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T HE T UFTS DAILY VOLUME LXXXV, ISSUE 3
Thursday, February 9, 2023
MEDFORD/SOMERVILLE, MASS.
Monaco, Genco field questions at DEIJ town hall by Arvind Pillai Staff Writer
The Tufts Community Union Senate held a school-wide town hall regarding the diversity, equity, inclusion and justice efforts at Tufts on Feb. 3. The event featured University President Anthony Monaco, Provost ad interim Caroline Genco and other senior administration members. A central focus of the town hall was to engage panelists by fielding questions on ways to increase the diversity and inclusion of the student body, staff and leadership. The first question, directed at Monaco, asked about the university’s progress following its 2020 commitment to become an anti-racist institution. Monaco responded by bringing attention to efforts made by the Office of Admissions.
“The previous dean of admissions and the current dean [ JT Duck] have made a lot of efforts to recruit students from areas that we were not traditionally recruiting from,” Monaco said. “[ We are] also partnering with organizations that bring students to our attention that Tufts would be a good fit and might not have known about us or we might not have known about them.” Monaco also cited the university’s undergraduate admissions test-optional pilot, which it recently extended for another three years, as an example of progress. “In admissions, [we are] keeping a focus on our holistic approach, not relying on test scores and GPAs so much as the entire picture,” Monaco said. “Particularly, focusing on the particular context and nuance
of the challenges that those students overcame or put forward for themselves as an academic challenge and how they did in that area.” “We’re always making absolutely sure we have good balance in our search committees,” Monaco said. “We’ve been tracking the applicant pool diversity and comparing that to the diversity of the employees we have and then saying, well, what is that gap? Of course we want the applicant pool to continue to get more diverse, but we really want to close the gap.” The university originally allocated $25 million to support DEIJ efforts last year, in accordance with the July 2020 commitment to anti-racism. Monaco said that the resource allocation for the initiative was recently doubled from $25 million to $50 million.
DAVID KIM / THE TUFTS DAILY
TCU members welcome guests to the town hall on Feb. 3. “I would argue we can’t afford not to do this,” Monaco said. “Having the variation in your faculty, students and staff really brings to bear the perspectives,
the different challenges that people overcame to get here and also the variety of approaches they see TOWN HALL, page 2
Dr. Cornel West, faculty, students 3 students announced speak at ‘Dystopia Now!’ symposium as winners of MLK Student Voices Award by Aaron Gruen
Executive News Editor
by Katie Spiropoulos The Department of International Literary and Cultural Studies hosted the “Dystopia Now!” symposium, focused on representations of dystopia in media and popular culture, on Friday. Dr. Cornel West opened the event with a keynote address. In his wide-ranging speech, West discussed how studying dystopia can provide insight into our modern condition and what it means to be human. “We always want to connect the utopian with the dystopian; it goes hand in hand,” West said. “This [ILCS] department has the audacity to say, ‘Come with us as we wrestle with … forms of death: physical death, social death, psychic death, spiritual death.’” West ended his keynote by asking attendees to immerse themselves in literature from all eras, not just contemporary work. “Don’t get socialized into one paradigm or one way of looking at the world or one school of thought; be improvisational enough to have confidence in yourself,” West said.
Assistant News Editor
AARON GRUEN / THE TUFTS DAILY
Dr. Cornel West speaks at Tufts on Feb. 3. “Don’t participate in the oligarchy of the quick and read only the people who are alive and breathing. … [Read] the great voices of the dead, those that wrestled with the same kinds of challenges of what it means to be human.” Following West’s speech, faculty and students presented on different interpretations of dystopia, from video games to film. Salomé Albright, a junior, spoke on a dystopian depiction of adolescence in the graphic novel “Black Hole” (1995). “It had this beautiful blend of existentialism and intimacy that I thought really captured the essence of adolescence,”
Albright said in an interview with the Daily. After focusing on femme theory and anti-colonial work in her studies, Albright decided she wanted “an opportunity to talk about something that was really just a fun read for me.” During her speech, Albright drew parallels between adolescence and dystopian tropes, including “transition, sexual desire, fear, peer and parental isolation, shame and displacement.” Milo Shields, a senior, explored dystopian video games, arguing that they are uniquely suited to present surreal stories. see DYSTOPIA, page 2
Three Tufts students were presented with the MLK Student Voices Award at this year’s annual Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration. Andrew Harris, who submitted photography; Marsha Germain, who submitted poetry; and Ayomide Oloyede, who submitted a spoken poem, received this year’s award. Applicants were asked to respond to the question, “What does love and creativity look like for you in the service of action for love and justice?” Winners were chosen based on their piece’s organization, originality, creativity, clarity and connection to this year’s theme. The award committee sought to lift up student voices through works including essays, poems, songs, art, spoken word and other kinds of performances. University Chaplain Rev. Elyse Nelson Winger described the composition of the selection committee. “Members of the MLK Day of Celebration committee, composed of staff from the University
Chaplaincy, the Africana Center, Tisch College for Civic Life, and the GLADC, were on the selection committee,” Nelson Winger wrote in an email to the Daily. Nelson Winger explained that the prompt for this year’s student voices award was inspired by the MLK Day of Celebration theme, “We Don’t Have Much Time: Raising Consciousness and Building the Future Now.” Nelson Winger wrote that the theme originated from an excerpt from King’s book “The Trumpet of Conscience,” which stated, “But we do not have much time. The revolutionary spirit is already world-wide. If the anger of the peoples of the world at the injustice of things is to be channeled into a revolution of love and creativity, we must begin now to work, urgently, with all peoples to shape a new world.” She added that this year’s winners stood out for their compelling creative work. “Each winner submitted beautiful and powerful work as a response to our prompt,” Nelson see MLK, page 3
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