@Mathmom - It is great to hear that your son is doing well!
With respect to board games, it may have been that your son was just hanging out with the wrong group of nerds! 
Tufts has a club called “The Strategic Gaming Society” with 135 subscribers on thie list serve. It is also one of three university based gaming societies (Tufts, MIT, GWU) listed on an international gaming blog (CC won’t allow the link). I have seen them playing board games in the student center on a couple of visits.
https://elist.tufts.edu/wws/info/sgs
Your son might like to know that a board game cafe opened up pretty recently in Teele Square (a stones throw from campus)
https://tuftsdaily.com/arts/2016/10/14/board-games-coffee-knight-moves-cafe-comes-somerville/
I believe that The Strategic Gaming Society tends to draw more from Tufts’ STEM community than Tufts’ IR/Poly Sci community.