On March 10th, Tufts announced they were canceling on-campus classes and that every student had to move out by Monday. I had a ticket back to Ecuador for Tuesday; I was going home for spring break. I figured I had time to pack everything up from my on campus house and to fly back home.
Category: Voices
As my friends and I gathered around ceviche and pisco sours, we cheered to our week long abroad experience. Peruvian universities start in March, so my study abroad program began later than most. I watched my friends abroad in Italy return home even before I arrived in Peru. During my first few days in Lima,
I am 13 years old, and I walk home with fear as I experience my first brushes with cat-calling on the streets of India. I can’t understand why my mom scolds me for walking around alone, as if anything that was to happen to me would be my fault. My complaints about her not treating
As we left the car a single thought kept coming up again: “Do you really need to go inside?” I knew the answer was no, but my mom had missed our shopping excursions that we so frequently used to go on together. I tried to calm myself, thinking “Cases have been relatively low. We are
I love words. I like how they taste, how you can roll them around in your mouth or snap them between your teeth or melt them on your tongue when you write. I can feel them, the outline of them and the shape; I can feel their weight and their give. I know their nooks
Walking into the bright orange-walled NOLOP makerspace, you’d expect to find mostly mechanical engineers making chairs (or whatever it is that mechanical engineers do). However, as soon as I stepped in, I realized that the makers in this space hail from a variety of majors, from studio art kids making sculptures to a sociology major
The shorts fit terribly, but they would have to do. I stuffed my white blouse into my too-tight waistband and forced the clasp shut. The itchy, navy cardigan restricted my arms if I ever needed to raise them above my head, and the gold and red crest was always visible from across the room. My
Content warning: sexual violence, victim-blaming language Note: This is a follow-up to a Tufts Daily op-ed published in December 2019, which can be read at bit.ly/tiertown. I’ve written before about my experiences with sexual violence in Tufts student-activism, focusing on how I was raped in Tier Town. But activists have done more harm than just
Step One: Fill the Kettle Gently flowing upwards, with no sense of direction, toward the light of the world above, I slowly search. A whistle sings. The seeping steam prevents me from seeing myself and the passage ahead, but I persist. Bursting out of the pressure-filled kettle, I strive to control my identity. Boiling in
Content warning: Descriptions of an anxiety disorder By March of my first year at Tufts, I was convinced I had sustained a total of 12 concussions and at least a little bit of irreversible brain damage. I had gotten the first concussion in early November when I sat up in the middle of the night
“Why are you wearing flowers?” my mother asks in Urdu. I freeze, kicking myself for not de-gaying my appearance before visiting her at work. “And is that henna? What’s with all of this?” Before I give her even one more second to notice, I thrust my wrists under the desk and twist off both of
Dear members of the Tufts community, About a month ago, we left a little note for you in the Campus Center gender-neutral bathroom. We know you saw it, but just for a little refresher, it said: “If you only use this bathroom to shit in private, don’t use this bathroom.” In response to this,