2010-04-16

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FRIDAY, APRIL 16, 2010

THE TUFTS DAILYTUFTSDAILY.COM

see SPORTS, back

The softball team takes on Trinity on Senior Day this Saturday.

see ARTS, page 5

HBO’s new show “Treme” explores life in New Orleans after Katrina.

Classifieds 6Sports Back

When Amelia Downs joins the class of 2014 next fall, she may well be the most recognizable person on campus without the last name Bacow or two Olympic figure skating medals on her mantle. Downs is better known in the Tufts com-munity as “Math Dance Girl” due to the

enormously popular YouTube.com video, titled “Math Dances,” that she posted in response to an optional question on the Tufts supplement that asked students to create and post online a one-minute film that “says something about you.” Downs was accepted by the university, and intends to become a Jumbo in the fall.

A Wednesday evening screening and discussion of the documentary “Crude: The Real Price of Oil” (2009) delved into issues of environmental justice, with a focus on the pollution of the Amazon rainforest. The event was sponsored by the Department of Political Science, the Department of Anthropology and the International Relations Program. Following the documentary screening was a question-and-answer session

with Professor of Anthropology David Guss, Associate Professor of Political Science Consuelo Cruz, Lecturer of Political Science Nancy Gleason and Harvard Lecturer in Anthropology and Social Studies Theodore Macdonald. “Crude” tells the story behind a $27 billion class-action lawsuit that 30,000 Ecuadorians filed against Chevron alleg-ing environmental damage and severe health problems caused by crude-oil pollution in the Amazon rainforest. Chevron, formerly Texaco, refused to

Alpha Tau Omega (ATO) of Massachusetts is today host-ing Sean Carasso, founder and chief executive officer of Falling Whistles, a non-governmental organization raising awareness about the use of children as sol-diers in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Carasso will be speaking at 1 p.m. in the Sophia Gordon Multipurpose Room as one of the stops on his ongoing tour. “Two of us are traveling on a tour … going from school to school, coffee house to coffee house, speaking up about what’s going on in the Congo,” Justine Porter, Falling Whistles intern, said. “The idea is just to spread as much awareness as we can.” Junior Megan Kono, an ATO member, began planning the event after hearing about Carasso and Falling Whistles’ story and cause. Carasso stumbled on the story of the “whistle boys” while in the DRC, where he met five children who were escaped child soldiers. According to Mallory Benedict, an education and visual media intern for Falling Whistles, Carasso found out from these previous child sol-diers that children too small to carry guns were made to go to the frontlines with whistles. “Boys like them, who are too

small physically to hold a gun, are sent out to the battle front-line with only whistles,” Benedict said. “They blow whistles to attract the enemy soldiers, take the first line of bullets and act as a human shield for the boys behind them.” Hearing this story, Carroso started Falling Whistles to address this problem and raise awareness. “We’re working to end the war in Congo and taking small steps to end it,” Benedict said. “We’re rehabilitating children through a program right now … We sell these whistles, and the proceeds go to the rehabilitation program. The whistles are a symbol of our protest, and we’re asking people to be whistleblowers for peace in the Congo and call out for peace in its absence.” Kono learned about this story recently and felt compelled to take action, especially on find-ing out that Carroso would be in Boston this weekend. “When I read the story, I was very, very moved; I don’t know how you can’t be,” Kono said. “I just thought it’s a long shot, and I’m one person, but one person makes a difference … I started talking to people and got ATO involved.” “[Falling Whistles] is an orga-nization [Kono] heard about over spring break and was really excited about it,” junior Joseph

The Tufts Sixth Annual 100K Business Plan Competition took place on Wednesday, with two teams each receiving $50,000 prizes after beating out a field of contenders that organizers

called the most talented in the competition’s history. The competition, which was sponsored by The Gordon Institute’s (TGI) Entrepreneurial Leadership Program, consists of the Classic Business Plan Competition and the Social Entrepreneurship Competition.

In the first category, Proximity Health Solutions, comprised of senior Michael Brown and juniors Jeffrey Miller and Bernard Tan, emerged victorious. Proximity Health Solutions’

Rain47/41

News | Features 1 Comics 4Arts & Living 5

VOLUME LIX, NUMBER 49

Where You Read It First

Est. 1980

100K Business Plan Competition sees increase in competitiveness

BY MARISSA GALLERANI Daily Editorial Board

see BUSINESS, page 3

ATO event to draw attention to plight of children in Congo

BY ELLEN KAN Daily Editorial Board

see WHISTLES, page 2

Groups set up model refugee hut to generate discussion of Ugandan issues

Tufts Christian Fellowship and Invisible Children at Tufts on Wednesday and Thursday set up a model of a Ugandan hut on the Academic Quad to simulate the experi-ence of a Ugandan refugee camp. Passersby had the chance to walk through the hut, learn about issues facing Uganda and purchase handmade jewelry to benefit displaced Ugandan women. The hut setup led up to a talk “Uganda: Hearing the Voices of Child Soldiers” last night in the Interfaith Center, during which Conrad Mandsager, founder of Child Voice International, shared his experience working in Uganda and with child soldiers.

Documentary screening delves into issues of environmental justice

BY MONICA MOWERY Daily Staff Writer

see CRUDE, page 3

‘Math Dance Girl’ Downs dances to the Hill

BY DEREK SCHLOM Daily Editorial Board

see MATH DANCE, page 3

JENNA LIANG/TUFTS DAILY

Proximity Health Solutions, pictured above, and Masawa were this year’s Tufts 100K Business Plan Competition winners.

TIEN TIEN/TUFTS DAILY

2 Friday, April 16, 2010

While much social and technological advancement would suggest that America has progressed since the 1950s, there exist some contemporary parallels to a dark point in the nation’s history that may suggest oth-erwise. This was the focus of Wednesday night’s annual Edward R. Murrow Forum on Issues in Journalism, during which panelists dis-cussed the current implications of the black-list and the culture of fear perpetuated by Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s communist witch-hunt. Some of the panelists at the event had a chance to speak in depth to the Daily after the event about McCarthyism’s implications in the modern world. McCarthy rose to power by stoking the terror of a communist takeover, accusing everyone, from Hollywood actors to his fellow congressmen, of having commu-nist sympathies. While many of his conjectures soon proved false, most news outlets reported only his newest accusations, so that public hysteria only grew wilder. Many thousands of Americans were blacklisted, making it near impossible for them to find work and erod-ing their quality of life to the point that many who were blacklisted committed suicide. The late CBS television anchor Edward R. Murrow was one of the first and only journal-ists to explicitly criticize McCarthy’s actions, saying to the American people, “We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty.” Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy student David Viola, a co-producer of the documentary “Trumbo” (2007), said that while the United States was founded on prin-ciples of free speech and civil liberties, during periods of great social upheaval, these rights are often restricted in the interest of national defense. In a world after the events of Sept. 11, 2001, the federal government has instated many policies that have made “the trade-off between civil liberties and the perception of national security ripe again,” Viola said. “Trumbo” tells the life story of blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo. The film was screened on Monday as part of the Murrow Forum. Trumbo himself called the House Un-American Activities Committee “barba-rism parading as American virtue,” which to some, including Murrow’s son, Casey Murrow, is reminiscent of the institution of the Patriot Act in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks. This might explain the recent burst of movies about the McCarthy era, such as “Trumbo” and the Murrow biopic “Good Night, and Good Luck” (2005). “I think that the excesses of the Bush administration and the damage to our legal system and to the Bill of Rights certainly brought about a lot of pushback from the film industry,” Casey Murrow said. While many of the same political issues remain, the ways in which people assess them has evolved. Journalism in the time of Murrow and McCarthy was limited to regional newspapers and a few major televi-sion networks, as opposed to the multitudes of conduits through which Americans now receive information.

“Ed Murrow always thought the obliga-tion of a journalist was to educate, to explain, and there’s not much education or explana-tion these days,” journalist Lynne Olson said. Olson cited the multitudes of cable news stations, as well as magazines, newspapers and blogs that cater to every possible ideol-ogy, essentially making it so that viewers can choose never to be “presented with different angles or ideas” than their own. “This country had a much more homog-enized view when there were only three net-works,” said Arnie Reisman, a screenwriter and producer who wrote the documentary “Hollywood on Trial” (1976) about Trumbo and his blacklisted colleagues. “We’re all scat-tered now.” As the broad landscape of media out-lets makes it easier for myriad ideologies to proliferate, the Internet makes it a much more difficult to silence alternative opinions. Before Murrow stood up to McCarthy, the only widely spread national news coverage of the hearings depicted them as essential in fighting the powerful spread of communism. With so many outlets, it’s possible that a movement like McCarthy’s could not have as wide an impact in today’s world, experts say. “[With the Internet,] I think dissent wouldn’t have been as polarized,” Viola said. “It was a lot easier to get people spun up because … all the news was coming from one place. I think there would have been a lot of people coming out more vocally in defense of constitutional rights, but it’s really impossible to tell.” However, Casey Murrow added that the current media landscape is not entirely equi-table. “Some outlets have more power than others,” he said. “If there were to be a con-temporary blacklist, a lot of people would still be shut down as communicators.” Assistant Professor of Sociology Sarah Sobieraj agreed that the online medium has not reached its full potential as a level playing

field. “User-generated content vehicles like Twitter[.com], Wordpress[.com], YouTube[.com] and the like have absolutely democ-ratized publishing and create the space for many more voices than we had in times past,” Sobieraj said in an e-mail to the Daily. “[However], it’s important that we not over-romanticize the significance of these tools because being able to publish and being heard are not the same thing.” For these reasons, journalists have a responsibility to speak truth to power, and in that way, to follow Murrow’s lead, according to Julie Dobrow, director of the Communications and Media Studies Program. “For Murrow, journalism was a public ser-vice,” Dobrow said. “Despite the Internet and despite the lack of controls we witnessed, we as a country walked into the war in Iraq without the media doing its job,” Crocker Snow, the director of the Edward R. Murrow Center for Public Diplomacy at the Fletcher School, said. “It may be official blacklisting or maybe not, but deception is just as possible today in different forms.” “If you listen to the political opinion media hosted by folks like Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, and Keith Olbermann, I think you’ll find that at least the vilification dimen-sion that we saw in the McCarthy era is alive and well,” Sobieraj said. “In this type of political media, which has a far larger audi-ence than many imagine, people are called socialists, communists, Nazis, and fascists on a daily basis.” “It’s fine to disagree, but when you try to limit someone else’s views or prevent them or punish somebody because of something they legally have the right to do under our Constitution, the danger is always there,” Olson said. “One always has to be very vigi-lant about what’s happening.”Carter Rogers contributed reporting to this article.

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Murrow, McCarthy and the media frontier analyzed

BY ALEXA SASANOW Daily Editorial Board

Lessard, president of ATO, said. “She approached me … and ATO is always look-ing for new organizations and philanthropy we can get behind and give our support.” Lessard hopes that this event will be the beginning of a long-term relationship. “This is a new organization to the cam-pus; it’s great to bring something new and hopefully foster some sort of relationship between the Tufts community and the organization, so in the future they can really see Tufts as a big supporter of their message,” Lessard said.

Porter echoed this, expressing her excite-ment to be expanding the organization’s presence in Boston. “We don’t have a big group of sup-porters in Boston right now … so we’re really excited to be coming and getting to know students, making friends, making connections, hearing others’ stories and what kinds of things students are doing,” Porter said. Lessard noted that Delta Tau Delta (DTD) fraternity has a similar partnership with HOPE for Ariang, an organization focused on the “lost boys” of Sudan — children dis-placed by the civil war in the country.

DTD’s events with HOPE for Ariang have involved the organization’s founder Gabriel Bol Deng, one of the lost boys himself, sharing his experiences and story. Lessard believes Carasso’s talk discusses a similar issue from a different perspective. “It’s similar to the Sudan lost boys cause … It’s a nice complement to that,” he said. “It’s a Westerner giving a Western take on the situation … It’s nice to do two points of view; they really are complementary and touch on different aspects.” The event will be free of charge and will feature raffles for various prizes and refreshments.

Founder of Falling Whistles to speak about war in Congo WHISTLES continued from page 1

COURTESY LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Sen. Joseph McCarthy’s witch hunt is still relevant in a contemporary world with a plethora of media options, experts say.

In the April 14 article “Rainy weekend sees average finishes for sailing team,” misreported results found on a faulty link during the writing process led to incorrectly reporting scores from last year’s Presidents Weekend Intersectional at Boston University instead of this year’s. Tufts finished sixth at this year’s regatta and not 11th.

Correction

Friday, April 16, 2010 3THE TUFTS DAILY NEWS | FEATURES

project focused on the issue of infections developed while in the hospital. “We want to develop a device that will rapidly detect hospi-tal-acquired infections,” Brown said. “Right now, the time is one to two days before you know what the diagnosis is. We want to cut that time down to one to two hours.” The project started through Brown’s research on silk through TGI, which he said was enhanced through his par-ticipation in the competition. “This gives me a totally dif-ferent perspective on why I’m doing this and why these things are important,” Brown said. “It was amazing to get the macro perspective doing the business plan and also the micro of doing work in a lab.” In the Social Entrepreneurship Competition, Masawa — made up of students from The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy Shailesh Chitnis, Darius Hyworon, Joshua Haynes, Marian Levin, Christine Martin and Julie Zollman — came in first with its plan for develop-ing an integrated technology platform to function on smart-phones, with a focus on usage in the developing world. Business plans were judged on the quality of the plan, its feasibility and the team’s abil-ity to execute it, according to Pamela Goldberg, direc-tor of TGI’s Entrepreneurial Leadership Program. Goldberg said the standard of the competition rises every year. “This competition does get

more competitive each year … Therefore the quality of the finalists just keeps getting bet-ter,” Goldberg said. She expressed her satisfac-tion with this year’s competition and competitors. “This is the best competition we’ve ever had,” Goldberg said. “It ran more smoothly than I could have ever anticipated, and it all went very well. I’m really impressed with every sin-gle team. There were fabulous ideas, and the quality of the presentations really exceeded expectations.” Carla Eberle, assistant direc-tor of communications and admissions for TGI, emphasized that this competition reached across different constituencies in the university. “This competition is one of the rare instances when all of the members of the Tufts community are able to come together,” Eberle said. “The diversity in the teams is huge, with groups from The Fletcher School of International Law and Diplomacy, from the School of Engineering, from the Gordon Institute and from … undergraduates. I think this is a rare instance when we see all these types of people com-ing together.” Goldberg explained that interested participants at the end of January submitted their business plans, and from that group of applications, five final-ists were selected for each cate-gory. There were no restrictions on the number of members in each team. “After the finalists were chosen, they were assigned a

mentor, some of which were alumni, to help work with them during the subsequent cou-ple of months to add to their preparations,” Goldberg said. “Each team also had a one-day coaching session from a team of experts to help them under-stand the expectations for the competition and what the day would be like.” The judging of the 10 finalists took place between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. on Wednesday, with each group giving a 15 to 20 min-ute presentation to the panel of judges. The judging was fol-lowed by an awards ceremony and a reception. Eight companies sponsored the competition, includ-ing Vertrue, Sherbrooke Capital, Lowenstein Sandler, Cummings Properties, the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance (NCIIA), Skadden, Deloitte and The Capitol Network. The panel of eight judges was drawn from these sponsoring companies. Teams Dermpedia and FindJoey were cited as honor-able mentions in the Classic Business Plan category, with groups Ditch the Dorm and KoffeeLINK taking third place and second place, respectively. In the Social Entrepre-neurship Competition catego-ry, groups R3 and The Green Power Gym were listed as hon-orable mentions, with 31favors.com and Citizen Water being awarded third and second place, respectively.Katherine Sawyer and Ellen Kan contributed reporting to this article.

clean up the damage, with one of its attorneys claim-ing that the petroleum was not Texaco’s and blaming the environmental damage on Petroecuador, an Ecuadorian oil company. Jeannine Lenehan, the communications coordina-tor for Tufts’ political sci-ence department, introduced the film, saying that it would bring viewers closer to the truth about oil pollution. Macdonald, who is also a fel-low at the Harvard University Committee on Human Rights, prefaced the documentary screening by giving the issue a global context. “The film is disturbing from an environ-mental perspective,” he said. He also highlighted issues not discussed in the film, including the absence of the government’s involvement in the contentious lawsuit and the lack of inter-national standards regulating environmental pollution. Macdonald emphasized the difficulties in prosecut-ing crimes across national boundaries. He explained that in some countries like Spain, universal jurisdiction applies in a way that allows another country to intervene if something egregious hap-pens. In Ecuador, the indig-enous people felt their voices were not being heard, accord-ing to Macdonald. “The indigenous people want to be actors in the situa-tion; they want prior informed

consent and active participa-tion,” he said. The downsides of global-ization also play a role in the film. “Transnational corpo-rations show us a negative standard of globalization,” Macdonald said. The film also illustrates the burden placed on indigenous communities in Ecuador, who have suffered the envi-ronmental and health costs of crude-oil pollution. “Crude” begins with an indigenous woman, the only survivor of her family — all of whom have died from can-cer or other oil-related health problems — singing. The rest of the film demon-strates the perseverance and advocacy for environmen-tal justice of the Ecuadorian people as they sought to hold Chevron accountable. The film’s portrayal of the incident ranges from scenes of a 20-day-old baby with a skin condition caused by oil pollution to a comedic anti-Chevron cartoon. The film also draws atten-tion to the Amazon’s natural beauty, showing how it was ruined by toxic sludge from Chevron’s oil waste. The theme of pollution’s impact on the community’s health also runs throughout the film. In one clip, a woman explains how her 18-year-old daughter had cancer and was dying because her mother could not afford the $500 needed for each chemother-apy appointment.

With 127,396 views by press time, Downs’ was the most-watched supplemental video of her applicant pool by a significant mar-gin — the runner up, applicant Rhaina Cohen’s video “In My Shoes,” had a com-paratively puny 30,918 views at press time. Downs’ viral fame (at least on the Medford/Somerville campus) started, as most cases of viral fame do, inauspicious-ly. Downs, who filmed the low-fi video in “a few minutes” with her best friend behind the camera, was just following the advice of her father. “When I was doing my college stuff, my dad always told me to just be memorable, to make them remem-ber you. But in a good way, obviously,” Downs said. Downs and three or four friends, she said, had just concocted a series of about 15 tongue-in-cheek “math dances,” basic movements that resembled math-related terms. For example, the motion for a line graph resembles the Electric Slide, and feverish air grabbing corresponds to a scatter plot. The moves are deliberate-ly inelegant, though Downs is actually a trained dancer who teaches ballet during school breaks. While perusing the optional questions in the Tufts supplemental application, Downs said the video option in particular caught her attention. “I was looking for an option that popped, and at that point the dances with my friends were a relatively new thing, so I just thought of it, and it seemed per-fect,” Downs said. “I just wanted to do something cute and short — something that would make them smile and remem-ber me. Nothing too serious.” The dances did not last long as an inside joke among Downs’ friends. “We tried doing calculus terms, but it’s hard to do a dance for a derivative,” she said. However, the video started racking up hits “almost immediately,” accord-ing to Downs. She speculates that the video, which she posted on Sept. 19 of last year, was initially the most viewed because of the title. “I was the first one that labeled mine ‘Tufts supplement,’ I think. I couldn’t find a single other video when I was looking for others before I

made mine,” Downs said. Downs noted that she expected the video to receive around 100 to 200 views. “I was the first one up, and people would want to see what other people were doing,” Downs said. However, the view count slowly grew into the four-figure range. As the media spotlight on the concept of videos as college application supplements — a Tufts innovation — grew, so too did attention to the videos with the most hits. Then the New York Times came calling — or, rather, e-mailing. “[New York Times writer Tamar Lewin] got in touch with me through Tufts, actu-ally. Someone from Tufts got in touch with me and said that The New York Times wanted to contact me and if it was okay to reveal my e-mail address, and I said yes,” Downs said. Only about 130 words of the almost 1,000-word Times article on the Tufts vid-eos were focused on her, but a link to her video was included in the online version of the story, and Downs was one of 12 Tufts applicants included in a feature on the New York Times Web site that contained the vid-eos in embedded form. In the two months since the article ran, Downs’ view count has risen from 6,000 to its current lofty heights. In addition to The New York Times, Downs has been featured in the Boston Globe; the Charlotte Observer, her local paper; Charlotte-area radio and television stations; and she was featured in an article and accompanying video on the ABC News Web site. Despite the media attention, Downs downplays the notion that she is now something of a local celebrity. “It’s definitely not a widespread, known fact at my school,” Downs said, attributing her anonymity to the size of Myers Park High, where the student body total is close to 3,000. Even Downs’ group of friends remained unaware of the growing popularity of the video before the New York Times article. “It wasn’t something I went around talking about, my college applications and stuff like that. Everyone is really stressed about college, and some [of my friends] applied to Tufts, and I just didn’t want to make them uncomfortable,” Downs said.

“[The day after the Times story broke,] a friend asked, ‘Did you know you were in [The New York Times]?’ And I said, ‘Uh, yeah, I did,’ and they said, ‘OK, that’s cool.’” Downs said that she isn’t worried about losing one of college’s perks: the ability to start fresh as just another anonymous face in the crowd. “I was actually on campus visiting the Friday before Easter, and no one recog-nized me,” Downs said. “It’s just weird to think that that’s what [future peers] got to see of me … I’m embarrassed, but not ashamed or anything like that. I was just in

sort of an unguarded state when I filmed it. I have that same kind of humor, but I’m not quite that cheesy in real life.” Downs believes that other colleges should consider accepting videos from applicants, but that prospective students looking for potential YouTube stardom rather than an acceptance to the school of their choice should be wary. “If I was apply-ing for next year, I would be pressured to do something or tempted to do something that would pop to The New York Times rather than to be myself. You shouldn’t plan for [the video] to become a sensation. Just be yourself,” Downs said.

Video star expected less than 1,000 views, got over 100 times that MATH DANCE continued from page 1

Tufts undergrads win $50,000 for business plan BUSINESS continued from page 1

‘Crude’ screening highlights environmental inequities CRUDE continued from page 1

DANAI MACRIDI/TUFTS DAILY

Amelia Downs performs her ìSin and Cos graphî dance in front of Bendetson Hall.

4 THE TUFTS DAILY COMICS Friday, April 16, 2010

DOONESBURY BY GARRY TRUDEAU

SUDOKU

Thursday’s Solution

CROSSWORD

LATE NIGHT AT THE DAILY

Please recycle this Daily

NON SEQUITUR BY WILEY

MARRIED TO THE SEA

Level: Running the Boston Marathon hungover

Sapna: “Scratching tires makes me think of sex.”

THURSDAY’S SOLUTION

www.marriedtothesea.com

5

Arts & LivingArts & Livingtuftsdaily.com

TV REVIEW

‘Treme’ paints picture of a post-Katrina New Orleans

In late 2009, when pop culture observers were meticulously compiling “best of the decade” lists, HBO’s “The Wire” (2002-2008)

was almost unanimously named one of the top TV shows since 2000, if not of all time. In terms of television fame, “The Wire” occu-pies rarified air. Created by former reporter David Simon, the show took a frank, brutal, expertly craft-ed look at Baltimore’s seedy underbelly, based on Simon’s real-life observations and journalistic work. Unsurprisingly, Simon faced the breathless anticipation of count-less fans and admirers on Sunday when HBO debuted his first ongoing series since “The Wire” ended. Titled “Treme,” after the neighborhood in New Orleans, the new series follows a hand-ful of Big Easy residents as they struggle to recover from Hurricane Katrina only three months after the tragedy. Unlike “The Wire,” which was so dense in plot that it was often compared to Greek drama, “Treme” is heav-ily character-driven. The many characters on “Treme” are nebulously connected, not unlike those in the film “Crash” (2004). At least in the pilot, their individual stories are more significant than the points where they intersect, though this is bound to change as the series progresses. There’s Davis McAlary (Steve Zahn), a former jazz musician, disgruntled local radio DJ and all-around deadbeat who takes music more seriously than his apart-ment or his relationship with Janette (Kim Dickens), a restaurant owner stretched thin by the storm’s aftereffects. There’s Creighton and Toni Bernette (John Goodman and Melissa Leo), an activist and a lawyer who fight to improve the big picture but whose social advantage protected them from the worst of the storm’s damage. There’s Antoine Batiste (Wendell Pierce), a friendly trombone player with a knack for tak-ing cab rides he can’t afford. There’s Antoine’s ex-wife Ladonna (Khandi Alexander), whose brother went missing from prison during the hurricane. And there’s Albert Lambreaux (Clarke Peters), an older man who staunchly chooses to move back to the city and live in a destroyed bar he doesn’t even own.

Slowly, these characters and their every-day lives paint a picture of what New Orleans was like only three months after the storm, when the rest of America had stopped its outpouring of sympathy and started trying to save its tax money. “Treme” has a strong documentary feel and draws heavily on Simon’s research, and it does not talk down to its audience. In a way, watching “Treme” is like visiting New Orleans without a guide-book or a map. The 90-minute pilot starts slowly. Unlike network shows that are required to use their pilot episodes to condense everything the show will be, series on premium cable net-works like HBO have the luxury of extended time (no commercials) and full-season reas-surance; in fact, “Treme” was picked up for a second season shortly after its pilot aired. This first episode gives just enough of a peek at the show’s potential for quiet emotion and engrossing themes to entice the viewer to wait for episode two. Potential major

plot threads don’t start to emerge until the second or third half-hour, but the characters are compelling enough that the time invest-ment is sure to pay off. In one evocative, atmospheric scene, Albert dons a beautiful, ornately feath-ered costume and chants and dances in the middle of the street to convince his neighbors to help with his renovations. Until this point, Albert had been quiet, and his sorrow hung heavily on his fea-tures, but here he takes on an almost sur-real quality, especially to viewers who are unaware of the Mardi Gras Indian tradi-tion — an African-American practice that appropriates some elements from Native-American religion. The calculated use of color and darkness in this scene exem-plifies the stellar direction of the pilot by renowned Polish director Agnieszka Holland (“Europa Europa,” 1990), who imbues segments of the episode with a uniquely New Orleans kind of magic.

Perhaps most instrumental to character-izing New Orleans within “Treme” is the show’s use of music. Two of the show’s most visible characters, Davis and Antoine, are musicians, and with them they bring an entire network of musicians to the show. A parade at the very beginning of the pilot fea-tures the kind of live-sounding, horn-filled jazz that is woven throughout the episode — from a jazz club where Elvis Costello (in a cameo as himself) comes for the local flavor, to a fascinatingly choreographed funeral procession. Music is truly its own character, as integral to the fabric of the show as it is to New Orleans’ identity. Though the pilot does not fully satisfy, “Treme” represents a fantastic amount of potential. The actors are stellar, expressive and authentic. Like “The Wire,” this is not a Hollywood interpretation of an urban landscape. Instead, it feels real, alive and full of life, even amid post-Katrina tragedy, destruction and death.

TVGUIDE.COM

Clarke Peters plays Albert Lambreaux, a man who chooses to live in a destroyed, post-Katrina New Orleans.

ARTS FEATURE

Battle of the Bands to feature ive engaging student bands This Saturday from 3 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. in Hotung Café, five student bands will put politeness and high-frequency hearing aside for a chance at greatness. The winners of this weekend’s Battle of the Bands will be granted the unique opportunity to play in front of thousands of their peers on the side-stage at Spring Fling. Groups will play a 20-min-ute set to be critiqued by a stu-dent from each class year and a member of the Tufts faculty. The judging panel will include fresh-man Dylan Portelance, sopho-more and Jackson Jills member Caroline Wilkes and President of Hip Hop for Social Change Mark Adams, a senior. The junior and faculty judges will be named later. Perhaps the most exciting prospects of the show, howev-er, are the varied backgrounds and entertaining natures of the groups competing. One of the contesting bands is

the rock and R&B group Lori and Andy’s 10th Avenue Supergroup, which first began playing as part of a senior project in multime-dia studies. Seniors Loretta Allen (vocals and piano) and Andrew Mead (guitar) started the proj-ect in September, but the group has since grown to include three backup singers, a bassist, a drummer and a synth player. The band’s live shows are a promo-tion for its upcoming five-song EP. Saturday’s performance will see the debut of two original songs as well as songs from the EP and some covers. The next contestant is rock-and-roll band Action Guaranteed! The group consists of seniors Nick Hellberg, Eric Potkin, Matt Miller, Jake Stern and Josh Zeidel, who is also an Arts editor for the Daily. “Many people don’t fully understand our name ... The exclamation point is crucial and oft overlooked,” Hellberg, the group’s guitarist, said. Excitement is the key to this band. Veterans of the Tufts music

scene, Action Guaranteed! is coming off a packed-house per-formance last Thursday night at The Burren in Davis Square. Also in the running is hard pop-rock band The Current Avalanche (TCA). The group consists of seniors Michael Zigismund and Eric Hyman, Zach Postle (LA ’09), and Berklee College of Music junior Ian Henchy. TCA describes its sound as “the heavi-ness of Slayer meets the sexiness of ’NSync.” The self-proclaimed dark horses of the competition began playing two years ago as mainly a jam project, but have rallied their efforts around origi-nal compositions by rhythm gui-tarist Postle. The band’s original name — Duck Sauce — referred to its ability to be sticky, yet sweet at the same time. According to drummer Henchy, the current moniker pays homage to victims of a devastating avalanche in Switzerland. A group that embodies the sty-listic diversity of this year’s field

is electronic duo All Out. The group is made up of senior and Beelzebub Matt McCormick and his hometown friend Joe Skutnik. The two see themselves as unique in sound but compare the feel of their music to other electro acts Cobra Starship and 3OH!3. Their live act consists of McCormick on vocals and Skutnik DJ-ing and creating sound design. The duo has serious aspirations in the music business and played a set at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas earlier this spring. McCormick acknowl-edged the difficulties involved with getting a Tufts degree while working on a mix tape and book-ing shows. Ultimately, he sees his education as an advantage. “I’m a singer; language is how I express myself,” he said. “Tufts has been extremely beneficial in that regard.” One of the newest bands com-peting this weekend is Mellow B, consisting of junior Zach Meyer and freshmen Elie Kommel, John Bello, Andrew Meleney and Sid

Richardson. This funk groove band describes its sound as a mix of The New Deal, James Brown, Phish and the Disco Biscuits. Although made up mostly of freshmen, save junior saxophonist Meyer, Mellow B has already over-come serious struggles at Tufts. Unable to procure practice rooms in the Granoff Music Center, the band settled for playing in Bello’s room in Tilton Hall, which has caused alienation among the other residents in the building. The band is happy to have a place to play this Saturday with-out fear of being ostracized. The group is confident of its chances at gracing the President’s Lawn stage this May. This Saturday’s competition presents the Tufts student body with five completely different, but talented and immensely entertaining options for Spring Fling. There may not be a clear favorite going into Battle of the Bands, but don’t be surprised if the winner steals the show come May.

BY NICK GANG Daily Staff Writer

BY REBECCA GOLDBERG Daily Editorial Board

Treme

Starring John Goodman, Steve Zahn, Clarke Peters, Wendell PierceAirs Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO

6 Friday, April 16, 2010

others. That is, after all, why she travels around the country, giving talks to groups like the Girl Scouts in an effort to help spread her mes-sage of determination to others. It’s the reason why she’s a spokesper-son for breast cancer awareness, works with a children’s hospital and is an avid supporter of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. Most recently, Johnson was named an ambassador to UNICEF, which she named as her biggest accomplishment. “I was confused and lost a year ago,” she said in the lecture. “But now I get to do what I love, which is help people.” Johnson’s character and devotion to her work is perhaps most embodied in a quote she shared with her audience. The quote, which she said is written everywhere, advises to “follow your heart, and you will never be let down.” Even though Johnson is 18 years old and consequently younger than probably all of her audi-ence at the event, members of the

crowd deemed her speech a suc-cess. It was perhaps a surprise for those who came hoping to see the cute gold medalist. “I was watching the Olympics — and who didn’t have a little crush on her? — so I decided to go,” junior Gordy Jenkins said. “I thought she did very well. She didn’t seem very nervous or anything, but maybe that comes from being on the athletic scene. She came off very mature. It’s funny, getting advice from some-one who’s younger, but I got out of it that you don’t have to dedi-cate every moment of your day to succeed.” Even when faced with auto-graph-seeking fans, unrelenting media questions and paparazzi video cameras, Johnson insists that, at heart, she still is the little Iowa native who captured the hearts of America at Beijing. “I’m just a normal girl,” she told the Daily. “The media likes to put up a lot of hype about controversy and competition and being this machine and phenom. I’m just a normal Midwest girl, and they like to make a story out of it.”

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Teenage gymnast leaves impression on Tufts students SHAWN JOHNSON continued from page 8

Olympics and who I am, and hopefully it will continue because I love what I do.

AP: How do you want people to see you?

SJ: As just a normal girl who saw her dreams come true. It’s weird being put on a pedestal like a celebrity because I don’t feel like it — I still feel like the normal Shawn I’ve always been.

AP: How is it easy for you to remain that relatable person, that same teenager at heart, even when these people are putting you on a pedestal?

SJ: For a second, I can feel like I’m on a pedestal, but then I look at everybody, and they look like my friends, so it’s just like telling my friends my story, and they’ve asked and they want to know, so it’s just about answering questions. I want to tell people what they want to hear and what they’re curious of because I was that person.

AP: What non-gymnastics moment are you most proud of?

SJ: I’m most proud of school. Through everything I’ve main-tained straight A’s. I’ve always wanted to get into an Ivy League school, and I was accepted. I don’t know if I’m going to go, but it’s a huge thing that I’ve always worked for, and I’m really proud of maintaining that.

AP: Michelle Kwan goes to gradu-ate school here. We have a Winter Olympian, but we need a Summer Olympian. Thoughts?

SJ: I will think about it … I’ve always wanted to go to Stanford ever since I was a little girl. I had aspirations to go to Harvard, I’m looking at Duke and Vanderbilt, but Stanford has a gymnastics team and needs help with the coaching.

AP: See, Tufts doesn’t have a gym-nastics team.

SJ: We could start one!

AP: How do you cope with all the stress of flying across the country

and giving all of these lectures?

SJ: I love it. Honestly, it’s a story, and it’s something I want to share because I feel like every-body else. I feel like I just worked hard for something, and I proved that a small-town, Midwest girl can see her dreams come true. I remember grow-ing up in gymnastics, I had my role models, and I looked up to Nastia Liukin. She was a high competitor when I was just get-ting started, and I wanted to ask questions. I wanted to know how to get there and how to achieve your dreams and how to stay in everything and how it works. AP: You mentioned during the talk that you love to watch mov-ies. If the Shawn Johnson life story gets made, who is playing you?

SJ: Jennifer Aniston. She’s just stunning and naturally beautiful.

AP: Could she do a backflip?

SJ: She could learn. She’s Jennifer Aniston. I can coach her.

Johnson talks possibility of attending Tufts INTERVIEW continued from page 8

Friday, April 16, 2010 THE TUFTS DAILY 7

The Western Conference playoff matchups? They look pretty enticing. The East? Not so much, at least not in the first round. Most of the hope for a potential upset went out the window when the Milwaukee Bucks lost Andrew Bogut for the season with a broken right hand. Now it looks like the race for the Eastern Conference championship will come down to which team in the East’s top quartet can put things together to make it to the finals in June. But that is not to say that those teams don’t have question marks that the bot-tom four seeds could exploit in the opening round. The Daily breaks down the pool in the Eastern Conference in preparation for the playoffs: (1) Cleveland Cavaliers (61-21) vs. (8) Chicago Bulls (41-41): It all starts with the Cleveland Cavaliers, who fin-ished las season with the best record in the NBA at 61-21. Cleveland will try to incorporate Shaquille O’Neal back into its rotation for the first time since he suffered a sprained thumb on Feb. 25. With Cleveland still fitting Antawn Jamison into its lineup, the Cavs’ chemistry will be something to watch as they face the Chicago Bulls. Still, Chicago will need a superhu-man effort from Derrick Rose to have a chance to pull off an upset. This is not the same Chicago team that nearly upset the Boston Celtics last season in an epic seven-game series in round one, as key scoring threats John Salmons and Ben Gordon have since departed. The only way this one will be close is if Kirk Hinrich or Luol Deng step up to provide some scoring along-side Rose. Make no mistake — Cleveland is the favorite to win the NBA champion-ship, with soon-to-be two-time reign-ing MVP LeBron James leading the way. But remember that everyone assumed Cleveland would win the East last year, only to see the Cavs fall to the Orlando Magic in the conference finals. The Cavs should go far in these playoffs. The question is, just how far? (2) Orlando Magic (59-23) vs. (7) Charlotte Bobcats (44-38): It would not be wise to count out the defending Eastern Conference champs; Orlando might have been the hottest team in the league in the second half of the sea-son. The Magic, led by Dwight Howard, went 23-5 after the All-Star break to secure the second seed in the confer-ence. The center has been sensational in that span, averaging 19.2 points and 13 rebounds a game, showing consis-tency on offense to go with the best defensive game in the league. The Magic have a lot of talent, but they could definitely use Rashard Lewis at his best. The sweet-shooting forward has had a rough March and April, scor-ing 10 or fewer points in half of his team’s games. His 14.1 points per game was his worst average since his second season, and Orlando won’t win the title without him producing. The Magic won the season series against their opponent, the Charlotte Bobcats, 3-1, and had won seven straight against Charlotte before a loss on March 14. While Stephen Jackson gives the Bobcats a dynamic scoring option, that probably won’t be enough to topple Orlando. The Magic are play-ing their best at the right time, and they will have a great shot at winning it all this year. (3) Atlanta Hawks (53-29) vs. (6) Milwaukee Bucks (46-36): The once-lowly Hawks are back in the playoffs for the third straight season, and this time they have designs of making a run to the Finals. Coming off their first 50-win season since 1997-98, the Hawks are arguably the most talented team in the league with the likes of Josh Smith, Al Horford and Joe Johnson. But perhaps the most important piece to the puzzle that has changed the Hawks from up-and-comers to contenders has been the addition of Jamal Crawford. The Sixth Man of the

Year candidate can light it up off the bench and is second on the team, with 18 points per game. That is about all he can do, but the Hawks don’t need him for much else. But is it still too early for this Atlanta team to be a real contender? Time is fleeting, with Johnson a free agent after this season, so the Hawks need to make their push now. As good as the Hawks can be offen-sively, it is defense that helps teams win in the postseason. Atlanta has qui-etly turned into a solid defensive club, finishing the regular season as the 10th-best team in the league in terms of points allowed per game at 97.0. Defense is also the hallmark of the Hawks’ opponent, the aforementioned Bucks. Milwaukee allows just 96 points a game under head coach Scott Skiles and has held the opposition to just 45 percent shooting. But despite the defensive stats, one gets the feeling this could be an offen-sive display. These two teams like to push the ball, and the Bucks have a point guard who can do that in Rookie of the Year candidate Brandon Jennings. Milwaukee might not have a superstar, but it has the type of depth that can help a team win in the playoffs. Still, without Bogut, their prospects are certainly dimmer. The Australian big man was averaging a double-double with 15.9 points and 10.2 rebounds, and he was second to Howard in the league with 2.5 blocks a game. For a team that sorely lacks depth up front, Bogut can-not be replaced. With him, the Bucks could have pulled off an upset. Without him? This might not be their year. (4) Boston Celtics vs. (5) Miami Heat: This could be aptly described as the Celtics versus Dwyane Wade. If Miami is going to take down Boston, then it will need Wade to be at his best. Miami finished the regular season by winning 12 of its last 13, but only three of those victories came against playoff teams. Facing the Celtics, who won all three meetings in the regular season this year between the two squads, will be a different challenge. These are not the same Celtics as in 2008, when they won a record 17th NBA title. Boston’s inconsistencies have been frustrating for fans, who have been waiting for the Celtics to turn things on and play like the team that was 23-5 after a Christmas Day win over Orlando. The Celtics are the great enigma in these playoffs. When they are at their best, they are a top team in the NBA. But those moments have been few and far between in this season, with big victories followed by maddening losses to some of the dregs of the league. Starting tomorrow, there will be no time left for the Celtics to make excuses. A team with the likes of Paul Pierce, Ray Allen, Kevin Garnett and Rajon Rondo should be making a championship run. But if the Celtics don’t find their rhythm, they could go home early.

The NBA Playoffs are finally here. The next two months promise to pack more excitement than the entire regular season, and once again, the Western Conference is stacked. All eight teams in the West brack-et have at least 50 wins, and the eight-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder would be the fourth seed in the East. Besides the Thunder, there are no newcomers to the Western Conference pool, with every other team having playoff experience dating back to last season. The Daily breaks down the pool in the Western Conference in prepara-tion for the playoffs: (1) Los Angeles Lakers (57-25) vs. (8) Oklahoma City (50-32): The Thunder played the Lakers tough all season, drop-ping two of the first three games by just three points, and winning the most recent contest between the two, 91-75, on March 26. Although they’re the No. 1 seed, the Lakers are backing into the playoffs, hav-ing lost seven of their last 11 games in the regular season. When in sync, Kobe Bryant and company are the toughest team to beat, but they haven’t shown that lately and could find themselves in a very tough series with a young and hungry Thunder team. Fresh off claiming the title as the young-est player in NBA history to capture the season scoring title, Kevin Durant enters the playoffs with even more to prove, and the Thunder have the ability to run the Lakers into the ground with their transi-tion game. This one could be closer than anyone thinks. (2) Dallas Mavericks (55-27) vs. (7) San Antonio Spurs (50-32): The Mavericks seem to come into the playoffs every year with promise but always find a way to disap-point expectations and owner Mark Cuban. This year, however, the Mavericks bring their deepest and most talented roster of the Dirk Nowitzki era into the postseason. With future Hall-of-Famer Jason Kidd at the point and Sixth Man of the Year candi-date Jason Terry averaging 16.6 points per game off the bench, the Mavericks have too much firepower for San Antonio. The Spurs still have the talent, but health and age are always a concern for them. Tim Duncan’s 17.9 points and 10.1 rebounds per game were the lowest totals in his career, and without home-court advan-tage in this series, it will be very tough for the Spurs to win. (3) Phoenix Suns (54-28) vs. Portland Trail Blazers (50-32): The Suns play at the fastest pace of any playoff team, while the Blazers play at the slowest, which should make for an interesting matchup. Anchored by Steve Nash, who dropped 16.5 points and dished out 11.0 assists per game in the regular season, the Suns’ offensive arsenal is scary. Amare Stoudemire (23.1 points, 8.9 rebounds per game) is virtually un-guardable in the paint, and the Suns have a bevy of three-point gunners in Jared Dudley, Grant Hill, Channing Frye and Nash, all of whom shoot better than 42 percent from beyond the arc. The Blazers have matched up well with the Suns, though, having won two of three

regular-season matchups. All-Star guard Brandon Roy, who has averaged 21.5 points per game this season, is questionable to play on Sunday with a slight tear in his meniscus. If Roy is unable to go in that one, or through-out the series, it will seriously hinder the Blazers’ chance of an upset. Portland’s LaMarcus Aldridge will have the tough task of containing Stoudemire, but if he gets into foul trouble, the Suns’ inside-outside game will be too much for the Blazers to handle. (4) Denver Nuggets (53-29) vs. (5) Utah Jazz (53-29): This will be the most intriguing first-round matchup of the playoffs because both teams have the ability to make it to the Finals. The biggest factor in this series will be home-court advantage; the Nuggets went 34-7 at home but 19-22 on the road, while the Jazz saw similar results, going 32-9 at home and 21-20 on the road. If the Jazz can steal a win from the Nuggets in the first two games in Denver, the series will likely go deep to six or seven games. The Nuggets have all the pieces for a championship run: playoff-experienced Chauncey Billups at point and one of the NBA’s most dynamic scorers in Carmelo Anthony. With Kenyon Martin back from injury and J.R. Smith coming off the bench to stretch the defense with his shooting abil-ity, the Nuggets will be a vicious opponent for any team. The Western Conference playoffs always feature tough-fought battles with long series, heroic performances and constant upsets. This year, the balance between the No. 1 and No. 8 seeds is as even as it has ever been. But in the end, the winner will be the team that can win the best on the road. At 27-14 away from home, look for the Mavericks to make it out of the West and get the chance to win the title.

EASTERN CONFERENCE PLAYOFF PREVIEW

Atlanta — yes, Atlanta — has a shot at the Finals

BY ETHAN LANDY Daily Editorial Board

WESTERN CONFERENCE PLAYOFF PREVIEW

Lakers, Mavs are the class of a deep playoff field

BY ALEX SCAROS Daily Staff Writer

MCT

Rajon Rondo’s Celtics slept-walked through the regular season and now find themselves in a playoff matchup against Dwyane Wade’s Heat.

MCT

Mavericks superstar Dirk Nowitzki might have his best shot to date at bringing an NBA title to Dallas.

8

tuftsdaily.com

She’s a role model for young girls and budding gymnasts everywhere, not to mention for celebrities hoping to score an appearance and the ulti-mate victory on Season Eight of “Dancing With the Stars.” But Shawn Johnson, winner of a gold medal and three silvers at the 2008 Summer Olympics, still finds time to travel across the country, giving lectures to her fans in the hopes of inspir-ing them to follow their dreams. The Daily’s Alex Prewitt caught up with Johnson following her talk at Tufts on Wednesday to discuss gymnastics, being a star and the possibility of being a Jumbo.

Alex Prewitt: You’ve won gold medals, and you’ve won “Dancing With the Stars.” So why come to a small school like Tufts to give these talks?

Shawn Johnson: I don’t know if I’ll have a small impact or a big impact, but if I can do a few of these school appearances a month, then I’m reaching a community. And even if it’s one person, it’s getting a message across.

AP: What did you think of the collegiate atmosphere in this lecture hall?

SJ: It was fun, being able to talk to people who are my age and a little older. It’s a little different transition because I’m used to talking to eight-year olds, but it’s still fun.

AP: How do you manage to

still get the same teenage expe-rience that any of these kids in this room with you would have?

SJ: It’s all about balance. I def-initely don’t get the same exact experience, but I get to have things in exchange and in return I get to travel the world and meet amazing people and get some of the normal life-style too. It’s about balancing your time.

AP: You seem to have this incredible rapport with your fans, even though you’re younger than most of them. How important is it to you to maintain that intimate, close relationship with the people who admire you so much?

SJ: It’s really important. I’ve met a lot of people like celeb-rities, people who I’ve looked up to, and they’re really dis-tant. They’re all about the fame, all about staying high-profile. I was here, I was that person, I wanted to know it was like. I wanted to be friends with them and I wanted to return that [feeling] because I didn’t want to be like a stereotype.

AP: Two years ago, you were in Beijing winning four medals. Has the magnitude of what you accomplished diminished?

SJ: It’s definitely changed. Especially after “Dancing With the Stars,” people saw me more as a dancer than an Olympic gymnast, but it’s still there. I’m still being able to do things like this and it’s because of the

The bullet points on Shawn Johnson’s résumé read more like a laundry list of childhood fantasies than that of a shy 18-year-old from Iowa: One gold and three silver med-als at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, winner of Season Eight of “Dancing With the Stars” (2009), two-time guest star of “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” (2008), partici-pant in the Celebrity Softball Game at the MLB All-Star Weekend and appearances on many more talk shows and commercials. It would be an understate-ment to call Shawn Johnson a national superstar. But for Johnson, two years removed from her captivating per-formance in China, the nouns she wants the public to describe her as hardly show up in the typical profile of one of the world’s best gymnasts: philanthropist, movie-lover, devot-ed daughter and best friend. In a sense, Shawn Johnson sees herself simply as another typical teenage girl. When Johnson came to Robinson Hall on Wednesday night to speak for the Tufts Lecture Series, she brought with her a wealth of experience and understanding about making it big in the world of athletics. With a bub-bling smile and an incredibly per-sonal demeanor in front of a size-able crowd, Johnson relayed her tale of struggles in Beijing, overcoming the temptations of Hollywood glam-our and the humanitarian work that has made her so much more than a face on a Wheaties box. “We had a feeling that Shawn would be a very popular choice, and it turned out that the tickets sold out in a couple days, and she fit all of our criteria,” said senior Jon Cohn, the co-chair of the Tufts Lecture Series. “She was great. We wanted

someone who we thought would draw a crowd, someone who we thought all the students would want to hear speak and someone who could get the students excited when they came to campus.” Most everyone with a television or an Internet connection two sum-mers ago heard of Johnson’s gym-nastic accomplishments. Highly touted as a favorite to win five gold medals at age 16 in 2008, the young captain of the U.S. team led her country to a runner-up finish, just behind a controversial Chinese squad. Individually, Johnson took first in the balance beam and silver in the floor exercise. Her proudest achievement came not when she captured the gold on the beam, but when she took second in the individual all-around competition. After completing the first three events in what she saw as flawless form, Johnson walked to her last event and glanced at the scoreboard, noticing that she was in fifth place. The unthinkable went through her mind at that moment, something she shared openly with her collegiate audience — that she felt the desire to give up. Mathematically, Johnson was eliminated. After coming to the rev-elation, though, that continuing was her duty after being picked by her

country, she rebounded in the final event to take silver. “That was my gold medal,” she told the crowd of 175 students and fans. “I won to myself and did the best I possibly could. That meant more to me than anything.” Johnson’s charm and celebrity status were parlayed into an appear-ance on “Dancing With the Stars,” a totally different challenge. Trading in her leotards and balance beams for sequined dresses and two-steps, Johnson learned the importance of surrounding oneself with strong influences, something she conveyed throughout her speech at Tufts. “When I was in L.A., I never real-ized it,” Johnson told the Daily, when asked about getting sucked into the allure of Hollywood. “I was a part of the lifestyle, I was a part of the red carpets and everything. But when I got home and I didn’t have all of that, it showed to me that I got wrapped up in it, and I didn’t stay true to myself. So it was a big lesson learned, and it was the only moment in my life when I didn’t have it. All it took was coming home to see it.” Talking to Johnson, even for a few minutes, reveals a humble teenager in love with her position to helping

For the past five years, the softball team has been the cream of the crop in the NESCAC East. But its reign could come to an end this weekend as the Trinity Bantams come to town for a three-game series that will likely decide the regular-season title. While the Bantams are currently one game up in the standings, if Tufts takes two out of three, it will leapfrog Trinity into first thanks to the head-to-head tiebreaker. “These games are definitely really important,” said outfielder Stefanie Tong, one of four seniors who will be honored this Saturday on Senior Day. “A lot is on the line and a lot will be determined about seeding. I think we are very capable of beating Trinity.” Conference play has not been a chal-lenge in recent years for the Jumbos, who will be entering the weekend hav-ing won 46 of their last 50 NESCAC East games. But this Trinity team is different from many teams Tufts has throttled in the past. The Bantams are the top team in the NESCAC East in runs per game and are second to Bowdoin in ERA. Senior outfielder Jessica Tait and junior co-captain Nicole Nardella anchor the Trinity lineup with the sec-ond- and third-highest slugging per-centages in the NESCAC, respectively,

behind only Tufts’ own senior co-cap-tain Casey Sullivan. Tait, the Bantams’ leadoff hitter, is tops in the conference in double and triples, while Nardella has slugged five home runs thus far, posing a dangerous threat in the cleanup slot at all times. Stymieing the Trinity bats will be a task to handle for a young Tufts pitching staff that is just coming into its own of late. Junior Izzie Santone and freshmen Rebecca DiBiase and Aly Moskowitz have gotten into a rhythm in recent weeks, evenly splitting the starting duties for each of the last two conference series. In conference play, they are a combined 5-1 with a 1.58 ERA, having allowed more than three runs just once. “In California, it was shocking because in the college game you can’t make a mistake on a pitch,” said DiBiase, refer-ring to the Jumbos’ spring break trip out West. “One pitch over the middle could lose you an entire game. After California, I knew better what to expect and how to prepare in practice. It has been easier to settle down because of the experience I’ve gotten.” On the offensive side of the ball, the Jumbos will be looking to emulate Sullivan, the reigning NESCAC Player of the Week. Sullivan banged out four home runs last weekend against Bates and now leads the conference in that category. The Tufts bats have shown power all season, hitting 16 round-trip-

pers in Tufts’ first 22 games. “I don’t think any team member expects to hit a home run,” Tong said. “We don’t expect to score if we can’t string hits together. It shows we have a lot of power and potential on the team, but it will be even better when we can string hits together and score even more runs.” But the Jumbos will need to bounce back after only managing one run in a non-conference game against Bridgewater St. this past Tuesday. It was Tufts’ lowest scoring output since returning home from their California trip, and is something they cannot afford to repeat against a very compe-tent Trinity team. “We came off on a high from the Bates series and had already scored seven runs against Bridgewater the week before,” Tong said. “I think what we did wrong was assuming if we didn’t score early we would make it up in the later innings. And it just didn’t come through for us in this game. With the Trinity game, I think we will be ready to attack them from the get go.” Recent history favors the Jumbos, who have only dropped three games to the Bantams in the last decade. They will also have a home field advantage, as the single Saturday game — which was pushed back due to rain forecast — will fall at the same time as the TCU-sponsored Springcoming.

“It’s always really nice to see all of the fans out,” DiBiase said. “Also, having other Tufts teams playing around us is great because there are fans all over the place, and the school spirit really helps. It definitely gets me fired up.”

INSIDENBA Playoff Preview 7SportsSports

INTERVIEW | SHAWN JOHNSON

Johnson talks life in Beijing and Hollywood

BY ALEX PREWITT Daily Editorial Board

see INTERVIEW, page 6

FEATURE | SHAWN JOHNSON

Just another Midwestern teenage girlOlympic gold medalist, ‘Dancing’ winner speaks at Tufts

BY ALEX PREWITT Daily Editorial Board

see SHAWN JOHNSON, page 6

SOFTBALL

Jumbos, Bantams set to duel for irst place in NESCAC EastComing off midweek loss, Tufts will look to rebound while honoring senior class

BY ETHAN STURM Senior Staff Writer

VIRGINIA BLEDSOE/TUFTS DAILY

Olympic gold medalist Shawn Johnson speaks during an event sponsored by the Tufts Lecture Series Wednesday night in Robinson Hall.

SCOTT TINGLEY/TUFTS DAILY

Senior shortstop Casey Sullivan will lead the softball team into a critical three-game stretch against Trinity this weekend.