The Tufts University school mascot is Jumbo the elephant, in honor of a major donation from circus owner P.T. Barnum in 1882. While Barnum gave the skeleton of the animal to the American Museum of Natural History, the stuffed remains of Jumbo were put on display in the basement of Barnum Hall until the building burned down in 1974. The alleged ashes of Jumbo currently reside in a peanut butter jar in the athletic director's office. A large plaster-statue elephant, Jumbo II, now sits on the academic quad. The Tufts mascot is the only school mascot listed in Webster's dictionary.[1]
The school colors of Tufts University are brown and blue. The shade of brown is generally a chocolate brown, and the blue is variously described as between light and middle blue, or dusty sky blue. Though this color combination was chosen by the student body in 1876, the colors were not made officially the colors of Tufts University until 1960, when the Trustees voted on the matter.
The Tufts Community Union funds a number of undergraduate student groups, and some 150 are recognized by the university. Prominent groups include the Beelzebubs, Shir Appeal, B.E.A.T.s, Tufts Dance Collective, and the Amalgamates. The Leonard Carmichael Society, an umbrella organization for community and public service projects, is the largest student group at Tufts, comprising a volunteer corps of over 1,000 and a staff of eighty-five.
In The Princeton Review's 2010–2011 "Best 363 Colleges," Tufts was ranked #14 for the happiest students and Tufts' study abroad program was ranked #3 in the country.[2][3] The Princeton Review has since 2005 listed Tufts in its "Best Campus Food" category, ranking it as high as second.[4][5][6] Additionally, The Advocate ranks Tufts as one of the top 20 gay-friendly campuses.[7]
In 2009, the school banned sexual activity in dorm rooms when a roommate is present. The university may have been the first in the nation to be explicit about this type of conduct.[8]
Contents |
A fixture on the Medford campus is a replica of a cannon taken from the deck of the USS Constitution, donated to the university by the city of Medford in 1956.[9] Since 1977, it has been used by student groups and individual students who paint advertisements, political statements, birthday greetings, and other messages on the cannon under the cover of night. Painting the cannon is a competitive activity; students must guard their handiwork or risk of having their message painted over by a rival group before dawn.[10]
The Naked Quad Run was originated by residents of West Hall and was originally known as the "West Hall Naked Quad Run". Though the exact date of its origin remains unknown, it was revived and popularized by West Hall residents in the early 1990s.
Dorm residents, such as "Quad Man", would warm up the gathering crowd below by stripping on the fire escape to loud music blasting from the upper floor windows. Once the dorm residents were themselves sufficiently 'warmed up' with alcohol, they would gather in the basement of the dorm, undress as a group, and then exit from the rear of the building, many with phone numbers painted on their back or buttocks.
The Naked Quad Run takes place just before fall finals, in December, and attracts hundreds of students to unwind by stripping and running a circuit around the Res Quad. Most students run naked, but some wear costumes such as capes or shrink wrap.
On March 14th, 2011, President Larry Bacow announced that the Tufts Quad Run had been banned for the upcoming year due to concerns about alcohol consumption.
Initially held in 1980, a concert known as Spring Fling takes place in the spring semester immediately before final exams on the President's Lawn. Spring Fling acts have included the following[11] (in reverse order of appearance, i.e. the headliner is listed first):
The night before Spring Fling, the Tuftonia's Day fireworks take place on the Rez Quad.
The Tufts Mountain Club "pumpkins" the campus on the night before Halloween, placing pumpkins in prominent and increasingly absurd locations such as atop buildings and statues. Although the ritual is over 75 years old, the TMC has never officially taken credit for it. In 1993, the infamous West Hall Halloween Party got a bit out of control and campus police showed up to shut it down, with at least one pumpkin crashing to the ground near an officer.
Tufts is a member of the Division III National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) and the New England Small College Athletic Conference (NESCAC), which includes Amherst, Bates, Bowdoin, Colby, Connecticut College, Hamilton, Middlebury, Trinity, Williams, and Wesleyan. Tufts does not offer athletic scholarships. Men's and women's squash and coed and women's sailing are the only Division I sports at the school. The sailing team won the 2001 Intercollegiate Sailing Association (ICSA) Dinghy National Championship and won more championships in the 1990s than any other team. Men's Squash maintains a top 20 Division I national ranking.[12] Tufts University won its first NCAA-sanctioned national team championship when the men's lacrosse team defeated Salisbury in the 2010 Division III men's lacrosse final.[13]
The Tufts football program is one of the oldest in the country. The 1,000th game in team history was played during the 2006 season. Historians point to a Tufts versus Harvard game in 1875 as the first game of college football between using American football rules.[14][15] The team plays at the Ellis Oval, located on the southwest corner of the campus.
In 1943, the Boston Red Sox used the Tufts athletic facilities during spring training due to gasoline rationing limiting the team's travel.[16]
Tufts was ranked amongst the top 10 universities in the nation according to the 2008 NCSA Collegiate Power Rankings. The NCSA calculates the rankings for each college/university at the NCAA Division I, II and III levels by averaging the U.S. Sports Academy Directors' Cup ranking, the NCAA student-athlete graduation rate of each college/university and the U.S. News & World Report rankings.[17]
Most campus publications and media are funded through the Student Activities Fee distributed by the Tufts Community Union Senate. The most notable exception to this is the Tufts Daily which is entirely independent of the Senate and is published through advertising revenue. There is a wide cross section of groups producing media on campus, both popular, electronic, and academic. All groups under the Senate are represented by the Media Advocacy Board at Tufts University, which provides a media laboratory for production of print publications.[18] Groups are arranged in order of establishment under their respective categories.