The Tufts Daily THE
INDEPENDENT
STUDENT
NEWSPAPER
OF
TUFTS
UNIVERSITY
E S T. 1 9 8 0 Medford/Somerville, Mass.
Tuesday, September 3, 2024
VOLUME LXXXVIII, ISSUE 2
UNIVERSITY
UNIVERSITY
Tufts sees drop in racial diversity for Carpenters union protests Class of 2028 after affirmative action ban against wage theft as firstyear students check in Estelle Anderson
Executive News Editor
Tufts reported a decline in the racial diversity of its incoming first-year class, who represent the first wave of students to be admitted after the Supreme Court’s ruling last year to overturn racebased affirmative action in college admissions. 44% of the Class of 2028 identify as students of color, down from 50% last year. The announcement comes as several other universities, including the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Amherst College,
have revealed similar declines in the diversity of their incoming class — at MIT, the percentage of incoming Black students dropped from 15% to just 5%. With data only beginning to trickle in from universities across the country, it remains unclear how much of this drop in diversity is tied to the court’s affirmative action ban versus other factors in the admissions process, such as a decrease in the number of students of color applying to certain schools. But Tufts’ data provides one of the nation’s earliest indications that the court’s decision has changed
the racial composition of college campuses. Breaking down the data Black students experienced the heaviest drop in their share of the first-year class, dipping from 7.3% of the Class of 2027 to just 4.7% of the incoming class. Nearly all other racial and ethnic groups on campus experienced declines, with Asian American students dropping to 19.7% from an earlier 20.3% and multiracial students dropping from 11.4% to 8.0%. According to Tufts, there was also a decrease in the enrollment of see DIVERSITY, page 3
Aaron Gruen
Executive Investigative Editor
Workers claiming wage theft protested outside the Joyce Cummings Center on Aug. 23 and 28, as incoming first-year students arrived on campus. Throughout the demonstrations, organized by the North Atlantic States Regional Council of Carpenters, protesters handed out flyers accusing Tufts of hiring contractors who exploit construction workers at Eaton Hall, Blakely Hall and Halligan Hall.
During the demonstrations, workers held signs reading “Stop Wage Theft” while others drove trucks with the attached signs around the Cummings Center. One truck carried a large inflatable rat as a symbol of protest against unfair practices by employers, especially ones using nonunion labor.
see UNION, page 2
LOCAL
Somerville City Council endorses November ballot question legalizing psychedelic-assisted therapy in Massachusetts Nicholas Prather
Deputy News Editor
The Somerville City Council passed a resolution on July 11 to endorse the “Natural Psychedelic Substances Act,” an upcoming proposition on the November ballot that would legalize the usage of psychedelics in Massachusetts. If enough voters vote “yes” to the act, which will appear as Question 4 on their ballots, it would allow adults 21 and older to legally grow, possess and use specific amounts of psychedelics that have been shown to have therapeutic benefits for certain mental health conditions. In recent years, Somerville has emerged as a leader in the fight to legalize psychedelics in Massachusetts, voting unanimously in January 2021 to decriminalize entheogenic plants and fungi. The city is the first in Massachusetts to endorse the “Natural Psychedelic Substances Act,” introduced to the council by 5 FEATURES
Professor ponders path to present
Councilor Willie Burnley Jr. The Cambridge City Council followed suit on Aug. 5. The act intends to decouple psychedelics from the black market and provide safe and supervised access with appropriate regulation and taxation. Under the measure, a regulated framework would allow the supervised use of psychedelics at licensed therapy facilities throughout the state. While the bill does not allow for retail shops or storefronts that sell psychedelics — meaning that individuals cannot take the products home — it removes criminal penalties for limited personal use by adults 21 and older. Proponents of the measure argue that psychedelic therapy contains tremendous potential for those dealing with conditions including depression, anxiety, OCD, PTSD, addiction and cluster headaches. “Using psilocybin was life-changing for me and allowed me to take control of my life from 7 ARTS & POP CULTURE
Birth of brat Edit illaborio harit re eium
mental illness,” Graham Moore, educational outreach director for Massachusetts for Mental Health Options, explained. Massachusetts for Mental Health Options is responsible for leading the “Yes on 4” campaign that collected enough signatures to put Question 4 on the November ballot. Jamie Morey, the Community Engagement Director for MMHO and the founder of grassroots advocacy group Parents for Plant Medicine, shared her sentiments on the power of psychedelics, particularly her experience with psilocybin, a compound found in certain species of mushrooms. “It was profound in a way that’s hard to describe in words,” Morey said. “It feels like a factory reset or 20 years of therapy in a day.” While there is much anecdotal evidence around the effectiveness of psychedelics in treating mental health, concrete research has lagged behind as a result of the drugs’ Schedule I classification. “We know which receptors
VIA WIKIMEDIA COMMONS
Somerville City Hall is pictured on March 12, 2012. these drugs bind to. We know some limited information about how they affect metabolism of different parts of the brain, but we’re really at a very preliminary understanding of how they actually work,” said Mason Marks, a visiting law professor at Harvard Law School who
11 OPINION
16 SPORTS
Letter from the Editor in Chief
We did it, Joe
leads the Project on Psychedelics Law and Regulation at Harvard’s Petrie-Flom Center. “But I do think that, after a while, you read so many reports, you hear so many stories from people, you do think, “Okay, there’s something to this.” see PSYCHEDELICS, page 2 News Features Arts & Pop Culture Science Fun & Games Opinion Sports
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