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Illustration: Aaron Meshon

Social Media Savvy

When it comes to innovation in social media, Jumbos take the gold. In CollegeSurfing.com’s Web 2.0 College Olympics, Tufts led fifty colleges and universities judged to be making the fullest and most creative use of hip new communications tools.

CollegeSurfing cited the Tufts Facebook group, which links to blogs like “T is for the T” by Chase Gregory, who shares web comics about her life, and “african@tufts.edu” by Ngoni Madungwe, a chemical engineering student from Zimbabwe who quotes Kierkegaard, Frost, and Elton John in a single soul-searching post. Tufts was also commended for its diverse Twitter feeds, which include FreeFoodatTufts, by “a poor, hungry graduate student who has discovered . . . the cornucopia that is free food on campus” (“Free brunch today from 11–1 at #Tufts Institute of the Environment!”).

Then there’s spark.uit.tufts.edu, which offers help in producing wikis, podcasts, web conferences, blogs, and other social media phenomena. With all these resources, could there be more heavy metal in Tufts’ future?