Tufts University President Sunil Kumar announced sweeping new tariffs on products and services supplied by outside vendors in a press conference on Wednesday.
“For decades our campus has been looted, pillaged, raped, and plundered by outside vendors near and far, both friend and foe alike.” Kumar said. “Unless C&W Services is prepared to exclusively employ Tufts students for their janitorial services, they will be subjected to a one hundred percent tariff.”
“If you want your tariff rate to be zero, then you build your product right here at Tufts.” he added.
“From now on, all construction at Tufts will be done by undergrad engineering students. The construction site at Blakely Hall will be the new NOLOP.” he continued. “The outsourcing ends today. It’s time we put Tufts first.”
Kumar clarified that the new tariffs will also apply to digital services used at Tufts.
Duo Push, a two-factor authentication service used to access Tufts accounts, will be replaced by Mono Pull, a single-factor authentication service developed by Tufts Technology Services. “All of these extra factors, what are they doing for us?” he remarked.
Box, a cloud-based storage system used by various departments at Tufts, will be replaced by Bag, a physical storage system managed by Tisch Library. “Students and faculty who wish to store their files will simply print them out and place them in a paper bag with their name on it. Then we will throw all the bags in one big pile so any time someone needs access to their files, they can simply search through the pile of paper bags until they find theirs,” Kumar said.
Canvas, a learning management system used by professors, will be replaced by Cloth, an in-house solution developed by the Computer Science Department. “Canvas has always been a lousy product. We are better off making it ourselves.” Kumar added.
The new tariffs are part of the President’s “Made in Medford/Somerville” initiative, which aims to decrease Tufts’ reliance on outside institutions. The new tariffs come in the wake of billionaire and special university advisor, Dhruv Sampat, and his newly created Department of Jumbo Efficiency, which aims to eliminate “fraud and abuse” within Tufts departments.
