Where You Partly Cloudy Read It First 56/35 THE TUFTS DAILY Est. 1980 VOLUME LXI, NUMBER 52 THURSDAY, APRIL 21, 2011 TUFTSDAILY.COM Student council to bring back engineering society to the Hill BY VICTORIA MESSURI undergraduate program accredited by Daily Staff Writer the national Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology or licensed The Engineering Student Council (ESC) professional engineers. plans next month to reinstate a long-dor- Seniors, graduate students, faculty and mant Tufts branch of the Order of the administrators at the School of Engineering Engineer, a nationwide organization pro- have been offered the opportunity to be moting unity and ethical practice among inducted into the Order, Kody said. professionals in the field of engineering. According to Frisell, the Order’s empha- Qualified students will pledge into the sis on ethics in professional engineering society, which has been inactive at Tufts aligns with the goals of the ESC. for over a decade, at a ceremony on May 6, The honorary ceremony will doubly according to ESC Secretary Alyssa Kody, a serve as a commemoration to the schools’ sophomore. seniors, Frisell said. Upon being accepted into the Order, “It’s also a way to show appreciation to students will receive a certificate and can students as they graduate,” she added. order a stainless steel ring to wear on the Lewis Edgers (E ’66), an associate dean fifth finger of their writing hand, Kody said of engineering and a member of the Order, in an email to the Daily. said the society became inactive on cam- “The ring is worn to remind the engi- pus a decade ago after student interest WILLIAM H. BUTT V/TUFTS DAILY neer to act ethically and make ethical waned due to its lack of structure. The Senate and Athletics Department say club sports, such as the men’s Ultimate Frisbee decisions,” ESC President Maren Frisell, a “Order of the Engineer has no financial team, have suffered from financial mismanagement in the department. junior, said. commitment or meetings,” Edgers said. Qualified attendees at the ceremony “The organization sort of fell asleep for 10 will recite an oath called the Obligation of years, I’d say.” Senate urges administration the Engineer, which sets forth an ethical Board members on the ESC initiated the code for practicing engineers similar to the reactivation of the Order several months Hippocratic Oath taken by new doctors. ago, according to Edgers, in response to a ESC Treasurer Victoria Sims, a sopho- reawakening of sorts of the moral code that more who proposed the idea of bring- defines the body. BY KATHRYN OLS O N sports program, which is currently under ing the Order back to Tufts, said that to “In the last several years, there has been Daily Editorial Board the jurisdiction of several different ath- qualify for induction, individuals must letics department staff members. be students enrolled in a graduate or see ORDER, page 2 A Tufts Community Union (TCU) A lack of communication between Senate resolution passed on April 10 calls the Athletics Department, the Senate toon administrators address in the School club of Arts andsport the administration finances has prevented and Sciences to improve financial transparency and led to a situ- its financial oversight of ation in which a sum of $10,000 that was the club sports program, supposed to be allocated for use by Tier citing a lack of transpar- I club sports was instead never used, ency and misallocation of according to de Klerk. Student Activity Fee funds “It was essentially just sitting there,” meant to go towards Tier I she said. club sports. The Senate has since 2000 allocated a The resolution, authored by TCU portion of the Student Activities Fee to Treasurer Kate de Klerk, asks the uni- the athletics department for distribu- versity to fund a new athletics business tion to club sports. The body currently manager position that would adminis- ter the finances of the university’s club see SPORTS, page 2 Sophomores place high in international math tournament DANAI MACDRIDI/TUFTS DAILY Junior Maren Frisell and sophomore Ashley Martin fit students interested in joining a new BY MICHAEL DEL MO R O Liam Clegg received “Honorable chapter of an engineering society with rings to be distributed at a ceremony next month. Daily Editorial Board Mention,” placing it in the top 45 percent of participants. A Tufts team that competed in an inter- Two other teams — one consisting national, four-day mathematical model- of sophomores Zach Himes, Brandon With help of Tufts grad student, Medford ing competition in February placed in Dillow and Daniel Fortunato and the top 15 percent of 2,775 participat- another made up of sophomore Min hopes to save $1.6 million on energy costs ing teams, the competition organizers Zhong, junior Yunlin Huang and senior announced on Friday. Liwei Liao — successfully completed BY RACHEL RA M PIN O users, such as municipalities and cor- This year’s Mathematical Contest in the competition but did not receive Daily Editorial Board porations, to secure the cheapest and Modeling, in which three other Tufts additional awards. least risky deals with energy suppliers, teams participated, marked the third Abel’s team chose to attempt to solve The city of Medford in February according to Adler. time Tufts has fielded successful com- a problem that required the students signed a contract with an energy pro- Renegotiating energy contracts is petitors in the event. to determine the minimum number of curement consulting firm run by a part of a three-pronged approach to The contest, which is held annually signal repeaters necessary to provide Tufts master’s student that will help energy efficiency and environmen- by the Consortium for Mathematics and 1,000 people with uninterrupted service. it renegotiate its energy contracts and talism supported by Medford Mayor Its Applications and this year took place Repeaters take weak radio signals, ampli- save a projected $1.6 million in the Michael McGlynn, according to Carey Feb. 10 to Feb. 14, required participants fy them and translate them into different next three years. Duques (G ’06), Medford’s energy and to respond to one of two modeling prob- frequencies to avoid interference. The deal with GridSmart Energy, environmental director and environ- lems: one in discrete mathematics and According to Abel and Stachenfeld, the whose president is Urban and mental agent. The city’s approach another in continuous mathematics. team had limited experience with radio Environmental Policy and Planning also includes upgrades to buildings to Sophomores John Abel, Kim networks before receiving the problem (UEP) master’s student Michael Adler, improve energy efficiency and incen- Stachenfeld and Jay Stotsky, all chemi- details electronically the on the evening comes as part of a broader municipal tives for its residents to shift away from cal engineering students, submitted a of the first day of the competition. movement to support environmental- wasteful behaviors, Duques said. problem solution that achieved the title Their group camped out for the next ism and energy efficiency. This will mean switching all traf- of “Meritorious Winner.” 96 hours in South Hall, where they Energy procurement firms such A team made up of juniors Stephen as GridSmart work with mass energy see GRIDSMART, page 2 Bidwell and Victor Minden and senior see MATH, page 2 Inside this issue Today’s sections Harry Potter is just one Freshman diver Johann News 1 Op-Ed 11 in a long line of book- Schmidt is trying to to-film adaptions, get new recruits on Features 3 Comics 12 some succesful, some TuftsLife — no experi- Weekender 5Sports 13 less so. ence needed. Editorial | Letters 10 Classifieds 14 see WEEKENDER, page 5 see SPORTS, page 13 2 THE TUF T S DAILY NEWS Thursday, April 21, 2011 Engineering society MATH to return to campus continued from page 1 ORDER learned a new programming language continued from page 1 calledFour LaTeX Tufts in order to putteams together a successfully compete in tough field discussion in the School of Engineering 21-page solution without any outside about ethics. … The students have got- help, Abel said. ten interested in that subject,” Edgers said, “Not only did we have to determine stressing the weight of morally based deci- where to place these repeater towers, sions in engineering. but [also] to figure out the configuration “Ethics are really important, especially of the system as a whole, which chan- in areas where public safety is affected,” nels would be represented,” Abel said. he said. Because of these variables, Stotsky said, Edgers chairs the Curriculum Task Force there were different possible outcomes. (CTF), which he said serves as a think tank “In making the mathematical model, for curriculum development for both fac- we did have to make some assump- ulty and students. CTF has recently been tions,” Stotsky said. “So depending on focusing on the role of ethics in the engi- what kind of model you were using or neering curriculum, he said. assumptions you make, you could actu- “As a Canadian organization, Order of ally get pretty different answers.” the Engineer has really only begun to grow Though the team was not allowed in the United States in the last 20 years,” to consult any in-person help during Edgers said. the competition, previous coaching Sims, who is from Toronto, brought up and review sessions prepared group the idea to reinstate Tufts’ chapter based members for realizing the different on her experience with a similar Canadian variables and taking into account pos- COURTESY JOHN ABEL version of the society called the The Ritual sible factors that they might encoun- Left to right, sophomores Kim Stachenfeld, John Abel and Jay Stotsky learned on Friday Calling of an Engineer.