Reflections on Events of the Past Week

December 15, 2006

Dear Friends,

This week has been a difficult one for the entire Tufts community. At a time when our thoughts should be focused on exams, the end of the term, and the upcoming holidays, our hearts and minds have been elsewhere.

This past week we suffered the loss of one of our wonderful students, Lily Karian, a young woman of exceptional promise. Lily's untimely and tragic death reminds us that life is precious because it is so fragile. Our hearts and prayers go out to her family and friends. We hope that their memories of Lily and their faith will sustain them during this most difficult time. Let us honor Lily's memory by reaching out to our own friends and family to remind them that we care about them and that we love them.

This week our community also was set on edge by the juvenile, vengeful and hateful words of a small number of students. I have heard personally from literally hundreds of students, parents, alumni, faculty and staff who question how something like this could happen at a place like Tufts, a university that prides itself on being a warm, welcoming and caring place. It is a question I have asked myself as I have counseled students who have been made to feel unwelcome and unsafe by these acts; students who have been moved to tears recounting how hard they have worked to get here and who now feel rejected by some of their classmates strictly because of the color of their skin.

This is a time when we must all come together; when we must focus not on what divides us but on what we have in common. It is also a time when we must redouble our commitment to diversity. Let me say clearly so that all can hear that Tufts embraces diversity because we learn from our differences. Moreover, we embrace diversity in every possible dimension. It is why we seek a class that is geographically diverse, economically diverse, diverse in interests, diverse in thought, and yes, diverse in race and ethnicity. It makes us stronger academically and it creates a more vibrant, intellectual community. Every single student who is admitted to Tufts is academically distinguished relative to their peers nationally. To suggest otherwise not only insults our current minority students, it demeans the achievements of generations of minority alumni who thrived academically while on this Hill and who have distinguished themselves subsequently since graduating from Tufts. Moreover, each student we admit is admitted for a reason. Each is admitted affirmatively because they bring something special to the class. Each is defined by their story and their voice, the set of life experiences that distinguish them from the vast majority of applicants who are also academically accomplished. If we thought we could reduce admissions to a series of simple metrics, we could eliminate our admissions staff and reduce our admissions process to a formula. I don't think any applicant wants to be judged merely by their "numbers" anymore than any individual wants to be defined by the color of their skin.

When we return from the holidays, I hope we will reflect on the events of this past week as we continue this collective conversation. The provost will soon announce a series of initiatives to facilitate this conversation. In the interim, I hope that as the semester closes, each of us will think deeply about how we as a community can model the behavior that we would hope to see elsewhere in the world. We need to take collective responsibility for building a community where each individual is valued and respected for what they contribute, where everyone is made to feel welcome, where we can ask and debate difficult questions with civility and respect, where we can disagree, even passionately, without being disagreeable or offensive. This is a responsibility that we all share and that I hope each of us will embrace as citizens of Tufts.

Sincerely,

Lawrence S. Bacow
President