates’ infamous-ly hot gym, the Jumbos surrendered a 30-21 half-time lead. Despite a 29-point, eight-rebound, five-block performance from senior tri-captain Jon Pierce, the team’s all-time leading scorer whose 18.3 points-per-game average is third in the NESCAC, Tufts didn’t have enough to overcome the fourth-place Bobcats (13-11, 5-4 NESCAC). The Jumbos finished the season in the conference cellar for the third straight year. It was Bates rookie guard Mark Brust who seemed to be the game-changer, scoring a

career-high 21 points, 15 of which came dur-ing the 22-7, seven-minute run in the second half that led to the home team’s victory. Brust shot 10 of 13 and drained seven in a row to help the Bobcats scratch their way back from a 44-34 deficit with 12:07 remaining to grasp a 56-51 lead with just over five minutes to play. Bates hit five out of its last six free throws to secure the win, with each point increas-ing the Jumbos’ desperation. Tufts went without a field goal for the last four min-utes of the season. “The big thing was that we came out cold and flat, and their guards really killed us on transition with easy lay-ups,” junior guard Matt Galvin said. “It was probably the loudest gym we played in all season, and we weren’t always on the same page. We knew they were going make a run at some point, and when it

came, we were rattled and didn’t respond like we should have.” Freshman forward Scott Anderson, who was playing his first game at Bates, admitted that the heat of the gym made him uncomfortable. “I think, at least for me, the gym really wore on us,” he said. “It felt like [I was] playing in the summer, and fatigue set in on us in the end after the energy we played with in the first half and beginning of the second. They were used to it, and they took advantage of us. We kept our composure, but it just got away from us.” Pierce scored 15 points in the first half alone, going 6-for-8 and sinking all three of his three-point attempts to send the underdog Jumbos to the locker room with the nine-point lead

see HOCKEY, page 13

see MEN’S BASKETBALL, page 15

MEN’S BASKETBALL(6-17, 2-7 NESCAC)at Lewiston, Maine, Saturday

Tufts 30 25 — 55Bates 21 43 — 64