The Tufts Daily THE
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E S T. 1 9 8 0 Medford/Somerville, Mass.
Thursday, March 14, 2024
VOLUME LXXXVII, ISSUE 8
UNIVERSITY
Engineers will now register for classes side by side with Arts and Sciences students Shannon Murphy Local News Editor
Originally published March 13. On Monday, Tufts announced a pilot program involving new changes to the registration process for undergraduate students. Engineering students will now register two days in advance for School of Engineering and select Arts and Sciences courses required for their degree progress — mostly those under the math, chemistry, biology and physics and astronomy departments — but will register for other classes simultaneously with Arts and Sciences students in their class year at randomly assigned times. Students pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts and those enrolled in a combined degree program will register on the same day as their class cohort, but at the earliest registration time available. This marks a shift from the previous registration process, in which all engineering and School of Museum of Fine Arts combined-degree students registered for all classes one day prior to Arts and Sciences stu-
dents of any class year. “A significant increase in interest in STEM disciplines at Tufts has occurred at a rate that out-paced the growth of introductory STEM courses at Tufts,” Chris Swan, dean of undergraduate education and an engineering professor, wrote in an email to the Daily. “This has contributed to a bottleneck for students interested in STEM, both in SOE as well as A&S. The new registration process seeks to alleviate the bottleneck, although we recognize that this is only part of the solution.” An email sent to undergraduate students on Monday said that the registration changes “will address student and faculty concerns with the existing model and increase equity in access to courses across all three undergraduate populations, while preserving priority access for SOE and SMFA students for those courses essential to their degree progress.” According to Samuel Thomas, professor and dean of academic affairs at the School of Arts and Sciences, the revised process was intended to make registration more
equitable for all Arts and Sciences and Engineering undergraduate students and address the challenges unique to each degree program. “One of the primary drivers of this pilot has been to reduce the inequities between students in different schools to accessing courses, while recognizing the differences in flexibility that students have in navigating the different curricula,” Thomas wrote in an email to the Daily. “Students in the School of Engineering have a much more rigid curricular plan and students in the School of the Museum of Fine Arts face logistical difficulties due to commuting to the Fenway and studio schedules, which requires special consideration.” Thomas also mentioned that student feedback has been the driving force behind these changes, exemplified through discussions between the administration and the Tufts Community Union Senate. “For a number of years, we have heard from students about dissatisfaction with the scale of the reg-
NATALIE BROWNSELL
The Science and Engineering Complex is pictured on Oct. 4, 2022. istration priority that some groups of students have had over others and these changes are inspired by that feedback,” he said. Junior Nessren Ourdyl, education committee chair of the TCU Senate, explained the Senate’s role in providing student insight into the process. “[The administrators] proposed what [the changes] would look like and we kind of gave initial reactions and questions that we had,” Ourdyl said. “I
Federalist Society panel discusses Trump’s criminal indictments
Somerville municipal employees continue fight for fair wages Grayton Goldsmith Staff Writer
Lang Law
Staff Writer
COURTESY KERRY O’DONNELL
Workers in the Somerville Municipal Employees Association are pictured. Highway Division, about this contract. “What happened is that we, as the union, never really recovered [our lost wages] from the financial crisis in 2008,” he said.
Halloran is referring to the worldwide Great Recession of the late 2000s. Similar to the economic hardship brought see WAGES, page 3
The Tufts Federalist Society hosted a panel about the criminal indictments against former United States President Donald Trump on March 1 in the Joyce Cummings Center. The panel consisted of Jeffery Cohen, associate professor of the practice at Boston College Law School; Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute, a conservative think tank; and the moderator, Tufts’ own Eitan Hersh, an associate professor of political science and civic studies. The panel opened with compliments to the Federalist Society from Hersh, who stated his goals for the event. “I hope we can create the vibe of open discourse,” Hersh said. The beginning of the event served to set expectations.
4 FEATURES
6 ARTS & POP CULTURE
9 OPINION
12 SPORTS
Coordinators provide Pre-O preview
It pays to see ‘Cost of Living’
Editorial: Tufts’ gym is running out of room
Men’s basketball suffers trinity of losses to Trinity
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see REGISTRATION, page 2
UNIVERSITY
LOCAL
Established in 1963, the Somerville Municipal Employees Association has since grown to represent more than 260 municipal workers, with bargaining units that cover everything from the Department of Public Works to the library department to school nurses. For more than 20 months, however, these vital city workers, prohibited by Massachusetts law from going on strike, have been working without a contract. Under the previous contract, which expired in June 2022, union workers received incremental wage increases of 1–2%, roughly matching the rate of inflation. The last of such raises took effect in summer of 2021. The Daily spoke to Ed Halloran, president of the SMEA and employee of the Department of Public Works’
think that helped smooth out the presentation process of how this would be communicated. We also just asked some clarifying questions that we had as students. They were really just looking for feedback.” Ourdyl believes that care was put into these changes and has confidence that the changes will have an overall positive impact on students.
Shapiro clarified that the panel would only discuss criminal indictments against the former president and that the civil suit from E. Jean Carroll against Trump and the New York State civil fraud suit were not relevant to the panel. Shapiro then summarized the four current indictments against Trump. The first indictment alleges that Trump made false payments to his then-lawyer, Michael Cohen, as hush money about an affair he had with Stephanie Clifford, an adult film actress, also known by her pseudonym Stormy Daniels. The second indictment alleges that Trump partook in a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 presidential election results in Georgia. In his summary of this case, Shapiro commented on the recent controsee TRUMP, page 3 News Features Arts & Pop Culture Fun & Games Opinion Sports
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