Student life at Tufts University

The Tufts 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.

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. 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.

Traditions

Cannon

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. 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.

[...] Quad Run

The [...] Quad Run was originated by residents of West Hall and was originally known as the "West Hall [...] 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 [...] Quad Run takes place just before fall finals, in December, and now attracts hundreds of students to unwind by stripping and running a circuit around the Rez Quad. Most students run [...], but some wear costumes such as capes or shrink wrap.

Spring Fling

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 (in reverse order of appearance, i.e. the headliner is listed first):

1980: Pousette Dart Band, Willie Nineger Band, Beelzebubs

1981: Pousette Dart Band, James Montgomery Band, NRBQ

1982: Clarence Clemons and the Red Bank Rockers, Chubby Checker

1983: Evelyn "Champagne" King, NRBQ, The Kool Rays

1984: The Stompers, Junior Walker and the All-Stars

1985: The Busboys, 'Til Tuesday

1986: Ministry, Scruffy the Cat, Plate O' Shrimp (the concert was held at Nine Lansdowne in Kenmore Square due to rain)

1987: The Smithereens, The Bongos, Plate O' Shrimp

1988: Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Treat Her Right

1989: The Robert Cray Band, Ivan Neville and the Rooms, Plan B

1990: The Band, Barrence Whitfield and the Savages

1991: Cheap Trick, Heretix

1992: Blues Traveler, Shinehead, Urban Blight (the concert was held in Cousens Gymnasium due to rain)

1993: Violent Femmes, The Lemonheads, Digable Planets

1994: Fishbone, They Might Be Giants, Queen Latifah, Thumper

1995: B.B. King, Denny Dent, Brand Nubian, Buffalo Tom

1996: George Clinton and the P-Funk All-Stars, Violent Femmes, moe.

1997: A Tribe Called Quest, Barenaked Ladies, G. Love & Special Sauce

1998: LL Cool J, Maceo Parker, Less Than Jake

1999: Ben Folds Five, Cherry Poppin' Daddies, The Sugarhill Gang

2000: The Roots, Better Than Ezra, Reel Big Fish

2001: Original P, Guster, Jurassic 5, Redshift 6

2002: moe., Toots and the Maytals, Mobb Deep

2003: Busta Rhymes, Reel Big Fish (the entire event was canceled due to rain)

2004: The Roots, Less Than Jake, The Sugarhill Gang

2005: Busta Rhymes, Goldfinger, The Walkmen, The Juice (Busta's performance was canceled again due to rain)

2006: Guster, Blackalicious, The Slip, Melodesiac

2007: T.I., Lupe Fiasco, Spoon, Oxford Collapse, Ezra Furman and the Harpoons

2008: Dropkick Murphys, Common, Tea Leaf Green, FunkSoulLove

2009: Ludacris, The Decemberists, Asher Roth, The Ride

Tuftonia's Day

The night before Spring Fling, the Tuftonia's Day fireworks take place on the Rez Quad.

Pumpkining

The Tufts Mountain Club famously "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.

Arts

Tufts has a vibrant arts community, with many students participating on both an academic and an extra-curricular level.

Pen, Paint & Pretzels

Pen, Paint & Pretzels, or 3Ps, is Tufts' umbrella organization for student-run performing arts groups on campus. Founded in 1910, it is the oldest student organization at Tufts. Complementing the Tufts Drama & Dance Departmental season, 3Ps produces several plays each semester, giving students countless opportunities to act in, design, stage manage, direct, and/or produce theatre. As well, 3Ps is the umbrella organization for dance ensembles, comedy groups, improv groups, HYPE! (a mime troupe), Torn Ticket II (a MusicAL theatre group), and Bare Bodkin (a student-written theatre group).

Athletics

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.

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 two American colleges using American football rules.

In 1943, the Boston Red Sox used the Tufts athletic facilities during spring training due to gasoline rationing limiting the team's travel.

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.

Campus media and publications

• Tufts Daily, the daily student newspaper and the most prominent source of news for the last two decades; the Daily is notable for its financial independence, receiving no funding from the student activities fee.
• Tufts Observer, a weekly newsmagazine and the oldest student organization on campus, having been founded in 1895 as the university's first student newspaper.
• The Primary Source, a journal of conservative thought.
• The Zamboni, a humor and satire magazine.
• Tufts Traveler, a travel journal founded in 2005.
• WMFO (91.5 FM Medford) is freeform radio operated by students and community volunteers since 1970; the station broadcasts 365 days a year and operates out of Curtis Hall.
• TUTV, the campus television station, operated by Tufts students in partnership with the Ex College.
• JumboCast, a student-run broadcast group that specializes in streaming Tufts events live over the internet via webcast.
• Hemispheres, since 1976 one of the few undergraduate journals dedicated to international relations in the United States.
• Public Journal, an alternative literary magazine, founded in 2005, which focuses on publishing found literature.
• Outbreath, a literary magazine which publishes short stories, poems, one-act plays, and photography.
• Melisma, a journal of independent music and culture founded in 2004.
• TuftScope: The Interdisciplinary Journal of Health, Ethics, and Policy, an interdisciplinary journal of health, ethics, and policy founded in 2001.
• Tufts Historical Review, an academic journal of global history consisting of undergraduate and graduate students, and distributed both at Tufts and at other research universities.