NEWSWIRE

FILM STUDIES MAJOR

Undergraduates can major in film and media studies for the first time this year. Malcolm Turvey is the codirector of the new program and the first to hold the Sol Gittleman Professorship, created by an endowment to honor the university’s former longtime provost. “You hear all this talk about the death of cinema,” Turvey says, “but it’s usually by people who only watch Hollywood films or the occasional American indie and don’t bother to go and see films from around the world.” full story

CHANNEL SWIM RECORD

At 4 a.m. on September 7, off a beach between Folkestone and Dover, England, three former Tufts swimmers, Andrew Altman and Chris Vorlicek, both A11, and Lou Tamposi, A12, began their quest to complete a relay swim across the English Channel—a feat so daunting that more people have climbed Mount Everest than have successfully swum these twenty-six miles. Nine hours and fifty minutes later, they came ashore on a beach in Cap Gris Nez, France. No three-man relay has finished faster, and the Channel Swimming Association validated their record. “Leading up to it, I was acclimating my body,” Tamposi says. “I was only taking cold showers.” full story

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