Whether it’s to summarize a jargon-heavy excerpt for class or to outline reasoning in an argumentative essay, there exists an unspoken shame in using AI among those who consider themselves academics. This is understandable. The fundamental pursuits of academic life, such as intellectual freedom and truth, seem diametrically opposed to the ends of the tech industry and their AI products: growth for the sake of growth. However, the question at hand is not whether AI is an intrinsic good for humanity, but rather a discussion of whether it should be adopted as a learning tool by Tufts. Refusing
I will admit it. When a tedious assignment stands between me and bedtime, I feel the temptation to open up ClaudeAI. It is so easy to let AI summarize everything I need to know in a few succinct bullet points filled with words like “delve” and “streamline.” Hours of work could be condensed into minutes. AI is the epitome of convenience, and that is precisely the reason it does not belong in higher education. And yes, I could harp on the environmental implications of AI, but I will avoid this for two reasons. First, such implications are difficult to pinpoint
At Tufts, students’ exposure to undergraduate teaching assistants (TAs) varies greatly by department. Computer science students will be very familiar with office hours held by their fellow undergraduates, while in the math department, all official teaching assistant roles are reserved for Ph.D. students. In the political science department, there has been a sharp turn away from undergraduates TA-ing; when I took Western Political Thought II in the spring of 2024, all four TAs were undergraduates, while only a single TA was an undergraduate in Western Political Thought I last fall. I have served as a teaching assistant and
How does one become a TA? This is a question I have often asked myself, wondering about the qualifications—both on paper and in terms of character—necessary to get the position. It is clear that a Teaching Assistant (TA) must have some sort of familiarity with the class material, and they must have some connection to the course professor. Above all, a TA must possess a genuine desire to help their students—or so you would think. It is common to hear about a TA who simply does not care. They are there to build their résumé, and they are there for
I love my small town. I love walking along its one main street and recognizing every other face I see. Above all else, I love the forced connection that a tight-knit community brings. Because of this, even though my major is International Relations, I know I’m moving back to my hometown. That being said, all anyone wanted as a high schooler in my town was to get out. We were two and a half hours outside of a major city yet trapped in a dinky town with a population less than 2,500, a median age of 66, and
Growing up in a small town in the American South, one topic of conversation was a constant amongst my peers: growing up and moving to the big city. My friends and I would go on about the ignorance of the adults around us and how slowly life moved. So, when I was 14, I did it—I left North Carolina for boarding school in New England. It was everything I had ever dreamed of, going to class with other kids from all over the country and the world. I made best friends from Hong Kong, San Francisco, Montana, you name it.
On Wednesday September 10th, 2025, at 12:23 pm on the Utah Valley University campus, Charlie James Kirk was shot and killed during his American Comeback Tour, a debate series across college campuses. Kirk was notorious for his right-wing beliefs, most of which he propagated through social media, podcasts, and YouTube channels such as Jubilee. Since his death, there has been massive “meme-ificiation” of Kirk, his platform, his sayings, and his death. The phrases “highkirkenuenly” and “lowkirkenuenly” can still be heard and seen in memes today; the songs “Charlie Charlie Kirky” and “We Are Charlie Kirk” were used in brainrot memes
Allegations of pedophilia and sexual abuse, discussions of presidential fitness, even political assassinations–issues that warrant sober debate–now circulate the internet primarily as memes. Somewhere beneath the edits, deepfakes, and reaction GIFs lies an actual, nuanced political story, but it’s almost impossible to find. Career-ending scandals are reduced to viral punchlines and, more than anything, politics has been reduced to entertainment. It’s a natural development; social media algorithms reward engagement, and more people want to engage for a few seconds with a funny image than to watch an hour-long speech, or read a complex article from a political commentator. The meme-ification
To adequately answer the question “Is woke dead?,” it should first be asked, “What was woke?” Maybe more important, “Was it ever alive?” As a Gen Zer, I’m observing the cadaver, my pathologist’s scalpel in hand. I wasn’t there, in 1930, when the Pittsburgh Courier proclaimed “The Negro is Woke” in response to the Jim Crow-era intellectual awakening; I didn’t witness the moment when, in 1938, Lead Belly told Black southerners to “stay woke” in Alabama after the Scottsboro Boys trial; and I never saw Marcus Garvey and the Back-to-Africa movement. Nor did I reinterpret Erykah Badu’s 2008 song “Master
When Friedrich Nietzsche wrote, “God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him,” he didn’t mean that God had literally perished. He meant that society’s turn away from Christianity as the great moral authority left a vacuum where a shared value system had once lived. Without a creator of meaning, we were headed for a nihilist fate, unless we decided on a moral code for ourselves. At Tufts, Woke occupies that vacuum. At Tufts, Woke is God. Not in the sense that everyone believes in it with equal fervor and not in the sense that it’s beyond critique,