Opinions
Life & Style
Food columnist Molly Edison PZ ‘18 tours the top six local donut shops so you don’t have to.
Why won’t the Consortium embrace safety in transparency? Adam Starr PO ’18 on the Clery Act.
Page 5
Page 7
THE
STUDENT
LIFE
The Student Newspaper of the Claremont Colleges Since 1889
CLAREMONT, CA
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
VOL. CXXX NO. 1
DACA’s Impending End Looms, But Mobilizes Students Kellen Browning & Kristine Chang
Lia Francis-Bongue • The Student Life
Don Chen (PO 18), Jaira Koh (PO 17), and Anais Gonzalez Nyberg (PO 20) at the Defend DACA event in Women’s Union at Pomona College on Friday.
CMC Sanctions Mac Donald Talk Blockaders Samuel Breslow & Liam Brooks Seven Claremont McKenna College students who participated in the blockade of conservative commentator Heather Mac Donald’s talk in April were sanctioned by administrators, according to an email sent to the college community in July. Of the seven students, three received year-long suspensions, two received semester-long suspensions, and two have been placed on conduct probation. The degree of the sanctions was determined by “the nature and degree of leadership in the blockade, the acknowledgment and acceptance of responsibility, and other factors,” according to the all-campus email. The sanctions followed a months-long investigation by the college after President Hiram Chodosh promised that students would be “held accountable.” The decision was made by a panel of three “trained community representatives” — one student, one staff member, and one faculty member. The sanctioned students, who remain anonymous, could not be reached for comment. Nana Gyamfi, an attorney with Justice Warriors 4 Black Lives, a collaborative network providing legal and other support to people involved in anti-racism activism, informally represented and counseled the students. To Gyamfi, the severity of the sanctions for students involved in nonviolent protest indicate they are being used as an example. “The students were being held up as, ‘this is how we’ll whip you at the whipping post if you dare to speak up,’” Gyamfi said. “We had hoped that a college that claims to be about diversity and that claims to want to be inclusive would understand that this is not how you respond.” The students were charged based on “a preponderance of video and photographic evidence and a limited amount of witness testimony.” A spokesperson for
CMC declined to elaborate on the sources of the videos or photos. When Mac Donald was scheduled to speak on April 6, up to 300 student protesters surrounded the entrances to the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum in an attempt to block her from entering the building. “We CANNOT and WILL NOT allow fascism to have a platform,” wrote protest organizers in a statement published anonymously to Facebook before the action. “To protect the current police and prison system means that you are maintaining the racist system which constantly murders and dehumanizes people of color.” In a timeline of the April 6 events released by the college as a series of frequently asked questions, student demonstrators are described as demonstrating “an unexpected level of speed, coordination, and intentionality,” moving past security fencing and Campus Safety officers to establish the blockade. Mac Donald, who had been inside the Athenaeum since before the start of the protest, delivered her talk to a mostly empty room. CMC distributed it via a livestream. She subsequently appeared for interviews on Fox News and penned an account for City Journal in which she wrote that the attempt “to try to prevent me or other dissenting intellectuals from connecting with students is simply an effort to maintain the Left’s monopoly of thought.” In a statement to TSL in July, she congratulated CMC “on following through on its promise to hold at least some students responsible” but questioned why the number of students sanctioned was not greater. The college also “issued provisional suspensions of oncampus privileges to four nonCMC students who appear to have played significant roles
Follow TSL on the web.
See SANCTIONS page 3
In 2007, an undocumented Pomona College student came to the United States from Mexico with her family seeking treatment for her younger brother’s leukemia. In the process, they overstayed their visa and decided to continue living in California. “For a while, we thought [the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program] was going to be a solution to the issue of being undocumented,” the student said. “It meant safety and stability.” The student asked to remain anonymous due to fears of deportation. Last Tuesday, Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced an upcoming end to the DACA program, outraging immigration advocates and leaving the futures of the United States’ nearly 800,000 DACA recipients unclear. “It still hasn’t sunk in completely,” the student said. “I don’t have a plan in place. If there is no amendment to DACA or a followup policy, I’m not sure what’s going to happen.” DACA was enacted by former President Barack Obama in 2012 and allowed young undocumented immigrants brought unauthorized to the United States by their parents to apply for a status that lets them live, work, and study without fear of deportation.
DACA recipients were able to apply for a renewal every two years, and can still do so if their current status ends by March 5, according to information released by the Department of Homeland Security. After Oct. 5, however, the Department will no longer accept new applications or requests for renewal. Despite Trump’s hardline stance on undocumented immigrants throughout his presidential campaign and presidency, he showed sympathy at times for the DACA program. “We’re gonna show great heart,” Trump told reporters at a press conference in February. “DACA is a very, very difficult subject for me, I will tell you.” In a statement last week, Trump called on Congress to act, noting that his six-month phaseout of DACA offers a “window of opportunity” to pass an immigration bill. He also tweeted that Congress has six months to “legalize” the program, and will “revisit the issue” if they do not. Trump’s statements, however, did not assuage fears among organizations at the 5Cs, which rallied behind undocumented immigrants and organized a phone banking event last Friday. Students called and emailed U.S. senators and representatives,
See DACA page 2
Scripps Over-Enrollment Causes Housing Crisis Meghan Bobrowsky & Jojo Sanders When Emilee Manske SC ‘21 was tired, lost, and wanted to return to her room after a latenight orientation event near the Scripps College gym, she called Campus Safety and asked for a ride back to where she lives – the Claremont Graduate University apartments. The 5Cs “encourage all students, including those who reside in the CGU apartments to use [Campus Safety for rides],” Director of Campus Safety Stan Skipworth wrote in an email to TSL. “The requests coming from those students [have] not placed any extra burden on our staff or our services.” But Manske said Campus Safety told her that since she lived in the apartments, 0.6 miles north of campus, she had to take the shuttle that runs until 2:00 a.m. every night. After several minutes of debate, Campus Safety eventually sent someone to take Manske and her roommate back to the apartments. But she was unsettled by the experience,
and now does not feel like Campus Safety is reliable. “They’re supposed to take you anywhere anytime, especially if you’re a Scripps student and you want to go back to your dorm,” Manske said. “They should be able to take you back.” Manske is one of the 38 Scripps first-years who lives in the CGU apartments, which are a 12-minute walk from campus, as a result of Scripps enrolling its largest class ever – 329 students. “We know that our applicants often have many great offers to consider, so we aim to admit enough students to meet the enrollment target,” explained Laura Stratton, Scripps director of admission, in an email to TSL. “What we didn’t anticipate was that more students would accept our offer of admission than we expected.” One day before Scripps issued room assignments for the class of 2021, Chloe Lesh SC ‘21 received an email from her primary contact dean, Leslie Schnyder, informing her of a “great opportunity to create community” and asking for See OVER-ENROLLMENT page 3
Mudd Awarded $400,000 in Federal Grants Adrián Suárez del Busto The National Science Foundation recently approved both of Harvey Mudd College’s petitions for funding from the Major Research Instrumentation Program this year, totaling more than $400,000 in grants to update research and training equipment in the chemistry department. “I don’t think anyone’s pulled this off before,” said chemistry professor Gerald Van Hecke, who spearheaded the petition for a new differential scanning calorimeter. Each academic institution can only apply for two projects to be funded by the research program per year, and competition is strong because these are “big
http://tsl.news
Rainie Kaplan & Dominic Frempong • The Student Life
bucks for big things,” said chemistry professor David Vosburg, who led the effort to update HMC’s nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer. A grant of $331,285 will pay for an update to the spectrometer, an instrument similar to the MRIs used for medical diagnostics. “In an MRI you can distinguish tissues because of their density of hydrogens,” Vosburg said. “The [spectrometer] is just fancier because you get a lot more detail.” The spectrometer needed an update because the model currently in use is no longer maintained by the manufacturer. If any piece failed, fixing it would be complicated and slow, Vosburg said.
See MUDD page 3
Like us on facebook: facebook.com/thestudentlife
Students Grapple with Damage, Fallout of Recent Hurricanes Helena Ong & Nastia Kourotchkina Hurricane Harvey tore into Texas in late August, with Category Four winds up to 130 mph and over 50 inches of rain, breaking a record for the continental United States. Last weekend, Hurricane Irma made landfall in South Florida, also at Category Four. 5C students and their families are among those affected by these storms. While most students from the affected areas were safe in Claremont, watching their hometowns get hit wasn’t easy.
@TSLnews
“It’s hard to be here in Claremont and not be there to help out,” Lauren Schoen PO ‘20, whose family lives in Houston, wrote in an email to TSL. “My entire Facebook feed during the storm was of friends posting videos of their houses flooding, of being rescued by boats .... It was difficult to watch, and know I can’t be there for them.” The Harvey death toll is up to 82 people, with up to $65 billion in damage, and the Irma death toll has reached 31 people, according to latest reports. Officials have not yet calculated the damage
See HURRICANE page 2 NEWS................................1 LIFE & STYLE.....................4 OPINIONS........................6 SPORTS.............................8
NEWS PAGE 2
SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
THE STUDENT LIFE
DACA: Phone Bankers Implore Congress to Pass Immigration Bill Continued from Page 1 urging them to support DACA and pass an immigration bill. “People have a right to be in the United States without fear of deportation and harassment based on immigration status,” said Wentao Guo PO ‘19, one of the phone bank organizers. The event “was really about pushing representations to develop and pass lasting legislation to protect undocumented people.” 5C administrations have also shown support for undocumented students. Following the announcement of DACA’s upcoming cancellation, all five colleges sent emails of support notifying students of resources such as the Monsour Counseling and Psychological Services Center and the Chaplains of the Claremont Colleges. But support for undocumented students – as well as undocumented and DACA student admissions policies – differs across the five colleges. The undocumented student believes Pomona College has the most comprehensive services, which include an emergency fund for immigration-related costs, pro bono legal services, letters for undocumented students confirming their good standing at the college and lawyers specifically consulted for the G28 form – a form for detained students. “Colleges and universities, as leaders of higher education, must support members of our society,” Pomona Dean of Students Miriam Feldblum said. “Without comprehensive immigration reform, we can’t do that. We need to advocate for a legislative remedy for the rescinding of DACA.” Pomona is not, however, a “sanctuary school,” which typically refuses to comply with Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials seeking undocumented students. Feldblum said that while “Pomona does in practice all that campuses that call themselves sanctuary campuses do,” the term “sanctuary college” does not have the legal meaning that “sanctuary city” or “sanctuary state” can have.
Lia Francis-Bongue • The Student Life
Helena Essex (PO ‘20) at the Defend DACA event hosted at the Women’s Union at Pomona College on Friday.
“People are trying to use the term ‘sanctuary campus’ because it seems to speak to support, and I fully resonate with the desire to speak to support,” Feldblum explained. “The way to do that is to actually say what we’re doing and not to use a designation that does not necessarily have substance and can cause confusion.”
SANCTIONS: Other Colleges Considering Investigations Continued from Page 1 in the blockade” and “provided evidence of policy violations by students of the other Claremont Colleges to their respective deans of students,” according to the allcampus email. Miriam Feldblum, Pomona College’s dean of students, wrote in a statement to TSL that the college had received “photographs and information” from CMC, and that Dean Townes and Dean Waugh, who advise Pomona’s judicial council, would “determine the need for an investigation, oversee the investigation if appropriate, and then proceed from there, again, as appropriate.” A spokesperson for Scripps College wrote in an email to TSL that the college had “received information from CMC and [is] reviewing the matter.” Harvey Mudd College Dean of
Students Jon Jacobsen wrote in an email to TSL that “the chair of our Disciplinary Board will follow up with CMC in the fall, when students return to campus, to discuss any allegations of HMC students violating the Demonstration Policy and any subsequent Honor Code actions.” Pitzer College Vice President for Student Affairs Brian Carlisle wrote in an email to TSL that “Pitzer is in communication with Claremont McKenna College. We are currently reviewing all information provided.” CMC will also be conducting an additional review to prevent what it calls “attempts to disrupt college programs in a non-peaceful, materially disruptive way.” This story originally appeared on tsl.news in July.
If ICE showed up on campus searching for a student, Feldblum said that Pomona would require a warrant and challenge any subpoenas in court. Pomona will “use anything in terms of legal means and public voice to make sure that it is doing all that it can,” she said. Pitzer College declared itself a sanctuary school last November.
Pitzer President Melvin Oliver wrote in a recent campus email that Pitzer is “concerned that important members of our community — immigrant students, DACA students, Muslim students — will be targeted because of their immigration status or religious beliefs.” Generally, students have called for 5C administrations to do more
in support of DACA. Tanvi Rajgaria PO ‘18 suggested a rapid response team in case ICE comes to campus, which could include an instant text system to notify students and provide places of refuge. One undocumented and DACA 5C student who requested to remain anonymous said there should be
more mental health services geared specifically toward undocumented students. “This is not just about the ability to work or to study. The phasing out of DACA is psychological warfare,” the student said. “Being undocumented impacts you emotionally in a way that nothing else can.”
HURRICANE: Administrations Pledge Support, Accomodations for Affected Students Continued from Page 1 from Irma. Jeni Zhu HM ‘21 called her parents in Coral Springs, Florida and texted friends and high school teachers in areas that lost power. “Although it’s hard to help from afar, the best thing you can do for someone who is riding out the storm is to keep them updated if they lose power,” Zhu said. With social media and a 24hour news cycle focusing on the hurricanes, however, some students needed to limit their exposure. “[I saw] video after video of really bad things or really good things, people saving themselves or people saving each other, to really horrible things – this is flooded now and then this is flooded now and you’re just like, ‘I know that place. Wow, my friends live there,’” said Amanda Martinez SC ‘20, who is also from Houston.
“For a lot of time, I would slam my phone down, because it would drain a lot of your energy at random dinners and random social settings,” she said. “So it was really hard to try to force yourself to stop and try to be here and do nothing about it.” Martinez was able to leave Houston in time for the first day of classes, but said others were stuck there during the storm. One of her friends just arrived on campus last week. Blocked roadways and delayed flights caused by the hurricanes left some students stranded at the start of the academic year. “A lot of my friends were in mandatory evacuation areas, but it was impossible [for them to evacuate],” said Shiv Pandya PO’ 20 of Sugar Land, Texas, a city just southwest of Houston. “Some of my friends’ houses got flooded,” Pandya added. “One of my friends left [for college] and was able to make it out, so another one left a few hours later and was going follow the
same pathway, but then that pathway got flooded and she ended up having to get rescued from her sinking car.” In the wake of the devastation, the 5Cs have worked to provide affected students with academic, financial, and mental support. “I have reached out to all students whose home addresses were in Texas, Louisiana, Florida, Mexico, checking in with them, if they have any needs or concerns, checking to see how their families are doing given the natural disasters,” Pomona College Dean of Students, Miriam Feldblum, wrote in an email to TSL. “The Financial Aid office also reaches out to students to let them know to connect with financial aid in case new needs arise.” Martinez said a Scripps College dean told her the administration has talked to the professors of students who have not yet arrived on campus and will be patient with such cases. Pandya also received emails from Pomona during the storm,
asking students to reach out for resources, including immediate assistance regarding financial aid. “They were pretty understanding,” Pandya said. “I know some students who weren’t able to come, so I think they’re taking everything into account – the Financial Aid Office and the Pomona College community has been really good too. It was a bumpy period for about a week, but it was a good community here to have.” Janet Asante SC ’21, from Houston, appreciated her primary contact dean reaching out to support her during Hurricane Harvey. But what made the biggest difference to her, she said, was the support she received from her peers. “Everyone during orientation week, once they heard I was from Houston, would ask me how I was doing,” Asante said. “Hurricanes are part of the Texans’ life, and I was not sure if people around here would care. The fact that they did made all the difference for me.”
TSL is hiring! We’re looking for: news writers sports writers graphic designers photographers
Email editor@tsl.pomona.edu for more information or to apply.
Mary Jane Coppock • The Student Life
NEWS SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
THE STUDENT LIFE
MUDD: Prof. Says Diversity Helped Secure Grant
Courtesy of David Vosburg
The current high field nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometer in the Jacobs Science Center.
Continued from Page 1 The update includes a 24-tube autosampler: an automated system to introduce samples into the instrument to conduct the tests. This system will reduce the need for human handling, increasing the efficiency of the spectrometer and reducing the risk of it suffering damage from novice users, Vosburg said. A second program grant of $84,362 will cover the cost of a new Differential Scanning Calorimeter, an instrument that measures the amount of energy needed to change the temperature of a sample. The new calorimeter is faster, more sensitive, and has an improved interface for data handling. Various research projects conducted by HMC faculty members will profit from the new instruments. Vosburg will use the updated spectrometer in his work creating molecules for medical compounds. Associate Professor of Chemistry Leila Hawkins, who specializes in the chemistry of air pollution, will use both new instruments to analyze aerosol particles. Besides the intellectual merit of grant applications, the NSF takes into consideration the broader impact of the instrumentation it funds, Van Keche said. “HMC has a built-in advantage [in the ‘broader impact’ section of the application] as an institution committed to training undergraduate students,” Van Keche said. He said because of the diversity in HMC’s student body, investments in the college’s instrumentation is
more socially impactful than it might be at another school, which is valued by the NSF. To increase the social impact of the updated spectrometer, the chemistry department made the instrument available to students at Mt. San Antonio Community College in Walnut and local high school students from the Upward Bound program, which helps low-income and first-generation students obtain higher education. This is possible because the autosampler makes the instrument easier to use. In its 2018 budget request, President Donald Trump’s administration proposed an 11 percent cut to the NSF. “We are in global competition for scientific excellence and productivity, and when funds are reduced for these endeavors, it is not good for this country,” Van Hecke said. “The president’s budget is only a recommendation to Congress, however, and I hope that the NSF brings forward good arguments to defend itself and that Congress listens.” Vosburg said reductions in public funding make research more difficult. “If there’s less public funding, the options are you either get less money, or you look for other sources,” he said. HMC, he said, has reached out to private foundations to fund its summer research program’s stipends and supplies after past reductions in NSF support. “We’re still doing pretty well overall.”
PAGE 3
Q&A: CMC’s Kesler Recognized by Politico Millie Hillman Charles Kesler, a professor of political science at Claremont McKenna College, was recently ranked No. 29 on Politico’s list of “50 Ideas Blowing Up American Politics (and the People Behind Them).” Kesler is a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute, a prominent conservative think tank, and the editor of their quarterly political publication, the Claremont Review of Books. TSL spoke with Kesler soon after his Politico recognition to discuss the current White House administration, his experience as a conservative professor on a largely liberal campus, and all things Trumpism. TSL: When did you begin to get into politics? What drove your interest in American government? Charles Kesler: As a child, I was interested in politics. I went to high school and college in the 1970s, so I was growing up politically at the end of the 1960s, which was a very turbulent time in American politics, and if you were conscious it was hard not to be interested in what was going on. That interest grew when I discovered William F. Buckley Jr – I became a subscriber to The National Review, and I read every Buckley book. And then when I was a senior in high school, I met him and interviewed him for the school newspaper. We ultimately became friends. I subsequently did a book with him, and worked briefly at The National Review, and I knew him for the next 35 years or so. TSL: How would you define your personal politics? CK: Well, I’m a conservative, obviously, and I guess I would call myself an American conservative, by which I mean I adhere to the conservatism rooted in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, and the statesmanship practiced by people like Lincoln and others who have tried to preserve and to transmit that legacy. TSL: How do you reconcile being a conservative professor in an area considered a “liberal bubble” by many? Do you find that people are eager to engage with a variety of opinions? Has there been a shift in the perception of free speech in the wake of the election? CK: Claremont McKenna College has always been perceived as the most conservative of the five colleges, and I think that reputation still holds, but the percentage of both professors and students who self-identify as conservative has been decreasing steadily but slowly. We don’t have a particularly conservative student body, but there are definitely conservatives within it; CMC has always been a very civilized place in the sense that there’s civility between all politi-
cal opinions, and students expect to meet people they disagree with, and they figure out how to disagree amicably. That has remained true at CMC, although I would say it is a little less true than it was, yet at the other colleges, I am worried. I think that political correctness is very strong in some of them, and pretty strong at the others, and such intolerance and impatience of people with whom you disagree is not good for a liberal arts education. TSL: What do you perceive as “political correctness?” CK: When I think of political correctness I think of the kind of political shortcuts that people make when they treat all views except their own as heresy, and want to suppress differing views rather than engage with them. It’s bad enough when that sentiment is held by some faculty members, but in some ways, it’s even worse when a considerable part of the undergraduate population holds that opinion. This was noticeable in the demonstrations at Claremont McKenna last spring – that was a massive eruption of political correctness. There’s all the difference in the world between saying “I disagree with you, and here is my argument” and saying “I’m offended by what you’ve said – please shut up.” TSL: Politico discussed how many believed that Trump was the “uninhibited ID of American politics.” What was your role in the election, and do you believe Trump represents the emergence of a new movement? CK: In the magazine I edit, we published arguments for Trump, against Trump, and even arguments that were anti-anti-Trump: they weren’t really for Trump, but they disagreed with his opponents. What I was trying to do in the magazine, during the election cycle, was to get the best arguments possible on all sides of the Trump question, because it seemed to me that the really interesting question was how we should define Trump. In many ways, he was a phenomenon in American politics. In that sense, the magazine was sympathetic to Trump, in the sense that we took him seriously, and didn’t simply dismiss his as a fraud or a vulgarian, as many of the established conservative publications did. I was interested in Trump – I predicted early that he would win the primary elections, and that he had a very good shot at winning the presidency. But is there a Trumpism? That is a more difficult question, I think. I don’t think there is a Trumpism yet: not every president needs to have an “ism” – there are very few presidents that get an “ism,” and I don’t believe it’s necessary to be a successful and respected president. Trump had a kind of manifest desire to “Make America Great Again”: he wanted to speak to citizens as citizens, as equals, and not to abide by the politically
Courtesy of the West Liberty University website
correct categories of ethnic, racial, gender, and other stereotypes that so many in politics love to use. TSL: Do you agree with Trump’s sentiment of “Make America Great Again” in the way you described? CK: Yes, I think in a way what he’s trying to do is restore to American citizens control of their own government. There’s a side of him that is sort of like Andrew Jackson, in being a sort of populist rebel against a Washington establishment of both parties, but there’s also a part of him that harks back to an earlier kind of conservatism, an earlier kind of Republicanism. I wrote a piece for the magazine and for The New York Times arguing that there are a lot of resemblances between Trump’s brand of conservatism and Calvin Coolidge, and William McKinley, and even before that, Abraham Lincoln. In a way he represents a kind of attempt to fuse some of those older sentiments with the post-Cold War conservative movement. TSL: Is there a “golden age” of American democracy you believe Trump is referring to, or that you would like to return to? CK: I don’t necessarily believe in golden ages, in the sense that there was a period of American democracy that was perfect. A famous historian once said that the Jackson era was probably the period in which Americans were happiest, and I don’t know why he said that. I would say that any era of American history that you pick has serious problems, especially socially: if you think of the Jacksonian period, you’re talking about
a time when slavery was legal, for example. I think that Trump’s conservatism harks back in a way to post World War II America, in an attempt to recapture the sentiment of national unity and national pride – with all of its problems – the 50s and the early 60s had. I wouldn’t go so far as to call that the “greatest era of American history” or anything – I think it’s true that it had some social virtues that we’ve increasingly lost touch with. TSL: Politico’s article mentioned that you want to use the Claremont Review of Books – of which you are the editor – to keep Trump accountable. How do you think students at the Claremont Colleges can continue to keep this current administration and future presidents accountable? CK: I don’t know if I have an original answer to that. You ought to follow politics, and you ought to study politics. The easiest thing to do is obviously to follow the mainstream liberal opinions and to dismiss Trump as a “creature from the lagoon” – someone who has forced his way into American politics but is completely foreign to it. I think that the more you know about American government, the easier it is to understand Trump, and to come to terms with him. It doesn’t mean you have to approve of him, but I think if you know something about Lyndon Johnson, and you know something about Andrew Jackson, and you know something about Teddy Roosevelt, then it would be easier to understand Trump’s agenda and why he won the 2016 presidential election.
OVER-ENROLLMENT: Displaced First-Years Say Apartment Amenities Fail to Meet Scripps’ Promises Continued from Page 1 the best phone number at which to reach her. When Schnyder called Lesh, she told her that Lesh was one of the 40 randomly selected first-year students that would be living off-campus at the CGU apartments for the entirety of the year. Two of those selected students were able to move on-campus. Audrey Simmons SC ‘21 submitted a housing change request before school started. When a first-year didn’t show up after a week and a half, she was able to take her spot. Lesh, however, never learned about the housing change request. “When I received the news that I wasn’t going to live on campus, I was obviously disappointed and a little bit nervous because I’m a first-year,” Lesh said. “I wanted to be on campus so I can experience what a dorm is actually like.” Lesh was sent a follow-up email which described the apartments as “very nice” with “two generous-sized bedrooms” to accommodate four students. The email said the student-bathroom ratio is “at least as good for these apartments as it is for any other students assigned Scripps housing.” Daphne Liu SC ‘21 doesn’t think her apartment lives up to its promises. “They told me it was much bigger. It wasn’t a lie, but they embellished it,” Liu said. “They
said there would be a common area and a living room area, and I walked in here and there’s nothing.” In addition to the lack of amenities, there are no printers for the students to use at the CGU apartments, according to Lesh. When Lesh needs to print out homework, she said, she takes the shuttle to a residence hall on campus. “It just makes it a little difficult if you know you have to print something out for class, you have to plan that into your day as well,” Lesh said. And when she does go on campus, she brings everything she needs for the day. “Even if you have a break in between, it’s just inconvenient to come back here if you have to ride the shuttle,” Lesh said. Manske said she spends about an hour waiting for and riding the shuttle every day — she goes back and forth between her apartment and Scripps several times. This wait time may change when students get their promised lockers in the Scripps Student Union above the dining hall. There is only one shuttle, which runs every 20 minutes from 7:00 a.m. to 2:00 a.m., with a 20-minute break in the morning, an hour-long break after lunch, another 20-minute break in the late afternoon and a final hour-long break at night. In addition to offering the shuttle, Scripps has guaranteed a bike for any Scripps student at CGU who needs one for the academic year. The students also receive their first choice for housing next year and $2,000 for a laptop, according to
Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Charlotte Johnson. Vice President of Business Affairs Dean Calvo said housing costs at the CGU apartments are “comparable to the student room charges at Scripps. When the cost of additional amenities is factored in, the per student cost to the College is higher.” Despite having a functioning kitchen, the students are required to stay on the 12 or 16-meal plan even though they live in alternative housing, which otherwise would qualify them for the five-meal plan, Johnson said. “The hope is that they will take most of their meals at Malott or one of the many dining halls at the consortium, which provides students, especially first-years, an opportunity to get to know and socialize with Scripps students and students from the other campuses,” Johnson wrote in an email to TSL. Helen Norcini SC ‘21, the fourth roommate of Manske, Liu, and Lesh, started with the 16-meal plan and switched to the 12-meal plan after the first week. Still, she says she’s never used all the meals. Instead, the four roommates buy food and cook in their kitchen because it’s not worth the trek to campus if they’re not already there, Manske said. But the kitchen sink gets clogged easily, Manske said, and the four first-years have had to wash their dishes in the bathroom sink on multiple occasions. They also experienced a severe ant problem last week, which required an exterminator to come and spray
the apartment. “There have been some complaints and adjustments made based on feedback we have received,” Johnson acknowledged in an email to TSL. “The need for room repairs and ant extermination are not exclusive to the apartments, and Scripps addresses these concerns when they are raised by any Scripps student.” Despite the unreliable sink and tight living quarters, Liu sees a silver lining in her housing situation. “I do appreciate having my own bathroom, good roommates, [and being able to] cook our own food.” Pomona College also experienced a shortage of on-campus housing, but not because of firstyear over-enrollment, housing director Frank Bedoya said. The admissions office was on target with their goal of 435 incoming first-years. However, a higher number of students wanted to live on campus than could be accommodated, as a result of overenrollment in the class of 2018, Bedoya said. Bedoya sent students an email in the first week of August offering $500 to cover the cost of a bike and other expenses for students willing to move to the College Park apartments, approximately 0.9 miles from the center of campus. Eight students volunteered to move into the two apartments, none of whom were first-years, he said. “It’s always better if you end up with people who volunteer to go instead of forcing them,” Bedoya said. “It’s easier when they’re friends and not random people living together.”
Selene Harb • The Student Life
Common area leading to the two-person bedrooms in one of the apartment inhabited by displaced Scripps first years at Claremont Graduate University.
LIFE & STYLE PAGE 4
THE STUDENT LIFE
SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
Food Columnist: Different Non-Chain Donut Stores in Claremont Molly Edison I love donuts. In fact, donuts are my favorite food. I might even consider myself somewhat of a donut connoisseur, but I haven’t yet compared Claremont’s donut shops head-to-head. So, I set out to compare some of the most-talked donuts to see which stood up to the hype. I went to six different donut shops within 10 miles of the Claremont Colleges. I chose shops based on reputation, distance, price, and hours. Fellow donut lover Jenna Loesberg PZ ’18 came along so that I wouldn’t eat 12 donuts alone. At each shop, we bought: a maple bar (my favorite and an American classic); a chocolate glazed chocolate donut (Loesberg’s favorite and a true marker of a good donut maker); and whatever donut the shopkeeper recommended to us. We started at Road Runner Donuts of Upland, a tiny walk-up window which was neither particularly welcoming nor off-putting. The chocolate glazed chocolate donut (CGCD) was very dense, and the donut itself didn’t have much chocolate flavor. Loesberg judged it “not good.” The maple bar (MB) was very dense and bready. Both had artificial tasting glazes. The shopkeeper suggested a cinnamon roll and threw in a glazed twist. Despite the letdown of the MB and CGCD, both the cinnamon roll and glazed twist impressed. The cinnamon roll was bready, not necessarily in a bad way, and the cinnamon flavor didn’t overpower. The glazed twist was light fluffy and crisp, with perfectly sweet frosting; it was Loesberg’s favorite of the day. Christy’s Donuts on Foothill Boulevard in Upland was next. Loesberg compared the CGCD to Dunkin’ Donuts and “not in a good way,” as it was sweet, but
lacking in chocolate flavor. The MB had a good fluffy texture with nice yeast structure, but not too airy. The glaze was much better than the maple glaze at Road Runner. The winner at Christy’s, though, is their specialty donut. We chose the whipped cream and strawberryfilled donut. The donut was crispy and light with a really nice glaze – filled high with whipped cream and fresh tasting strawberries. It was a big winner. Next: Upland Donuts. The CGCD was the best so far, but still imperfect: crunchy, but not cakey and had good chocolate flavor. The MB was incredibly fluffy and tender with a wonderful doughy sweetness. The glaze was well-flavored, fresh-tasting, but thin. The shopkeeper suggested their chocolate glazed buttermilk donut to us, and it was absolutely incredible. It was crispy and crunchy with a wonderful tangy and cakey dough. They also threw in some glazed donut holes that the customer before us had forgotten. They were the same dough as the MB – very tender and fluffy. Form there, we came closer back to campus to Pixie Donuts, in the strip mall near Vons off Baseline in Claremont. The CGCD did not have a lot of chocolate flavor, was too crunchy, very sweet, and dense. The MB had a lot of nutmeg and other spices in the dough which complimented that maple flavor well. It was cakey and dense. Pixie Donut’s specialty was their “cronut” (croissant donut). It was extremely flakey and buttery, and it was very good. However, it was rich and indulgent and hard to take more than a few bites of. The last shop in the immediate area was Grizzby’s Biscuits and Donuts in the Claremont Village. Grizzby’s has a wide array of flavors and very few traditional flavors. Loesberg chose a salted
caramel donut, as Grizzby’s lacked CGCDs. I went with a maple crumb donut. Grizzby’s was substantially more expensive than any other shop. Our totals elsewhere averaged $3 to $5 while Grizzby’s cost $10. Each donut was around $2.50. The steep price was justified, however, by the flavorings and toppings. The salted caramel was sweet, sticky, and indulgent. The maple crumb topping was similar to a cobbler topping, which was a nice addition. Where Grizzby’s falls short, however, is the donut itself. The dough is very dense, bready and oily. Despite their bougie aesthetic, they miss the mark on baking quality. Last but not least is the donut king: Donut Man on Route 66 in Glendora. The classic 24-hour shop features a walk up window looking onto frying donuts, with more being poured onto the shelves. Their CGCD was cakey and crisp, but still not as good as Loesberg’s favorite donut shop back home. The MB was huge with very crisp edges. Donut Man’s claim to fame, though, are their strawberry and peach filled donuts: huge, round glazed donuts filled with fresh strawberries or peaches and doused in syrup. They were amazing and decadent, almost like eating a sweet bread bowl of fruit. Loesberg’s favorite donut of the day was the glazed twist at Road Runner Donuts of Upland: expertly glazed atop a perfectly crisp and fluffy donut. My favorite was the maple bar at Upland donuts: the yeasted dough had such an amazing texture, and it was the only donut I finished. The best overall donut experience – drumroll – was Donut Man. The dough frying right before your eyes, the incredible smell, expansive selection, and access off Route 66 at any time of day or night makes for a classic American donut experience.
Ath Speaker Series Kicks Off with Free Speech by TV Host
Molly Edison • The Student Life
A cronut from Pixie Donuts on Baseline Road in Claremont
Pitzer Talks Conspiracies in New Speaker Series
Lia Francis-Bongue
Jaimie Ding
Dave Rubin, TV personality and comedian, opened the 2017-2018 speaker series at Claremont McKenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Sept. 12 with his lecture “The Rubin Report: An Evening of Free Speech with Dave Rubin.” A self-defined classical liberal known for his political satire and direct approach, Rubin is the host of “The Rubin Report,” a talk show focusing on ideas and free speech. Rubin commenced the Ath speaker series by addressing how to disagree in discussions and talking about free speech on college campuses. He praised CMC for “bucking the trend” among colleges of being unwilling to have controversial conversations. “I feel like I’ve died, and gone to free-speech heaven,” said Rubin. “[College] is the place to learn how to think, where you learn how to fight for what you believe in,” Rubin said. He added that if you don’t fight for what you believe in now, it won’t get any easier. However, Rubin warned students not to “fight for something” simply because they’ve been “guilted into believing into it,” arguing that political discussion is necessary because politics will dictate every aspect of your life. “‘I’m not political’ is the worst thing I ever hear,” Rubin said. Rubin said that he believes in the right to say whatever you want, even if it means people will “heckle the shit out of [you].” However, he did criticize protesters who opposed Milo Yiannopoulos at a speaking event at the University of California, Los Angeles in 2016. While discussing what he considered to be divisive language, Rubin recounted the story of his political awakening. He cited a clip from “Real Time with Bill Maher,” in which Ben Affleck called both Maher and the religious critic Sam Harris “gross and racist.” Rubin credits that interview with helping him realize the need to protect civil discussion, arguing that calling people ‘racist’ or ‘homophobic’ is the quickest way to stifle such discussion. Claiming that racism is a human condition, Rubin said that while racism can be managed, people cannot “magically [wipe] it away.” He believes that while one can say an argument is based on racism or other forms of bigotry, words such as ‘racist’ or ‘Nazi’ have been thrown around so much that they have lost all meaning and that, ultimately, there are better arguments than telling someone they are “racist.” While Rubin wants an equal playing field for opportunity in society, he argued against any sort of “othering” treatment. “Diversity of thought is the only diversity I care about,” Rubin said. Rubin added that he believes there “should be no laws” regarding
What do Lee Harvey Oswald, the moon landing, and 9/11 have in common? They’re all part of giant government conspiracies to cover up the truth. Last Tuesday, Sept. 12, Kathryn Olmsted, professor of history at the University of California, Davis, gave a lecture titled, “Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Out to Get You: Anti-Government Conspiracy Theories in American History.” It was part of a lecture series hosted by the Munroe Center for Social Inquiry at the Benson Auditorium at Pitzer College. This year’s series, titled “CONSPIRACY THEORY – CONSPIRACY FACT: Understanding a perplexing social phenomenon” focuses on “conspiracy theory theory: the theory of conspiracy theories, why do people hold them, what are they, how best to understand the nature of this phenomenon,” according to Professor Brian Keeley, the director of this year’s lecture series. A professor of philosophy at Pitzer, Keeley is personally interested in the topic this year. “Conspiracy theories as theories are kind of interesting, as they are the only type of theories where evidence against them is taken as evidence for them,” he said. Olmsted’s talk was the second of eight total lectures this fall. The series looks at conspiracy theories from various academic lenses, with scholars from fields
Aki Amarnath • The Student Life
Dave Rubin, an American comedian and political commentator known for his work on “The Rubin Report”, speaks about free speech and open-minded political dialogue at the MMC Athenaeum on Tuesday evening.
affirmative action. As evidence for this point, he said that many cities led by Democrats, such as Chicago, Illinois and Ferguson, Missouri, have high crime rates in black communities and are economically declining despite affirmative action policies. He also argued against taking down Confederate monuments, saying that he viewed that as a slippery slope to censorship and an erasure of history. “Pretending that these [monuments] didn’t happen [or] pretending [that] they didn’t have meaning to people is incredibly dangerous,” Rubin said. Rubin belives that modern ideological views are fated to be considered dangerous and offensive at some point, and therefore subject to censorship. As an alternative to removal, Rubin proposed the addition of other statues or information near Confederate monuments. After the lecture, the floor opened up for student questions. Rubin said that when speaking to people with opposing views or even just trying to get along with them, the most important thing is to stop taking things personally. “It’s not built into me to be wildly offended,” he said. Rubin added that both mainstream media and social media trolls try to make people feel badly about what they think, but that people “have way more in common than [they] have apart.” Jasmine Shirrey CM ‘18 asked Rubin about the disconnect between talking about power and privilege, along with talking about free speech. Rubin responded that he thinks it is possible to acknowledge the truths about violent histories, in reference to Native American genocide in the United States, without judging their descendants on skin color. He also referenced Michael Gerson, an op-ed columnist of The Washington Post, and his theory of the “soft bigotry of low expec-
tations” – meaning the subtle discrimination of not expecting certain minorities to meet the standards set for the majority – which Rubin feels is exemplified in giving marginalized groups special treatment. However, Shirrey shared some of her dissenting views on political correctness. “Fraught with cognitive dissonance and contradictions, Dave Rubin’s speech at the Ath tonight certainly showed how intellectual you can sound when you speak with confidence and don’t acknowledge the context of the words you use,” Shirrey wrote in an email to TSL. “He used many commonly used phrases about the virtue of ‘the American Dream’ and many misconceptions of antiracist schools of thought to claim that politically correct speech shuts down conversations. [W]ords like ‘rape’ distract from Thomas Jefferson’s overall image, and power and privilege are distracting words in the free-speech ‘debate.’” Nonetheless, Patrick Koe CM ‘21 praised Rubin for his talk. “It was really interesting to see how people responded to specific beliefs,” Koe said, specifically referring to audience responses to Rubin’s thoughts on Confederate monuments. “I was really impressed by how well he handled [questions] and offered to keep discourse going.” Rubin closed the lecture portion of the evening with a discussion of the phrase “May you live in interesting times,” which he attributed to an ancient Chinese proverb. He said that people always think that the times they live in are unremarkable, but that in reality the current climate is incredibly unique. “I hope if nothing else, you guys will be the generation that corrects some of the madness,” Rubin said.
as wide as philosophy, anthropology, political studies, history, journalism, and media studies sharing their research on conspiracies and conspiracy theories. Olmsted described how she got into the whole business of conspiracy theories. After publishing her first book, “The Secret Government: The Post Watergate Investigations of the CIA and FBI,” she “discovered there was this whole subculture out there: many, many Americans who believed they were the victims of conspiracies by the CIA and FBI.” There was a lot of interest around her book, and people began to send her mail with their own conspiracy theories. “I became very interested in the relationship between real government conspiracies and conspiracy theories about the government,” she said. Olmsted described various conspiracy theories surrounding the Kennedy assassination, the CIA, and 9/11 before touching on a current topic: Donald Trump. “Donald Trump got his start in politics by spreading a conspiracy theory that Barack Obama was not eligible to be president because [Obama had] actually been born in Africa, and [Trump] gained a lot of his support as he ran for president by spreading conspiracy theories and encouraging his followers not to believe anything that the government said or that the mainstream media said,” Olmsted said. Keeley also noted that conspiracy theories are especially interesting today, “particularly with this last election where both of the major party candidates
had an important connection to conspiracy theories.” Everyone is, of course, all-too-familiar with Donald Trump’s tweets during the election, and in the 1990s, Hillary Clinton was part of a right-wing conspiracy theory during the Monica Lewinsky trial. Conspiracy theories have especially gained traction over the past few decades due to a “recent erosion of trust in government and media,” Olmsted said. This is with good reason too, as the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandal and showed that the government did indeed lie over and over to the public. Additionally, the postWatergate Church committee unveiled startling facts to the public, including the CIA’s attempts to assassinate foreign leaders and the FBI’s systematic spying on Martin Luther King Jr. So what do we do about it? Who can we believe? Professor Olmsted shared with us one piece of final advice before the end of her lecture, “To be skeptical, to hold the government accountable, and to ask the right questions.” A short Q&A session followed, allowing many of the community members and students in the audience to ask Olmsted any other questions they had. The next lecture is in two weeks on Tuesday, Sept. 26, at 4:15 p.m. in Benson Auditorium. Professor Lee Basham from South Texas College will be presenting a talk titled “Governing by Crisis: How Toxic Truths Subvert Mainstream Investigation.” Both students and community members are welcome and encouraged to go.
Meghan Joyce • The Student Life
Dr. Kathryn Olmsted presents her lecture “Just Because You’re Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not Out to Get You” in Pitzer College’s Benson Auditorium on Sept. 12. Olmsted’s was the first in a series of lectures to be held this fall about conspiracies and conspiracy theories.
LIFE & STYLE SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
Faculty, Librarians Unite to Digitize Humanities Whitney Watchel On Friday, September 8, the Digital Humanities Department at the Claremont Colleges began their Teaching with Technology Brown Bag Lunch Discussions, events designed to encourage the implementation of technology in humanities courses. These meetings are specifically created to facilitate a discussion between faculty members and librarians who are currently or in the process of engaging with digital tools in the classroom. The program was established thanks to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation’s grant, which was designed to “create a sustained and integrated system of support, training and research implementation [that] will make the consortium a model community of learning where digital humanities methods and tools inform the work of humanities scholars and students at all levels,” according to the Mellon Grant’s proposal. The grant was initially awarded to the Claremont Colleges in October of 2014. Throughout the first three years of the award’s implementation, course development grants were available for new or redesigned courses. After faculty members applied for this opportunity, a selection committee “[chose] the most robust projects that would be the most engaging and meaningful uses of technology in the classroom,” said Digital Research Studio Director and Visiting Professor Ashley R. Sanders. The selected courses were required to be taught at least two times, which generated fifty or more digitally-enhanced Humanities classes at the undergraduate Claremont Colleges.
PAGE 5
THE STUDENT LIFE
Some of the technologicallyadapted projects have included a virtual recreation of an ancient site in Pakistan and a storymap of water sites around Los Angeles. Both of these enterprises were designed to enrich the respective educational experiences, as analyses corresponded with the technological representations. The Digital Humanities Department also created training opportunities and workshops for faculty members as a realization of the Mellon Grant’s initiative. For the concluding years of the grant’s implementation, the Digital Humanities Department is focusing on integrating undergraduate students in humanities faculty research through various courses. Sanders is sharing these experiences with undergraduate students through her six-week Introduction to Digital Humanities course, which covers five different digital research methods. These techniques include network and text analysis, temporal representation methods, geographic information systems and data visualization. In coming months, the Digital Humanities Department plans to partner with other intercollegiate organizations, including the Center for Teaching and Learning, the Hive and EnviroLab Asia. Sanders encouraged undergraduates to contact the Digital Research Studio for potential workshops, which would cover topics including Adobe Illustrator, Python Programming and data visualization methods. The Brown Bag Series events occur the second Tuesday and Friday of every month in the Honnold-Mudd Library.
Scripps Celebrates Cross-Generational Latina Photography Becky Hoving The sound of a band blended with jovial Spanish conversation into a melodic symphony fitting for the opening night of “Revolution and Ritual” at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery of Scripps College’s exhibition in conjunction with the Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA series. The exhibit, which celebrated its opening on Sept. 9, will run until Jan. 7, 2018 and features photographs from three Mexican female artists: Sara Castrejón, Graciela Iturbide, and Tatiana Parcero. Although both Iturbide and Parcero were invited to exhibitrelated events, only Parcero could participate in the opening. Oswaldo Ruiz, who works closely with Iturbide, attended in her place. Until January 2018, over 70 separate art exhibitions all over Southern California will prompt a far-reaching exploration of Latino art, according to literature provided at the event by Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA, an initiative by the Getty Foundation. Pomona College and Pitzer College are hosting their own exhibitions in addition to the one at Scripps’ Williamson Gallery. The “Revolution and Ritual” opening consisted of several panel discussions throughout the day with an afternoon tea session, all taking place at Scripps. They finished with a reception from 7:00 to 9:00 p.m., celebrating Mexican heritage with live music,
traditional food, and Claremont residents eager to participate in discussion about the displayed photography. Amongst those attending the exhibition were Lauren Koenig SC ‘20 and Anezka Boyle SC ‘20, both of whom were prompted to contextualize the photographs’ artistic significance. The two were present with their Scripps Core III course “Portraits, Snapshots, Instagram,” taught by Associate Professor of Art History Juliet Kloss. “The [Core III] class is dealing with art versus photography, and if photography should be considered art or not,” Boyle said. Both Boyle and Koenig agreed that photography is an art form but pointed to the era of each photographer when identifying differing artistic intentions. “It’s interesting to compare each photographer’s take on the art of their time,” Koenig said. “Castrejón is sort of a historical documentary photographer and didn’t really identify what she was doing as ‘art.’” This is the first exhibition in the United States to feature Castrejón’s work, according to the project director Dr. Mary MacNaughton. Laurel Dickstein SC ‘18 interned at the Williamson Gallery this summer, helping to curate the exhibit specifically by transcribing all of the wall text. She similarly pointed to the artists’ differing objectives based on the time period each photographer was documenting. “[Castrejón] was really documenting the Mexican Revolution
from her point of view in this very rural town, so she didn’t really have artistic intentions,” said Dickstein, who is double-majoring in art history and anthropology. “It was portrait work … She was documenting history.” Conversely, Dickstein noted that by the time Iturbide came onto the scene, she was held to the same standard as Frida Kahlo or Diego Rivera. “It wasn’t crazy anymore to consider photography as an art, which shows how quickly the medium was transformed,” Dickstein said. However, Dickstein also recognized that Iturbide’s work, which documented indigenous communities, could potentially be viewed as an anthropological endeavour. “These portraits that Graciela was doing, people thought that they were anthropological just because she was photographing people [who] weren’t her contemporaries,” Dickstein said. “It’s portrait work – yes – but portrait work with artistic intention.” The work of Tatiana Parcero, the third and most contemporary artist represented, was previously featured at Williamson Gallery and had left an impression on Giovanna Perricone SC ’19, who works at the gallery as a guard. “It’s just very unique,” Perricone said of Parcero’s work, which comprises of black and white selfportraits overlaid with illustration serving in place of the photo’s white space. “It was about a year ago, but I can still remember because it was unlike any photograph
I had ever seen before.” Dickstein credits the impressionistic effect of Parcero’s photography to the ephemerality of the experience and the viewer’s addition of their own context to the image. “What’s special about it is that she leaves that inch, quarter of an inch, [or] two inches in between the background and the acetate of the photo so that it really is a window, and as you’re moving around, it’s changing,” Dickstein said. “Not only is she not telling you what the illustration is, but by de-contextualizing it, she’s also reconstituting its value as a system of knowledge.” When asked about the significance of the exhibit at Scripps – compared to the ones at the other Claremont Colleges – Dickstein referenced the implications of having only female artists represented. “I don’t think it’s chance that we chose Mexican female artists at a school that is supposed to be representing women [and] minority women,” Dickstein said. Eve Wang PZ ’19, who worked for one of the curators of Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA this summer, noted a similar connotation. “All of the three photographers are females who approach the subjects in a very humanistic way,” Wang said. “They shoot the subject as the way they are, and Tatiana specifically celebrates women’s bodies by linking it to her cultural heritage, which I think is what a lot of students here are striving to explore.”
NAME • The Student Life
Photo Courtesy of Digital Humanities at the Claremont Colleges
Ashley Sanders talks to students about Digital Humanities at the Claremont Colleges on August 25th during their open house in Honnold-Mudd Library. Photo Courtesy of Digital Humanities at the Claremont Colleges.
Adela Pfaff • The Student Life
Students and community members discuss the work of contemporary Mexican photographer Tatiana Parcero during the opening reception of “Revolution and Ritual” at the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery of Scripps College.
Visiting Chicago Author Talks Horror’s New Heyday Shringi Diva Vikram “Maybe we move in and don’t hear the intonation for a few days. Or maybe we hear it when we unlock the door … we try to describe [the sound] and fail … [it is] ancient, resonant, husky and rasping,” began novelist Jac Jemc, reading from her new book, “The Grip of It,” a story about a young couple that is haunted by their home. On Tuesday, Sept. 12 at noon in Scripps College’s Hampton Court Room, Chicago-based author Jac Jemc – winner of the Paula Anderson Book Award and a writer quoted in Amazon’s 2014 Best Story Collections – spoke as part of the Scripps Presents Fall 2017 series. Jemc read several excerpts from the novel and discussed her writing style, fascination for horror, and her collection of 374 rejection letters with professor Adam Novy from the Scripps Writing Department. Jemc ended her reading of the prologue with, “Maybe we should share something genuine for
once … deep stories … ready to trip into the world without even our permission.” She narrated excerpts from both James and Julie’s perspectives, the wife and husband in her book. “I loved that we heard two different perspectives,” Ananya Sagar SC ‘21 said. “And [Jemc’s] reading was great because she was able to flip her tone when she alternated between the two people.” The character Julie first describes entering a house with “closets hidden within closets” and sounds that sounded like moaning incantations. The couple left the city in an attempt to rebuild their lives after James’ experience with a gambling addiction, and moved into a deserted house built by a stretch of woods that seem to move closer to the house throughout the course of the book. “It’s a narrow-clenched horror story about a haunting [as well as] and a mediation on the perils of marriage and owning a home,” Adam Novy said in his descrip-
Stella Li • The Student Life
Jac Jemc discussed her novel “The Grip of It” during a Q&A with Scripps professor Adam Novy during her talk on Tuesday, September 8th.
tion of the book. “In it, the bad guy is the rate race. It’s terrific.” Novy and Jemc discussed the balance of issues in the book. “In the first draft, I only knew that I was writing about a haunted house, but I didn’t know what I wanted to say,” Jemc said. “I had the character of a neighbor, fully aware of the house’s history, narrating portions of the story. I took him out and left in just Julie and James, and their story gained more complexity. This couple is trying to fix something in their marriage, but as the haunted house closes in and breaks down around them, their agreeableness does too.” In another section Jemc read, Julie banters with her co-worker who notices the first signs of a mysterious bruise slowly blooming over Julie’s skin. “I was fascinated by the fact that this story wasn’t just [about a] description of the haunted house,” said Sagar. “It’s [haunting] features were moving into the bodies of the people as well.” Jemc also mentioned that she thinks horror “is having a moment today” – becoming better and more popular. “Horror scares me so much,” Sagar said. “But I want to read it because it sounds thrilling.” Novy finished by mentioning that Jemc is “the keeper of a public online list of every rejection she ever received, and as an author who has won an award for every book she has written, [Jemc] is also demonstration of the fact that success is gained from loss.” “It was just always easier to talk about rejections than about good things,” Jemc said lightheartedly in response to Novy’s comment. “I wanted to build something with which people could empathize [with]. It’s a good way to stay humble.”
Latino Artist Juan Downey Confronts Past and Future Through Tech Juanita Man Since Sept. 9, the works of Latino artist Juan Downey will be on exhibit at the Pitzer College Art Galleries. Organized by Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) and Pitzer College Art Galleries, the “Juan Downey: Radiant Nature” experiential exhibition is designed to help visitors understand the symbiotic relationships between technology, environment, and humans. What makes the Pollution Robot unique is the time when it was first created. The exhibition is a refabrication, but the Pollution Robot first showed up in 1970 during the opening of “With Energy Beyond These Walls” at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York. “The Robot is my favorite artwork in the exhibition,” one of the exhibit staffers said. While taking photographs during the opening reception, she saw many audiences talking with the robot. “The Robot can respond to the audience’s simple questions pretty quickly, but there [was] a girl asking the Robot [for] its name, and I don’t think it could answer that question,” she said, laughing. A visiting student who took part in the opening reception said she was amazed by the robot. “It is interesting to look back to 1970 from now,” the student said. “A robot is not a new idea in the 21st century, but it was definitely a very advanced idea in [the] 70s. The exhibition makes me more aware of the natural communication between my body and technology.” Downey’s ideas have foreshadowed technological change in the time since he created his art. “It is like viewing the anatomy of bodies before the surgery,”
said Jelani Lateef, the art director of the Capoeira Angola at Pitzer College. Lateef appreciated the close relationship between audiences and the artworks in “Juan Downey: Radiant Nature.” “You can actually touch the robot and talk to it. It is a participatory experience that you can’t get in ordinary exhibition,” Lateef said. According to exhibit curators Ciara Ennis and Robert Crouch, Juan Downey is generally famous for his later video works, which tend to overshadow while his Electronic Sculptures and Life Cycle Installations. “We have prepared this exhibition for three years,” Ennis said. “We really want to show audiences how Juan Downey applied the ideology of cybernetics into the Electronic Sculptures and make audiences realize the natural communication between humans, environment, and the machine systems.” Crouch introduced the “Life
Cycle Installations” artwork, a plant with an electrode monitor that can detect human electromagnetic energy. A high-pitched sound will emit depending on the plant’s reaction to a human’s electromagnetic energy. “By integrating audiences into the performance, audiences can be aware of the energy they carry and the natural communication between organic matters, machines, and people, which people may not realize in daily life,” Crouch said. “Instead of forming distance between artworks and audiences, the exhibition attempts to make the artworks more approachable to reinforce the idea that the environment, humans, and technology are in a united cybernetic system.” “‘Juan Downey: Radiant Culture’ connects both past and the future,” Lateef said. While phones gradually replace face-to face interaction, Juan Downey’s works strive to build direct interaction between people and the world, reminding people of how they once communicated.
Aki Amarnath • The Student Life
Visitors explore Chilean experimental artist Juan Downey’s interactive “Radiant Nature” exhibit during its opening at Nichols Gallery of Pitzer College.
OPINIONS PAGE 6
THE STUDENT LIFE LIAM BROOKS Editor-in-Chief KATIE BAUGHMAN Managing Editor CHRISTOPHER ESKILSON Managing Editor GRACE OZONOFF-RICHEY Production Editor LAUREN ISON Editor-at-large
ELINOR ASPEGREN, News Editor KELLEN BROWNING, News Editor SEAN OGAMI, Life & Style Editor ARIEL SO, Life & Style Editor JOLO LABIO, Opinions Editor TIARA SHARMA, Opinions Editor HANK SNOWDON, Sports Editor SABRINA WILK, Sports Editor DAPHNE YANG, Senior Design Editor MADELINE MCCLUSKEY, News Designer SARAH TRAN, Life & Style Designer NOOR DHINGRA, Opinions Designer CASSIE WANG, Sports Designer CAROLINE ALBRO, Design Associate
DONNIE DENOME, Copy Chief OLIVIA TRUESDALE, Copy Editor PRIYA KARETI, Copy Editor SAMHITA KADIYALA, Copy Editor PEICHI CHOU, Copy Editor
Tear Down Racist Monuments Including Wagner
DOMINIC FREMPONG, Graphics Editor MEGHAN JOYCE, Photo Manager ADELA PFAFF, Photo Editor IRIS SHI, Distribution Manager ANNIE WAN, Business Manager
The Student Life, the oldest college newspaper in Southern California, is produced and managed by students of the Claremont Colleges and published weekly.
TSL welcomes Letters to the Editor, which can be submitted by mail, by email, or in person at the Fishbowl in Walker Hall. Letters must be under 400 words (although when an issue is particularly salient, we reserve the right to allow letters to run at a longer length) and submitted by 4 p.m. Wednesday of the The Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief and two week of publication. We reserve the right to decline publication Managing Editors. Aside from the editorial, the views exof submitted letters and will not accept anonymous letters, letpressed in the opinions section do not necessarily reflect the views of The Student Life. ters containing profanity, factually inaccurate letters or letters making personal attacks. TSL also reserves the right to edit for E-mail Letters, Questions and Concerns to editor@tsl.pomona. spelling, punctuation and grammar. Letters may be signed by edu. email tips to liaison@tsl.pomona.edu; email advertising a maximum of three persons. All letters become the property of inquiries to ads@tsl.pomona.edu. TSL and may not be reprinted without prior permission from the Editorial Board.
EDITORIAL BOARD
Freedom of Speech But Free from Harm Last semester, we spent many column inches debating what free speech is and how it happens. Is hate speech free speech? When does civil disobedience go to far — and isn’t that the point? Who has a right to make these decisions, anyway? Such conversations are far from over. In light of recent weeks, we believe the conversation must expand to include other freedoms of expression, particularly the ability to profess one’s opinions publicly and visibly. Putting a name and a face to your beliefs is important for productive discourse; just compare our Facebook comments section to the anonymous online comments. Accountability makes us all more intentional with our words. But identifying oneself is not always beneficial, though, as one’s perceived race, gender, age, or any other aspect of identity can and is used to personally rebuke arguments. This isn’t a threat to free speech, of course, but exposure to prejudice is a darker side to owning one’s words. For some, however, simply
TSL SAYS
SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
THE STUDENT LIFE
being identified can be a threat to their livelihood. Last week’s announcement about the end of the DACA program is just one example, and one which pushes us as journalists to consider how we provide a stable platform for all voices, no matter the threats they may face. TSL’s blanket policy is decidedly against anonymous sources for most cases. Journalism works because it has a paper trail, and part of that paper trail is a person trail. Names (spelled correctly), titles, schools, years — these are all details that we ask our reporters to note down carefully and use as the backbone for their articles. As found in the Society of Professional Journalist’s Code of Ethics, it’s imperative we identify sources clearly. The reading public has a right to as much information as possible to verify our reliability . Sometimes, it can backfire for the source, and there’s nothing we will do — it’s on them for letting out the truth or saying something they probably shouldn’t have. These mistakes often result in some of the most useful journal-
ism we do. But we are also bound as ethical journalists to minimize harm, and that can often be put at odds with our need to relentlessly seek out truth. For many of our sources, embarrassment, suspension, or firing may be on the table. But for undocumented and DACA students, publicizing them means making them more likely to be deported, unable to finish college, or be torn from loved ones, and that is not what free speech is about. Freedom of speech, and freedom from harm; this is something that we actually have control over as journalists, and we do not take that responsibility lightly. That means you may see more anonymous sources in our stories about our DACA and undocumented peers. We try to be the place to go to tell your story, and we do not ask you to be put on extreme risk just because you wanted a journalist to listen to your story, or just because you consider yourself worthy of being known about, without being put under threat.
Cassini BOOOOOOOM
Frary Thanks for being open during Turf Dinner. Best Restaurant in Claremont 2017
North Korea BOOOOOOOM
Turf Dinner I want my damn meal swipe back
iPhone 8 There’s no 9 because 789
Single Payer Healthcare When 17 senators finally back Bernie’s bill!
iPhone X Leave furries out of my $1000 phone
Single Payer Healthcare Everyone else.
Zachary Freiman Columnist The bust of Wagner featured on the facade of Pomona’s Big Bridges Auditorium. In the months following the white supremacy protests in Charlottesville, the national spotlight has illuminated the memorialization of individuals who used their power to demean others. Such figures include General Robert E. Lee, General Stonewall Jackson, and General John Hunt Morgan, who led the Confederacy’s revolt in the defense of slavery. The racist demonstration in Charlottesville did not stop with Americans of color. As the bigots marched, their revulsion turned towards Jews. And yet, as an American Jew, the events in Charlottesville only highlighted what I already knew to be true: anti-Semitism rages across this country. These anti-Semites, empowered by an implicit goahead by the president, took to the streets in a show of force, shouting, “Jews will not replace us” and “blood and soil,” a Nazi rallying cry. In spite of renewed determination to combat anti-Semitism from members of both major political parties and organizations across the spectrum, the spotlight has yet to expose a principle anti-Semite memorialized on our very own campus: Richard Wagner, one of five composers whose name and likeness is etched onto Pomona College’s Bridges Auditorium.
Wagner is credited with promulgating vicious anti-Semitism throughout Europe, particularly in Germany. His written musical and philosophical works inspired – and were celebrated by – the leaders of the Nazi movement. He diffused his prejudice not only through his inclusion of anti-Semitic tropes and characters in his operas, but also through articles such as “Das Judenthum in der Musik” or “Jewishness in Music.” Written by Wagner in 1850, “Jewishness in Music” analyzes why “Jewish nature” is intrinsically revolting to the “civilized.” In a section that is particularly abhorrent to me as a singer, Wagner seeks to explain the ‘ugliness’ of Jews’ singing voices: “The Jew’s production of the voice-sounds is a creaking, squeaking, buzzing snuffle.” He uses terms more appropriately ascribed to maimed bird rather than an ethnic group. Despite Wagner’s credo, there are legitimate arguments as to why musicians should continue to play his music. After all, he was an unquestionably, very gifted composer. Why should I, as a Jew, give Wagner the satisfaction of not enjoying his music? Should I listen just to spite him? However, marveling at Wagner’s musical talent does not forgive his vile attitude toward Jews. Nor does it grant him the right to unadulterated celebration, either in concert or as ornamentation. And here we reach the crux of the problem. The commemoration of Wagner on Big Bridges is not, in fact, about celebrating musical genius. If it was, composers superior to Wagner – most notably, Wolfgang Mozart – would complement Big Bridges’ façade in Wagner’s stead. Rather, it is a relic of the era in which the building was constructed: a time when there were quotas on Jewish enrollment in higher education, or when Jews were barred from attending universities altogether. Higher education’s past injustices toward Jews makes it all the more crucial that we clearly acknowledge that Richard Wagner is the Robert E. Lee of our campus. That is not to say that Jews are subject to the same ongoing system of systemic oppression and violence
as Americans of color – American Jews in the 21st century are not. I am horrified by the far right’s glorification of Confederate leaders; it hurts me to know that there are Black Americans who are forced to attend schools named after racists, live in towns that honor slave owners, and endure administrations that willfully embraces racism. It goes without saying that I proudly support the activists who failed to remain silent at the erection and memorialization of bigoted figures around the country, from local parks to the Capitol building. Systemic racism in this country strives to disempower Americans of color through the fear they experience every time they venture outside of their homes, and no comparison to any other system of oppression fully encapsulates the unique danger to which black and brown Americans are vulnerable. The glorification of Lee and Wagner is unacceptable and their hateful ideologies deserve to be expunged from existence. As Robert E. Lee must be torn down from his podium in Charlottesville, so too must Wagner be removed from his lofty perch on Pomona’s most prized structure, one of the “most photographed buildings in Southern California.” With each day that Wagner sits atop Big Bridges, his looming bust reminds us all that Jews are unworthy of even basic human dignity. It is insulting to me as a Jew and as a student of this college. It is now, in a time of increased anti-Semitic incidents, not just in the United States, but also worldwide, particularly on college campuses, that we must remain vigilant of everyday occurrences of prevailing anti-Semitism. Although students on campus may not be aware of the painful history Wagner evokes, I shudder to perform in Bridges Auditorium, for if statues could talk, Wagner’s would claim that I, like all Jews, “[am] innately incapable of enouncing [myself] artistically through either [my] outward appearance or [my] speech, and least of all through [my] singing. Zachary Freiman PO ‘20 is a prospective Music and Public Policy Analysis double major from Sleepy Hollow, NY. He dreams of one day meeting Oprah Winfrey.
Meghan Joyce • The Student Life
An Etching of Composer Wagner on the facade of Pomona’s Big Bridges Auditorium
Weekly Comic: Welcome Back
Sophie Reingold • The Student Life
OPINIONS SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
PAGE 7
THE STUDENT LIFE
On Learning to “Be Myself ”
Corinne Mitchner Columnist It’s strange not knowing how to be yourself. The only comparable sensation I can think of is when I become aware of some innate bodily function, like blinking or breathing, and then, goddammit, why can’t I stop thinking about how to open and close my eyelids? Coming into orientation a few weeks ago, I thought I knew who I was. At home, I knew where I belonged, the types of activities I enjoyed, the people I clicked with. I never needed to assert who I was to my friends – they just knew. But, taken out of my comfortable context, I was forced to re-evaluate. Suddenly, I was shaking hands left and right, trying to befriend strangers through small talk about hometowns and majors. This discomfort made it hard
to communicate with others in a way that felt genuine to what I was actually feeling. I’d walk away from conversations with new classmates, disgusted with myself. Did you really just say that? What was I thinking? I felt out of touch with who I was, and I could sense that others felt the same. To my surprise, the highlight of my first days on campus was taking my laptop to IT. The student, a senior, conversed with me as she connected my laptop to my dorm printer and installed protective software. She was refreshingly relaxed and candid. Unlike the first-years I had been surrounded by all day, she felt no need to establish herself at Scripps. I immediately decided that I wanted to approach my future social interactions with her sincerity. I’d just be myself. Easier said than done. “Just be yourself!” is the advice we were all given. But in many ways I felt like the myself I knew wasn’t the myself I wanted to present to others. The only “self” I knew spent her entire life in the same affluent suburban community, the same social circles, the same daily routine of school, homework, extracurriculars, sleep. Given the newfound independence of college life, I don’t think anyone wants to be their high school self in college. I had to ask myself: “So, who do you want to be?” I don’t think I’ll ever be able to answer this question with 100 percent certainty, although I hope
I’ll get closer as time moves on. But during orientation, and for the time being, I have realized the value of honesty. It was easy during first-year events to slip into a hyper-positive, uber-excited-to-be-here mask. Under the bright lights of the Scripps College field for the first 5C event, I felt scrutinized by my fellow first-years, many of whom – I now assume – felt just as uncomfortable as I did. I tried to conform to whoever I was speaking to at that moment in time. Being a social chameleon is great for meeting people, but desiring deeper connections, I had to dig deeper and extract exactly what I wanted out of college friendships. To attract people who like the real you, you have to identify how you feel at that moment in time and express that. Finding the real you at this transitional time necessitates that you combine your knowledge of your past and with your uncertainties for the future. Talk about your involvement in a high school club, but disclose your current fears about finding your place on campus. Facetime old friends from home, but change it up and sit next to someone new in your writing section. Tell old stories, but make new memories. It’s difficult to discover a balance between who you used to be and the person you want to become, but in many ways I feel that’s what college is all about. Be bold, and take the first step. Hi, I’m Corinne. It’s nice to meet you.
Shirley Zhong • The Student Life
No False Choice for Fighting Climate Change Casey Goodwin Columnist
Amy Lowndes Columnist Last week, Hurricane Irma spun through much of the Caribbean Islands and Florida, devastating communities, destroying roads and buildings, and renewing anxieties about climate change. The storm was particularly frightening for a multitude of reasons: its proximity to Hurricanes Harvey, Jose, and Katia; its incredible 400-mile radius; and
its record-breaking intensity. While a number of environmental factors cause hurricanes, climate change worsens their impact. These facts alone should be enough reason to buckle down on climate legislation. But Scott Pruitt, Environmental Protection Agency chief and climate change denier, thinks differently. “Here’s the issue,” Pruitt told CNN. “To have any kind of focus on the cause and effect of the storm, versus helping people or actually facing the effect of the storm, is misplaced.” “To use time and effort to address it at this point is very, very insensitive to this people in Florida,” he added. This quote is so convoluted that it verges on nonsensical; Pruitt favors a reactionary approach not only over, but in lieu of, a preventative one. He sets up a false choice: you can either have immediate empathy for people’s struggles, or you have concern for the root of these struggles. This is a familiar refrain for the GOP. When tragedy strikes, the government avoids creating meaningful legislation, instead di-
verting national attention with accusations of ‘politicizing’ a tragedy. Though ‘politicizing’ a tragedy is framed as a callous act, it is far from that. Too often we conflate creating meaningful legislation with exploiting a tragedy for personal or political gain. Legislation doesn’t exist as purely cold, factdriven calculus; it is driven by deeply human stories and empathy for those suffering. For the 103 dead because of Irma in the United States and the Caribbean, for the incalculable number facing destroyed homes and insurmountable financial burden, for the citrus growers facing a heavily compromised season, the government must honestly acknowledge its failure to pass comprehensive environmentally-conscious legislation. However, the GOP continues to discourage conversation on the matter. The current administration has shown nothing but contempt for climate science. The United States withdrew from Paris Climate Treaty in August with no small fanfare. Ten days before Harvey made landfall
in Texas, Trump rescinded an Obama-era executive order that required protective infrastructure in flood-prone areas. Even mentions of climate change have been wiped from the EPA website. Meanwhile, those actually affected by catastrophic weather events continue to suffer. In Miami, mayor Tomás Regalado slammed Pruitt’s comments. “It is insensitive on his part, because I wish that he would have been here when people ran from high rises, because of the storm surge,” Regalado told CNN. “I wish that he would have been here when we were told that we were facing apocalyptic moments with a Cat 5 hurricane.” Instead of backing away from the issue out of a misguided idea of sensitivity, now is the ideal time to discuss climate change and its devastating effects. Shying away from climate discussion only further victimizes those it purports to be considering. Amy Lowndes PO ‘21 is from Orlando, Florida. She likes Dolly Parton, iced coffee, and ‘90s crime shows.
Uncovering Campus Safety’s Lack of Transparency Adam Starr Guest Columnist In 1990, the United States Congress unanimously passed the Jeane Clery Act, requiring universities to disclose statistics about crime on and around campus so students could properly evaluate their school’s safety. The intent of the law is clear: colleges ought to make information about crime on and around campus publicly available. Safety requires transparency. In the spirit of the Clery Act, many colleges publish online logs with brief descriptions of incidents. However, the Claremont University Consortium fails to embrace the intent of the law by limiting access to information and improperly maintaining records. Why is the Consortium’s default mode secrecy and not openness? The Consortium must create practices in the spirit of the Clery Act. Limiting access to information goes against the core mission of academe and places our community at risk. Some manifestations of the Clery Act include timely warnings and the annual Safety and Security Reports. Another requirement of the Act is that institutions maintain a complete and accurate daily log of all known campus crime. Once an log entry is added, it may not be deleted. The 2016 Clery Act Handbook requires that institutions “let students and employees know that the log is available, what it contains, and where it is” and suggests information be in student handbooks and “anywhere else it’s likely to be seen.” The daily crime logs are not referenced in any 7C student handbook nor any 7C Title IX or Sexual Misconduct Policy – they are also not referenced in the section entitled “The College’s External Reporting
Obligations.” As I was researching Pomona College bike thefts for a class project, I requested Pomona College crime logs from Campus Safety. While I was not looking to find failures in their system, I was shocked by my experiences. To access records, I was required to submit identification, being that the Campus Safety representative stated that the department is obligated to maintain a record of who accesses the log. Requiring personal information for log access suggests a violation of Clery Act, as the Clery Handbook prohibits institutions from requiring written requests for the sixty day log. To get better context about bike theft, I requested previous years’ logs as well, and Campus Safety directed me to the annual security report which covered three years of aggregate data. With this, I became suspicious. I reiterated my request for previous logs with the support of Pomona College, and Campus Safety informed me that photographing the logs or possessing a digital copy would be illegal. Campus Safety Director Stan Skipworth claimed that neither he nor Pomona College “possesses the statutory authority” to release digital copies of the logs. He further claimed to be unable to find “a colleague that supports this much broader interpretation” of the Clery Act as to allow such access. Ultimately, Skipworth authorized the release of digital logs as “a one time courtesy” without a guarantee of “accuracy, completeness, timeliness or correct sequencing of the information.” What is the purpose of the log if not an accurate, complete, and timely record of crime on campus? If Skipworth supports the release of digital records, why does he con-
tinue to limit access? Evidence suggests that the logs are not properly managed. One example of this is that not all entries are properly recorded. Consider the April 23, 2017 trespassing arrest of Michael London. As of June 15, 2017, the logs did not indicate that arrest was made. Additionally, entries of known reports seem to be missing from the logs. Campus Safety provided me with a list of reported bike thefts on Pomona’s campus. Some of these thefts were not indicated in the logs. Campus Safety preemptively suggested that the discrepancy may be due to reclassification, but reclassifications are not justifications to remove entries from the logs. Have other reports been removed from – or never been added to – the logs? The consortium must reexamine its policies surrounding crime log maintenance, access, and publicity. Students must be made aware of and provided easy and timely access to
an accurate daily crime log. Safety requires transparency. The consortium needs to go beyond the minimum reporting requirements of the Clery Act. In a recent conversation, Campus Safety indicated that they are further restricting access to the logs and that upcoming reports will reflect their “actual” policies. Skipworth claimed that work on a website to provide online logs will begin in a matter of “weeks.” The crime logs should include descriptions of the events, and if a member of our community asks about an incident, Campus Safety should be informative without placing the victim at risk. Campus Safety often plays the obstructionist in response to inquiries about crime on campus. Skipworth claims to support openness while simultaneously limiting college supported student access. Campus Safety must increase access to these public records.
Sean Ogami • The Student Life
Weekly Crossword
Simone Bishara PZ ’18
Across 1. Arco convenience store, day and night 5. Willing and fit 9. TV channel with Barney 12. Coke synonym 13. Angelou, poet and activist 14. Roadside service option 15. Look around, maybe in the Sahara 16. “Yeah, right!” “Pshaw” 17. Greek letter that sounds like spicy tea 18. Me or you or your neighbor or ____ 20. Music genre or pole com position 22. Also 23. Tennis match 24. ____ humbug! 26. Tal Bachman One Hit Wonder, with 23-Down 29. Air-related 33. Greeting in Portuguese 34. Gorilla or monkey 35. The sea, in Spanish 36. Snow Big Foot 38. Surprise sound 40. Poem about someone 41. “It Takes ___” by Rob Base & DJ EZ Rock 43. 33rd pres. of the USA 45. Really fast superhero 48. The Weather Girls song with 37-Down 52. Charged particle 53. Related to the small intestines 55. Ru Paul is a gay one 56. Toast topping, abbr. 57. Ark builder 58. Spanish goblet, or football trophy 59. X 60. Catch a glimpse of, ESPN award 61. Thought, learned
Down 1. City in New York 2. Crescent, full or new 3. “_____ Funk Music” by Wild Cherry 4. “___ No. 5” by Lou Bega 5. Amongst 6. “___ Got Back” by Sir Mix A lot 7. Washing and cleaning solu tion 8. Alice in Wonderland sign 9. Treaty 10. “Who Let the Dogs Out” by ____ Men 11. “____” by Awolnation 19. ___ La La 21. Flight stat 23. With 26 Across 24. “Crank That” by Soulja ___ 25. Beer 27. Othello character 28. Phone app when you’re lost 30. Heart eyes or upside down face 31. Super cool! 32. Unrefined rock 37. With 48-Across 39. 21st Letter of Greek alphabet 42. “____ Up” by Kat DeLuna 44. Small cut 45. Small Italian car 46. “Tainted ___” by Soft Cell 47. Without identification, abbr. 48. Harvest 49. “___ Breaky Heart” Billy Ray Cyrus 50. Opposite of yeah 51. Chew 54. Spanish article
SPORTS PAGE 8
SEPTEMBER 15, 2017
THE STUDENT LIFE
P-P Athlete of the Week
CMS WOMEN’S SOCCER
Athenas Salt Banana Slugs in 5-1 Victory
Gianluca Minardi
Men’s Football Edward Sias
PO ‘19 Northridge, California Led by quarterback Edward Sias PO ‘19, the Pomona-Pitzer football team (1-0) returned from a 21-point deficit to win their season opener against Rhodes College (1-1) on Saturday, Sept. 9. Sias, with 256 passing yards and one touchdown in the match, popped the Sagehens up to 38 points to overtake the Lynxes’ 31, launching the Sagehens into a loss-free season for the first time in over five years. Coming out of 2016 with a career-high 2,119 passing yards and 15 touchdowns, along with a Second-Team All-SCIAC title, Sias has the momentum of a 1300-yard, 10-touchdown increase from his 2015 record that will hopefully propel the Hens into a victory-filled 2017 season.
CMS Athlete of the Week Men’s Cross Country Thomas D’Anieri
CM ‘20 Wellesley, Massachusetts
Men’s cross country runner Thomas D’Anieri CM ‘20 set a personal best time at the ten-team Biola Invitational, finishing second with a time of 25:06.21 in the 8k race. D’Anieri effort led the Stags to a second-place team finish in the meet. This race bested his previous personal record by over 35 seconds. As a first-year last year, he ran 25:45.5 at the NCAA Championship in Louisville, Kentucky. D’Anieri, projects to be the top runner for the talented group of Stags runners this fall. The team will next compete in the UC Riverside Invitational on Saturday, Sept. 16, at 7:30 a.m.
The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women’s soccer team (1–2–0) dominated the field Saturday, Sept. 10, securing their first win of the season in a spectacular 5-1 win over the University of California, Santa Cruz Banana Slugs (1-5-0). The Athenas were polished on offense, with midfielder Sarah Malott CM ’19 firing two goals in her second multi-goal career game with the Athenas. With firm defensive positioning, the Athenas controlled the ball from the start of the match. They jumped out to a fast start and opened up the scoring in the eighth minute, when Sydney Smith CM ‘18 rebounded her own kick with a chip over the Banana Slugs’ keeper. However, UCSC responded well to the goal, and they started to make runs into the Athenas’ territory. By the 25th minute, they capitalized on a CMS foul and tied the match when UCSC defender Joelle Steichen rocketed a free kick into the box and
forward Olivia Stewart tipped it into the net. After the goal, the Athena defenders regained their strength and stifled any UCSC attempts at attack, but their offense still did not not make headway against the Banana Slugs’ goalkeeper. The teams headed into halftime deadlocked at 1–1. After the second half whistle blew, CMS set a new tone for the game: Megan Lo CM ‘19 took advantage of UCSC’s defensive mistakes to win the ball from the goalkeeper and put the Athenas in front just 15 seconds into the half. Following the momentum, CMS launched itself offensively. At the 52nd minute, Rhiann Holman CM ‘20 blasted the ball from outside the box to score CMS’s third goal. This lead would prove to be more than enough for a CMS victory. Given the extreme heat and a two goal advantage, CMS calmly paced the rest of the game, controlling possession and limiting the Banana Slugs’ attempts at attack. However, the Athenas weren’t
Audrey Connell • The Student Life
Teammates congratulate Megan Lo (CMC’19) after her goal gives the Athenas the lead against the Banana Slugs of the University of California, Santa Cruz.
finished scoring yet. At the 81st minute, midfielder Sarah Malott CM ’19, coming from the bench, took advantage of a rebound inside the penalty box and put it into the open net, making the game 4–1. Looking to secure the
COMMENTARY
Bennett Praised, While Kaepernick Remains Unsigned: the NFL’s Inconsistent Response to Players’ Activism Noah Shapiro
Last season, then San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began kneeling during the national anthem to protest racial inequality and police brutality. Since Kaepernick’s initial protest, many other players have joined suit or shown solidarity in various ways. This past weekend, some players kneeled or remained seated on the bench, while others linked arms or raised a fist in the air. Anthem protests have nearly become commonplace around the league. In response to Kaepernick’s initial protest last season, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell told NFL Network that he “believes very strongly in patriotism in the NFL,” and that players must “choose respectful ways” of bringing forward societal issues. Kaepernick did not receive
support from the NFL when he chose to take a stand for issues he believed in. This fact has been made much more clear since the QB left the 49ers, as no team has been willing to sign him. Some teams have said they don’t want to bring in a distraction or cause trouble in the locker room, but it is hard to argue that Kaepernick isn’t talented enough to be on a roster. One of the most outspoken NFL activists aside from Kaepernick is Seattle’s Michael Bennett. On Sept. 6, Bennett tweeted an open letter describing a recent experience with what he deemed to be police brutality. In the letter, Bennett described how he was in Las Vegas on the night of Aug. 26 to watch the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor fight. While heading back from a club he heard what sounded like gunshots and began to run from the sound with the rest of the crowd.
While fleeing, he was grabbed by policemen who thought he was the shooter; he was then handcuffed and forced to the ground at gunpoint. His letter said that one officer shoved a knee into his back, and that he could not feel his fingers due to the tightness of the handcuffs. Bennett added that he was released by the police after 10 minutes of detainment, once the officers realized he was a professional football player. Bennett wrote that officers targeted him “for doing nothing more than simply being a black man in the wrong place at the wrong time,” and that one told him that if he moved he would “blow his [expletive] head off.” “All I could think of was ‘I’m going to die for no other reason than being black and my skin color is somehow a threat,’” he said. The Las Vegas Metropolitan
Clark Returns for Second Stint as CMS Women’s Soccer Coach Torrey Hart Since the start of the 21st century, CMS women’s soccer has had only two coaches – Jennifer Clark from 2000 to 2003, and Keri Sanchez from 2004 to 2016. It’s only fitting that Clark, the 2002 SCIAC Coach of the Year, would return to bookend Sanchez’s tenure. “A lot is the same as when I left,” Clark said. “I think what has changed is the general athletic environment. Obviously we have this fantastic building [Roberts Pavilion] to work out of, and that has kind of raised expectations – self-expectations.” In her time between stints, Clark served as an assistant soccer coach at Middlebury College, followed by head soccer coach at Castleton University. While Middlebury’s athletic program is reminiscent of CMS’s, Castleton was a different experience. The biggest difference between Middlebury and CMS? “Worse weather,” Clark joked. With her return to the Sunshine State, the Dartmouth College grad inherited an undeniably awkward situation: a handful of recruits who she had never met – and potentially needed to cut – and a team of players who had seen their beloved coach unexpectedly quit midway through their careers. For the players, the transition has proved easy. “Jen has been amazing, and coming off Keri who was also amazing, it hasn’t been that difficult,” junior midfielder and defender Sydney Talmi CM ‘19 said. Though Keri left detailed and unbiased notes about each player’s strengths and weaknesses, everyone entered the season with a blank slate, increasing the opportunity for walk-on players, Clark said. “Watching video is so much dif-
ferent than seeing people play in person,” she said. “I kind of gave everyone their tryout.” One of the biggest challenges this year could prove to be the number of players that made the cut, Clark admitted. While everyone has seen playing time early in the season, as competition elevates there will be a need to narrow down the player roster. “Everyone just clicking together, I think, will take a little bit of time. But once we come together I think we’ll be great,” Talmi said. Clark’s coaching staff consists of assistant coach Rosalie WrightLapin and goalie coach Jordan Sanguedolce, who also works with the men’s team. WrightLapin played for Clark in high school and at Middlebury, earning her the position known to the team as ‘translator.’ “Jen definitely likes to get creative with her drills. … She says a lot of things where we have to look at our assistant coach and kind of ask ‘what does that mean?’ Talmi said. “Rosalie has to decode for us.” Clark confirmed her player’s comment. “I always say [Rosalie] can translate ‘Jen speak.’” In addition to her staff, Clark said she has connected with men’s coach, Matt Edwards, for support. Edwards is entering his third season with CMS and also serves as a faculty representative for the Student Athletic Advisory Committee in addition to his coaching duties. “He’s been good about helping me keep up to speed with what’s happening,” Clark said. As for what is to come this season, Clark noted that while she and the players are looking forward to the Pomona-Pitzer rivalry game, it is important not to overlook other teams while on the quest for another SCIAC championship.
upset, Malott continued to push the ball forward, and she scored CMS’s fifth and final goal in the dying minutes of the game. By the time the final whistle blew, the Athenas had convincingly defeated the Banana Slugs 5–1.
Photos courtesy of Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, and Public Domain Pictures. Edited for reuse by Adela Pfaff.
Police Department Undersheriff Kevin McMahill said that they do not think the incident was one of racial profiling, but they are investigating the situation. NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was quick to come to Bennett’s support after the story broke. In a statement released by the league, Goodell said Bennett “represents the best of the NFL” and credits Bennett for bringing up issues that “deserve serious attention from all of our leaders in every community.” While this statement of support is encouraging, it is nothing like the league’s response to Kaepernick. The former quarterback has been called a disgrace and told to stick to football, not politics, while Bennett is being celebrated for using his platform to bring up social injustice. There is nothing wrong with celebrating Bennett for his response, or with sympathizing with him after he experienced police brutality firsthand. However, Kaepernick deserves some credit too. He took a stand when nobody else would, and he helped keep racial injustice and police brutality in the national conversation. Just because he has not been pinned down by the police with a gun to his head does not mean he shouldn’t be praised for trying to help those who have. The bottom line is that Goodell and the rest of the NFL community are very willing to put on a progressive mask when a player is mistreated. They acknowledge that these issues are important and deserve attention. However, the moment players try to spark actual conversation and debate around these topics, the NFL distances itself from these ‘rogue individuals’ and preaches patriotism and respect. If athletes want to make their voices heard, they must continue to protest without worrying about the reaction from the league. As fans, we must support these players and allow them to not be silenced or forced out of a job.
P-P CROSS COUNTRY
Cross Country Sagehens Race Ahead in Season Openers Jacinta Chen
In the sweltering heat over Labor Day weekend, the Pomona-Pitzer cross country teams endured the blazing sun and took second at the PP-Oxy-La Verne Triangular meet on Sept. 1. The women’s and men’s teams accumulated the fastest total and average times of that competition, ending with 33 and 38 points respectively. The next day, the men’s team traveled to Brea to take part in the Mark Covert Classic on Sept. 2, where they took third out of 14 teams. At the PP-Oxy-La Verne friendly meet, Ethan Ashby PO ’21 won the 6k race with a time of 20:12.00, while teammates Nicholas Beatty PO ‘18 and Gabe Elliot PZ ‘18 also finished in the top 10. Helen Guo PO ‘20 and Lauren Hamilton PO ‘20 cruised to first and second in their 4k race, finishing at 14:50 and 14:54 respectively. Maddie Bennet PZ ‘19 and Isabella Kearney PO ‘21 also placed in the top 10. “It was promising to see the new first-years run as a pack with
the veterans,” said Guo. “We hope that this strategy is what is going to help the team place well at Regionals at the end of the season.” Guo’s teammate Emily Freilich PO ’18 has enjoyed the team’s competitiveness and support for one another. As a senior with four years of cross country under her belt, she said that it has been “very exciting to see everyone grow as runners.” Both teams faced coaching changes this season, as previous assistant coach Jordan Carpenter is now the men’s head coach and previous assistant coach Emma DeLira is serving as interim head coach for the women’s team with head coach Kirk Reynolds on leave. Even so, Guo has been pleased with the smooth transition and the introduction of “recruit weekends, new workouts, and new bonding events” to the women’s team. “These changes have been embraced by the team and I hope they continue to be,” she said. On the men’s side, Julian DeGroot Lutzner PZ ‘19 said that Coach Jordan Carpenter “is cultivating a cohesive team,” con-
tributing to the existing “depth, talent, and positive energy” of his teammates. After last year’s 17th-place finish at NCAA National Championships, the men hope to continue their success in the 2017 season. Welcoming back five runners who attended that NCAA race and 11 new first-years won’t hurt their cause. Nick Vucovich PO ‘18 said that this year’s team has “the most depth the Pomona-Pitzer program has ever seen” and is excited to see the results they will produce. Vucovich was proud of what the men accomplished at the Mark Covert Invitational, adding that the team’s collective talent showed. Andy Reischling PO ‘19, who took 41st in last year’s Nationals, finished in the top 10 at the Mark Covert Classic with a time of 25:47.00. Both Hugo Ward PZ ‘21 and Bukuru Anaclet PO ‘21 were challenged by the length of the 8k race in combination with the 100 degree weather at the Mark Covert Classic, but said they have enjoyed their experiences so far as Sagehen cross country athletes. They said
they have been inspired by the dedication that all their teammates have for the sport. The season is leading up to the SCIAC Championships in October and Regionals in November. The women hope to place in the top two at Regionals and qualify for the National Championship. “That would be the dream!” said Guo. The men, on the other hand, aim to win SCIAC, hoping to continue their five year winning streak. “We’ve got something special brewing,” said Anaclet. “We want to show that we’re the team to beat this year.” After conquering SCIAC, the men have their sights set on winning Regionals and placing in the top four at Nationals this season. Knowing that “the team has worked hard to place well at Nationals,” Ward said, “I really hope that we do well at Nationals [whether or not] I’m on the traveling team.” The P-P Sagehen cross country women and men will be back in action on Sept. 16 at the University of California, Riverside Invite.