<p>Yes, I'm aware that people have asked this type of question, but I'm trying to be more specific.</p>
<p>Are there any traditions/cultures in Tufts that really MAKE it Tufts? I'm not talking about "oh it's very diverse, small liberal arts feel, it's suburban but near Boston blah blah" I'm talking about something ONLY Tufts has. Here are some examples from other schools:</p>
<p>Harvard: Rubbing John Harvard's foot; Finals clubs;
Brown: Josiah S Carberry;
WUSTL: The "Bunny" statue;
MIT: East/West Campus culture;</p>
<p>Hope I got my point across. It could be a well-known inside joke, just anything that is TUFTS-ONLY is fine. If there are none... I hope not, since Tufts is known for pretty quirky students.</p>
<p>The “quirky” thing is somewhat of a myth, a marketing idea that didn’t go so well, imo. We found quirky kids at every school we looked at including Brown, UChicago, Cornell, URochester, Brandeis, CMU…in fact, every school has “quirky” kids!</p>
<p>Tufts really has it all! Quirky and non-quirky! 
My S1 will be an incoming sophomore at Tufts, and he is anything but quirky! And he LOVES it there!</p>
<p>Not sure what your question is…Tufts has an Experiential College…why don’t you google Tufts and see what you find related to your question! I’m sure you know they are focused on Global, International Relations, and giving back to the community…but it’s hard to define them as one way since they, as most schools, have many cultures that they are defined by!</p>
<p>Tufts has the tradition of decorating the canon if that’s the kind of thing that you mean. Different groups will decorate it in the middle of the night from what I understand.</p>
<p>^^^Not sure that’s really unique to Tufts. We visited many schools that also had cannons or fences or something to paint…</p>
<p>One thing that is unique to Tufts, I think, is the Jonathan Tisch College for Active Citizenship…</p>
<p>Colleges aren’t defined by a single unique attribute; so much goes into it, from the people to the dining to the professors. Trick-turning is cool, and the Hill is a distinguishing (if occasionally bothersome) feature, and the subsequent Uphill vs. Downhill wars are amusing 
There is a very strong school spirit centered around love for the school itself and (maybe even more so) for elephants (Jumbo!). The camaraderie is amazing, and I’ve never seen so much mutual respect among a group of peers at any school before. As chocchipcookie said, there is a lot of emphasis on active citizenship, especially on a worldly scale, not just locally, and the Experimental College is a pretty neat addition. There are a lot of things that go into making Tufts unique, but most of them aren’t really tangible. A lot of it is (for lack of a better word) the “vibe” of the students, professors, and school as a whole. Hope that answers your question somewhat =)</p>
<p>@chocchipcookie: I tried googling but all I found were the official information from the school. I wanted to know something that’s more “student-centric”, perhaps well-known student traditions or inside-jokes.</p>
<p>Did you see the list in this article?
[Student</a> life at Tufts University - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_life_at_Tufts_University]Student”>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Student_life_at_Tufts_University)</p>
<p>P.S. the Naked Quad Run has been banned due to safety concerns.</p>
<p>The Perching Pumpkins are fun:
[Tufts</a> Alumni - Photo Gallery](<a href=“Tuftsalumni.org”>Tuftsalumni.org)</p>
<p>There might be some fun videos here under “Student Life” or “Favorite Videos” - I haven’t really looked. <a href=“Tufts University - YouTube”>Tufts University - YouTube;
<p>Excellent excellent. Thanks for the input!</p>
<p>[Jumbo</a> - History - Get to Know Tufts - Tufts University](<a href=“http://www.tufts.edu/home/get_to_know_tufts/history/jumbo/]Jumbo”>http://www.tufts.edu/home/get_to_know_tufts/history/jumbo/)
…so now we have a concrete elephant instead of a stodgy statue of an old founder like most colleges.</p>
<p>Also you can text the Cookie man your address and he’ll bring you cookies! (not really a tradition or anything since it just started this year but cool nonetheless)
[Home</a> | SWEET IDEASWEET IDEA](<a href=“http://haveasweetidea.com/blog/]Home”>http://haveasweetidea.com/blog/)</p>
<p>It’s partially a marketing myth (Tufts is not as “quirky” as say, Vassar), but the campus definitely has its own culture. As does any campus. [Stuff</a> Tufts People Like | This blog is devoted to stuff that Tufts people like](<a href=“Private Site”>http://stufftuftspeoplelike.■■■■■■■■■■■■■/) is pretty good with some of it.</p>
<p>There are a lot of cool things, but a lot of it also differs from group to group. Stuff Tufts People Like touches on a lot of things.</p>
<p>One thing that I think is actually pretty cool is the Tufts Daily. I’m pretty sure Tufts is the smallest school to have a daily newspaper. It’s good for keeping up on what’s going on around campus and for keeping you busy in big seminar classes (sudoku, crossword, scramble). My favorite part of the Daily was probably the Editorial/Op-Ed section. It’s a really good way to maintain a campus dialogue on major issues occurring on and off campus.</p>
<p>Tufts Dance Collective is another really cool group. It can be somewhat tough to get into dances now if you don’t know any choreographers, but it’s basically a dance show at the end of every semester that you rehearse for weekly and no dance experience is required. There are around 20 different dances per semester.</p>
<p>The general off-campus culture is unique compared to the schools most of my friends from home go to. The majority (I think) of upperclassmen live off campus but it seems like a majority of the houses abutting campus are occupied by Tufts students, so most of them aren’t far. It’s nice to be able to get away from the dorms (whether you live off campus or a friend does).</p>
<p>I can think of more if you want.</p>
<p>^ It’s fine haha. I’ve got what I’ve wanted from the replies, but of course it’d be helpful for other users if you could post more information.</p>
<p>Tufts Dance Collective is a big one–it’s a huge dance group that you need no experience for, and hundreds of students participate in it each semester. Most of the dances are really silly, and there’s even a faculty dance. We also have a pretty big Burlesque troupe that performs each semester and again, requires no dance experience. We have BEATS, a student percussion group that sometimes performs on buckets/pots/etc outside the dining hall on sunny days. Some of our performance and preorientation groups are really into flash mobs. That can get annoying when you’re trying to eat lunch. We have both an Arts Haus and a Crafts House, and the Crafts House runs the Crafts Center, which is a super cool room in the basement of one of the dorms that is full of every craft supply imaginable, and anyone can go there almost any evening and make whatever your heart desires. It’s cool. </p>
<p>Honestly, as a student here, it’s hard to think of what the UNIQUE Tufts Culture is. Not because it isn’t there, but because most stuff is just a part of my daily lives and it doesn’t occur to me that it might be Tufts specific. Or because I haven’t gone to any other schools, I don’t know what is unique and what isn’t. Who knows? Also, don’t rub John Harvard’s foot. It’s also a tradition for students to pee on it.</p>