The Tufts Daily

12/10/2025

LETTER | As our time on The Tufts Daily Managing Board comes to a close, we want to thank you for joining us for a semester of engaging reporting and nuanced conversation. Throughout the past six months, you’ve enabled us to thrive as a student publication and call attention to the stories that matter most.

Over the summer, we co-published an op-ed with Vanity Fair written by Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk, highlighting her experiences in Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention. We have witnessed firsthand students’ fears of the potential consequences of expressing their opinions on campus, and remain committed to upholding student voices in the face of heightened challenges to free speech.

The 92nd Managing Board writes. Link in bio for more.

12/09/2025

INVESTIGATIVE | Over the last decade, negotiations between Tufts University and labor unions have degraded. Multiple unions described challenging and exhausting negotiations, citing the university’s uncooperativeness and staunch resistance to pay increases as driving forces behind the recent growth in collective action. Alternatively, the university expressed that its negotiation policies have been grounded in fiscally-responsible decision-making and an earnest desire to reach agreements. The university reports that it continues to view its union relationships as productive and successful.

Seven unions currently have contracts with the university: resident assistants, dining workers, teaching professors (formerly full-time lecturers), part-time lecturers, the police association, facility workers and Ph.D. students at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Engineering. In addition, professors of the practice at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts have voted to form a union and are 18 months into contract negotiations.

In the initial stages of union formation, workers have struggled with the university.

Gus Gladstein reports. Link in bio for more.

12/08/2025

NEWS | U.S. District Court Judge Denise J. Casper granted Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk’s motion for a preliminary injunction Monday afternoon, ordering the government to immediately reinstate her Student and Exchange Visitor Information System record retroactive to the date it was terminated — March 25.

The termination of a SEVIS record causes the loss of work authorization and an inability to re-enter the United States. Additionally, it means that the government could begin counting days the individual remains in the country as “unlawful presence,” which can lead to further re-entry bans.

Casper ruled that because the terminated record barred Öztürk from paid research roles and key aspects of her doctoral training, the harm is considered irreparable, a necessary element for a court to grant a preliminary injunction. Öztürk is also at risk of additional immigration consequences tied to gaps in her SEVIS status, according to Casper.

“She continues to lose out on paid on-campus employment in which she would otherwise be engaged … [and is] losing out on a unique opportunity to work with her advisor on a project that would further her doctoral training and professional development,” Casper wrote in her ruling.

Julian Glickman reports. Link in bio for more.

12/08/2025

SCIENCE | Recently, a neuroimaging study funded by the European Research Council introduced “NextBrain,” a three-dimensional, probabilistic, high-resolution brain atlas that maps the brain into 333 regions to assist with MRI analysis, powered by artificial intelligence. In neuroimaging, a brain atlas functions like a standardized coordinate system for the brain structure: It allows researchers and medical professionals to label and analyze the same anatomical regions across different brains so that results can be compared “in a common coordinate frame.”

Brain atlases can be used to analyze MRI scans of patients: While MRIs cannot capture high-resolution cellular information, brain atlases provide cellular data for comparison. Previous atlases relied primarily on either histology or MRI scans; NextBrain combined both to create a higher-resolution model. Histology involves dividing ex vivo (unalive) human brains into small pieces and staining them to reveal their cellular architecture. This process allows researchers to analyze tens of thousands of pieces in detail. On the other hand, MRI scans can be performed on living patients but lack the resolution to detect certain subregions crucial for early disease diagnosis or research. By connecting both approaches using Bayesian segmentation and machine-learning algorithms, researchers attained significantly higher accuracy. Earlier brain atlases typically mapped one or several brain regions without detailed labels. NextBrain changed this by identifying and labeling 333 “regions of interest” in the brain.

Hande Naz Kavas writes. Link in bio for more.

NextBrain released an open-to-the-public brain atlas that outperforms previous models in terms of resolution and region-of-interest mapping.

12/08/2025

SPORTS | No. 3 Tufts faced off against No. 2 Emory in their fourth NCAA semifinals appearance on Thursday. Despite a gritty performance and dominating possession, the Jumbos fell 3–0, and their season came to an end.

Emory’s offense wasted no time, drawing a foul in the final third in the second minute. They sent in a quality ball and headed it just wide. Jumbos junior goalkeeper Gigi Edwards tipped the ball, however, and the Eagles were awarded a corner kick. The Jumbos survived multiple crosses, putting the ball out for another Eagles corner. This time, the Eagles opted to go short. They then crossed the ball in and headed it down, and sophomore forward Mikayla Camp shot it into the corner, just out of Edwards’ reach. Emory was up 1–0 just three minutes into the match.

“I think the momentum at the start of the game and the big stage challenged us. [It] took us a second to settle in as a team,” Edwards wrote in a message to the Daily.

Morgan Baudler writes.

No. 3 Tufts faced off against No. 2 Emory in their fourth NCAA semifinals appearance on Thursday. Despite a gritty performance and dominating possession, the Jumbos fell 3–0, and their season came to an end.

12/08/2025

NEWS | Concerned Tufts staff members have distributed a petition in conjunction with Tufts Labor Coalition demanding that no workers be laid off as part of Tufts’ Operating Model Transformation, an initiative restructuring the university’s administrative functions.

Junior Ella Perin, a student organizing member of TLC, said the purpose of the petition is to show “the administration that [potential layoffs are] not a popular decision.” She emphasized that all members of the Tufts community should be concerned about layoffs, noting that the staff’s “working conditions are [students’] living and learning conditions.”

Theo Weller writes.

Concerned Tufts staff members have distributed a petition in conjunction with Tufts Labor Coalition demanding that no workers be laid off as part of Tufts’ Operating Model Transformation, an initiative restructuring the university’s administrative functions.

12/05/2025

OP-ED | In sixth grade, my middle school scheduled its first dance for a Friday night during Sukkot. My family kept Shabbat and would spend the evening in our Sukkah, twin reasons why I couldn’t realize the quintessential teenage dream of swaying to top-40 beats in the cafeteria, chaperoned by history and Spanish teachers.

My mom suggested I invite another friend who couldn’t attend, a Muslim girl whose family observed the Jumma, or day of prayer, on Friday, to dinner in the Sukkah. Overcoming some middle-school trepidation, I invited her over — she’d become one of my closest friends.

We were similar in our differences, unable to attend Friday night dances or dispel all the assumptions our classmates might make. Our experience at our little Cary, North Carolina middle school mirrored a larger truth at the heart of the American experience: Jewish and Muslim safety and success — like those of all minority communities — are tightly bound together.

The Anti-Defamation League has lost sight of this lesson. In the wake of Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York City, the ADL announced a ‘Mamdani Monitor’ dedicated to cataloguing the mayor-elect’s every move. No such monitor exists for an American president who has asserted Jewish dual loyalty, staffed his administration with avowed anti-semites, described violent white supremacists as “very fine people” and pardoned convicted felons who stormed the capital clad in N**i regalia.

Meirav Solomon writes. Link in bio for more.

12/05/2025

ARTS | In Boston’s Symphony Hall, beyond the sprawl of hallways and swinging double doors, there lies a room — the Rabb Room — where conversations take place under the hum of quiet classical music.

On Nov. 21, a group of Tufts students, led by their Music and Nature professor Jeremy Eichler, had the opportunity to spend their afternoon there, speaking to the composer of the afternoon performance’s piece before enjoying the composition itself in the grand performance hall.

The young English composer, Grace-Evangeline Mason, discussed her 12-minute piece entitled “The Imagined Forest,” which was about to be performed by the Boston Symphony Orchestra. Describing her intentions for the piece, Mason emphasized the importance of audience interpretation.

“It’s meant to be the forest of your own imagination. I don’t want to prescribe to you, kind of, what you should be imagining,” she said.

Ellora Onion-De and Sam Stearns report. Link in bio for more.

12/05/2025

FEATURES | As a California native, I made the bold — and perhaps regrettable — decision to apply to colleges somewhere with seasons. My idealistic 17-year-old self had a vision: a fall of cable-knit sweaters and orange leaves crunching beneath my feet like in “Gilmore Girls” (2000–07), and magical snow blanketing my historic college town in the winter.

Oh, how naive I was.

The seasons, while I’ll admit were briefly gorgeous, kicked my butt. I wish that was a metaphor. It was early November of my first year at Tufts. The red and orange leaves had fallen cinematically on the ancient brick paths of Boston — very “Gilmore Girls” — though Rory failed to warn me how slippery they’d be underneath my bike tires as I made a sharp turn. My cheek hit the ground faster than I could recall the physics of inertia. I showed up to class clutching a fractured wrist, with leaf pieces dangling from my leggings and hair. The seasons found a way to humble me before winter even began.

Sera Kwon writes. Link in bio for more.

12/05/2025

NEWS | On Thursday, the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts heard arguments on a motion for a preliminary injunction that seeks to require the government to reinstate Tufts graduate student Rümeysa Öztürk’s Student and Exchange Visitor Information System record. U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper did not issue a ruling, but committed to making a prompt decision.

Öztürk’s F-1 student visa was revoked days before her arrest on March 25. Her SEVIS record, the file that monitors the legal status of non-citizens studying in the U.S., was terminated on the day of her arrest.

Anika Parr reports. Link in bio for more.

12/04/2025

MAGAZINE | This semester has gotten me all tangled up in time. The phantom of graduation lurks ever closer, and bright-eyed first-years remind me just how much time has passed since I first stepped foot on a college campus. I want to freeze these slippery days like an image to film — to create some barricade between me and the unrelenting watershed of change.

When I first arrived on this campus, five semesters ago as a sophomore, Tufts was teetering on a precipice of change. University President Sunil Kumar’s administration was freshly minted, life was finally coming to a new normal after the COVID-19 pandemic and the school was about to plunge into semesters of encampments and protests. My next three years blurred into a haze of administrative emails, midterms, helicopters flying overhead, finals, construction sites melting into refurbished buildings and a packed protest in Powderhouse Park.

Now, as the newest crop of students builds lifelong friendships, attends its first parties and dines at a freshly blue (!) Dewick, I’ve begun to wonder what this current era of Tufts feels like for them. What kind of launchpad will they have for their college journeys? What’s it like to attend college after a chilling effect has set in on student speech; after diversity, equity and inclusion has died rather than still in the midst of an unceremonious collapse; and now that we’re more concerned with “No Kings” than COVID-19?

Liam Chalfonte writes. Link in bio for more.