South Africa is a country that has been devastated by the spread of HIV. This epidemic, especially rampant in the Black community, only underscores the existing hardship and trauma that Africans have endured in South Africa for many years. Currently, the country is taking a step in the right direction to fight the HIV/AIDS battle due to the most unlikely source: the porn industry.

Think of a heroin addict—pale, gaunt, strung out. This may be the stereotype, but it by no means the rule. As prescription opiates become heavily prescribed to those suffering from terminal illnesses, more and more former cancer patients are turning to street drugs like heroin to find the same high.

Just since the beginning of September, six teenage boys have committed suicide because of harassment they endured for being gay. Seth Walsh, Billy Lucas, Raymond Chase, Asher Brown, and Cody Barker all gained similar notoriety to Tyler, a tragic notoriety that could have been prevented.

As newspapers and magazines move into an exclusively online world, blogs are becoming an easy way to reach large audiences. Blogs provide a refreshing dose of uncensored thoughts, as opposed to the highly edited content of various news sources. Whether they deal with politics, fashion, or travel, blogs offer organically honest opinions on a wide array of topics.

For many at Tufts, intramural sports offer the opportunity to compete in various athletic ventures without sacrificing the fun of the game. But this less competitive, arguably more enjoyable, athletic forum is facing significant changes as a result of a transformation underway in Tufts athletics.

With the recent speculations of Tufts’ campus safety in the news, one can’t help but wonder if Tufts’ small security breaches point to a much larger safety issue on campus.

There is an inescapable and truly awesome sense of change in the future of our public schools, a transformation catalyzed by the fresh ideas of twenty-somethings

A garden makes its own social center where we learn easily from one another how good food can taste, how sweet sunshine can be when captured in vibrant produce.

Graffiti has long been considered an underground art. In a sense, it’s vandalism. Graffiti artists don’t pay fees to use these walls as canvases, nor is there a thank-you note for building tenants the morning after. But what if there was someone who OK’d this art and even paid for it? What if your sponsor was the government? In an attempt to exert itself, Hugo Chavez’s government in Venezuela partnered with brigades of Caracas’ graffiti artists to embellish Caracas with images that praise Chavez’s Bolivarian regime. Images range from Caravaggio’s David holding the severed head of Hillary Clinton to a depiction of Simon Bolivar crushing a suited demon bearing a grenade and chains.

Teach for America is an organization that employs recent college graduates as teachers in some of the most under-resourced schools in the country—typically within low-income urban and rural communities. It is a very popular option for college graduates, particularly at Tufts, where eight percent of graduating seniors applied this year. However, it is placing relatively undertrained and inexperienced teachers in already underprivileged, low-income classes. Some wonder whether TFA is doing more harm than help.

Our morning cup of coffee hardly resembles the plant it comes from; a coffee bean is picked, skinned, dried, roasted, and ground to unrecognizable dust before it ever reaches Tower Café. As college coffee consumers, we can best support natural coffee growers by making sure our coffee is shade-grown.