THE STUDENT
LIFE
The Student Newspaper of the Claremont Colleges Since 1889 CLAREMONT, CA
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 23, 2018
VOL. CXXX NO. 4
NEWS
Klawe Promotes Liberal Arts In Speech At Pakistani University Jaimie Ding Harvey Mudd College President Maria Klawe gave a lecture Tuesday at Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan, titled “The Importance of a Broad Education: The story of building an innovative university and impacting society.” Habib is Pakistan’s first of just a few liberal arts universities. Inspired by HMC, it has a core curriculum that exposes students to the humanities, arts, and natural and social sciences. It was chartered in 2012 and will graduate its first class this year. The speech was part of Habib’s annual Yohsin Lecture Series, designed to bring distinguished scholars, artists, and critics to Habib to engage with the university’s faculty and students, according to the series’ website. “‘Yohsin’ is a verb that comes from Habib’s motto relating to grace, generosity, and excellence,” the website states. “The Yohsin Lecture Series is thus meant to promote thought that approaches these qualities.” Klawe wrote in an email to TSL that her talk discussed “the importance of a broad education in preparing graduates to understand the impact of their work on society,” which echoes HMC’s mission statement. During her speech, Klawe described HMC’s founding story and the origin of its mission statement. The founding president, Joe Platt, objected to the development of the atomic bomb, and was one of the few physicists in the United States that refused to work on the Manhattan Project. Platt founded HMC “to educate scientists engineers and mathematicians who’d be leaders in their field and understand the impact of their work on society,” Klawe said in her talk.
Campus Safety officers generally try to avoid using force on 5C students, but they are permitted to when necessary. Read more on page 3.
LIFE AND STYLE
After reading Lisa Wade’s “American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus,” sex columnist Micaela Macagnone PO ’20 decides to take a new approach to college hookups. Read more on page 5.
Courtesy of Habib University
Harvey Mudd College President Maria Klawe takes a selfie with Habib University President Wasif Rizvi in Karachi, Pakistan. Habib recently invited Klawe to give a lecture on the importance of a broad liberal arts education.
Increase in Pomona STEM Majors Prompts Concern From Other Disciplines
LIFE AND STYLE
Glen Williams
Get thrifty at Pomona Colege’s new 5C Thrift Room, a two-room space full of clothing, jewelry, and other funky finds at Pomona College’s Walker Lounge. Read more on page 5.
OPINIONS
Following the Parkland, Florida shooting, opinions columnist Zachary Frieman PO ’20 expounds upon the next steps in mass-shooting prevention. Read more on page 9.
SPORTS
The CMS women’s basketball team topped conferenceleading Chapman Saturday, clinching the No. 1 seed in the postseason tournament. See more on page 10.
Science, technology, engineering, and math degrees have been all the rage at Pomona College the past several years. In 2005, STEM degrees made up less than 30 percent of all majors completed, and the arts and humanities was the most popular division at roughly 30 percent, according to Pomona’s Office of Institutional Research. By 2017, STEM degrees accounted for 41 percent of all majors completed, while the arts and humanities had fallen to 21 percent. These percentages do not reflect Pomona’s recent decision to change economics’ classification to STEM. These numbers exceed those at many of Pomona’s peer schools around the country. In 2017, 25 percent of degrees conferred at Amherst were in STEM fields, 28 percent at Swarthmore, and 34 percent at Williams, according to the common data set reports from those schools. Some of Pomona’s admissions policies help contribute to the high percentage. Starting in 2015, Pomona has admitted a Posse cohort from Miami every year open only to students interested in STEM fields. Some humanities and social science professors said they are concerned about some of the underlying trends that may be influencing the spike in STEM interest. David Menefee-Libey, a Pomona politics professor and member of the steering committee for the public policy analysis program, theorized that rising economic inequality and the unpredictability of the labor market encourages students to identify majors and career paths that ensure financial stability. Other professors agreed. “This is a world in which so much of it is defined by ‘How much money am I willing to make?’ rather than ‘What would make me happy?’” classics department chair and professor Kenneth Wolf said. Wolf said he feels the focus on major and marketability contrast with what Pomona represents. “I think people need to understand that Pomona is not a trade school,” he said. “Every discipline is to be studied for the love of the discipline. We don’t have applied programs. We have pure disciplines. A place where students can come in, follow their hearts, and
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graduate and find their place in the world.” However, some Pomona STEM majors said they study these fields because of their interest in the subject. Math major Chris Donnay PO ’18 said that even if all degrees were equally marketable, he would “absolutely” still be majoring in math. “I’m planning to go to grad school to get a Ph.D. in math. I seem to hate all the kinds of math that appear marketable and love the more academic kind,” he said. Wolf said he is concerned that students think humanities degrees will not lead them to profitable careers. “If it’s simply a shift in interest, then I don’t have a problem with it, but if people think they’re not going to get anywhere with a degree like history or English, that is simply not true,” he said. Some STEM students have taken future career prospects into consideration when choosing to major in STEM, but said this was because their career goals are based in their interests in certain fields, rather than with an eye for profits. “The environment is a very important issue to me” said Cade Niles PO ’20, who is majoring in biology and geology. “Although politics intrigued me, I just felt like I needed to have some empirical scientific expertise as well, so even if I was in the political arena I could back-up what I said with facts. Having taken political science courses, they feel very much theoretical, in ways I don’t think I could apply.” Wolf said he is grateful for Dean of the College Audrey Bilger’s efforts to de-emphasize the importance of students’ specific majors and focus on liberal arts as a whole. “We see Pomona graduates going on to meaningful careers after pursuing a wide range of majors, from the humanities to social sciences to STEM, and a recent study by the American Academy of Arts & Sciences also shows humanities majors finding satisfying careers, and — even more important — satisfaction in the quality of their lives,” Bilger wrote in an email to TSL. Economics professor Eleanor Brown said it’s likely that some portion of the student body perceives
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See KLAWE page 2
Pomona’s Family Weekend Features Notable Parent Speakers Chris Agard Pomona College hosted a series of speeches by notable parents of students as part of its family weekend Feb. 16. It featured the president of the Boston Bruins, a film studio executive, one of the prosecuting attorney in the infamous 1995 O.J. Simpson murder case, and the European Union’s special representative for human rights. Each speaker gave a short talk on ideas that ignite their “intellectual spark.” Former NHL athlete and Boston Bruins President Cam Neely, parent of Jack Neely PO ’21, talked about resilience and adjustment to challenges, drawing primarily from his career as a professional hockey player turned hockey executive. After being traded at age 21 to the Boston Bruins from the Vancouver Canucks, Neely played for 10 years in Boston, where his
career took off. “When you get traded, you think that team doesn’t want you, but my father was a very positive thinker and he got me thinking, ‘One team may have not wanted you, but think about the one that did want you,’” Neely said. The Bruins retired his jersey number in 2004, and Neely was inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame the following year. Filmmaker Lauren Versel spoke next, discussing her career in Hollywood and the endurance required to be successful. She described some of the obstacles she has faced as a woman in an industry with limited female representation. “When I said I planned on directing at my first internship in film, I was told, ‘you can be a script supervisor or an editor. Editors are like cooking; you look in the fridge and see what’s there and make dinner,’” Versel said.
H owever, she per severed through the challenges — including once working as an editor under a blind director — and eventually found success through the creation of the Lucky Monkey Pictures production company with Maria Teresa Arida in 2002. Attorney Christopher Darden, one of the prosecuting attorneys in the O.J. Simpson trial and parent of Chris Darden, Jr., PO ’20, chronicled his journey “rising above the court of public opinion” after being criticized by many in the media for his role in the trial. “If you ever want to meet someone who’s been dragged through the press, had the most terrible things possible said about that person, I’m your guy,” Darden said. Darden spoke about how he struggled under and eventually learned to deal with the intense media pressure and public scrutiny
See KLAWE page 2
SAS Faces Hurdles Installing Campus Plan B Vending Machine Amanda Larson SAS has begun planning for the implementation of a wellness vending machine, according to the minutes from meetings throughout this and last semester. ASHMC is also working on a plan to install a wellness vending machine. The machine would likely be modeled on the one in Pomona College’s Walker Lounge, which sells the Plan B One-Step emergency contraceptive pill, as well as other items. A survey sent out by SAS at the beginning of the 2017-2018 academic year asking whether or not Scripps College should have a wellness vending machine received 98.6 percent affirmative responses from about 42 percent of the overall student body. A wellness vending machine at Scripps’ campus would increase accessibility for students of Scripps, Pitzer College, and Harvey Mudd College, who are farther from the machine at Walker Lounge. A Scripps student, who asked to remain anonymous, said a machine on Scripps’ campus would have
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improved her access to Plan B during first year. “I needed Plan B my freshman year, and had to make two trips to the machine at Walker Lounge because I didn’t realize the price of the pill, and that the machine only took Claremont Cash. I had to go back to my room to fill up my card,” she told TSL. “I fully support a machine on Scripps’ campus; it would have made my experience getting Plan B a lot easier.” SAS will be self-funding the project, SAS co-Treasurers Grace Wang SC ’19 and Romanshi Gupta SC ’19 wrote in an email to TSL. The money will come from reserves accumulated from unused funds in previous years, they wrote. Acquiring sufficient funding for the wellness machine seems to be a problem for SAS. Feb. 18 minutes note the project would require continuous funding to keep the machine stocked, rather than only initial funding to install it. The Claremont Colleges Dean of Students Denise Hayes added in an email to TSL that this project has also been delayed due to Student Health
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Services’ lack of a director, an issue which SHS is working to remedy. SAS minutes indicate that there have been other difficulties with SHS. Feb. 11 minutes state that “SHS rejected” an unspecified aspect of SAS’ plan for the wellness vending machine, leading SAS to look for ways around SHS. “Action Item — brainstorming other ways for wellness [vending] machine, without going through [SHS],” the minutes read. However, Scripps, not SHS, ultimately has final approval on the project. “Each college can make choices about purchasing a vending machine and installing health and wellness products,” Hayes wrote. SAS is currently in talks with Student Health regarding the types of products to be stocked in the machine, according to Gupta and Wang. SAS minutes from Feb. 11 indicate that SAS may include discounted Plan B in the wellness vending machine, to be priced at $20, rather than its normal retail price of $35 to $60.
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NEWS................................1 LIFE & STYLE.....................4 OPINIONS........................7 SPORTS...........................10
NEWS PAGE 2
KLAWE: Speech Advances Mudd’s Partnership With Habib Continued from Page 1 During the lecture, Klawe revealed many personal elements of her journey from a young undergraduate at HMC to becoming its president — her trip to Pakistan for the speech was not her first time in the country. Klawe dropped out of school for 21 months to travel across India, Pakistan, and Afghanistan, before going back to HMC and continuing on to get a doctorate in mathematics from the University of Alberta. “I loved being in those countries, and I will say I was very skinny,” Klawe said. “The thinnest I’ve ever been in my life ... the person and I who were traveling together, we were living on about a dollar a day, and that included travel, and so we were eating maybe a banana a day,” Klawe said. Klawe eventually discovered that her passion was to “change the
culture of science and engineering so everybody feels welcome and supported; that region or gender or race, country of origin — those things are irrelevant, they don’t matter. But the way most places function, if you’re female, or black, or gay, or Muslim, you’re not going to feel like you belong.” Klawe’s lecture is the latest element of a partnership between Habib and HMC, which started when Habib President Wasif Rizvi visited Klawe in Claremont about two years ago. “Habib University was already in discussions with Pitzer about a possible collaboration, and was looking at our CS and engineering programs as well,” Klawe wrote in her email to TSL. “Since we are one of a very small number of liberal arts colleges with CS and engineering majors, [Rizvi] was interested in how our educational approaches might transfer to Habib
University.” Last year, HMC held a teleconferencing session with Habib faculty to discuss pedagogical techniques and practices. “It included faculty from many different departments and I very much enjoyed hearing about what they were doing with their students,” HMC Associate Dean for Faculty Development Rachel Levy wrote in an email to TSL. Habib faculty have also visited HMC to learn about its Clinic Program. “It’s very inspirational to see how far Habib has come in the last four years,” she wrote. “It’s amazing to me how they have created a real liberal arts learning community in such a short period. The students are incredibly thoughtful about how much they have learned and how it has changed they way they see their country and their future.”
CMC Students Still Unable To Apply For Watson Fellowship After 2002 Violation Kellen Browning Next month, 40 lucky students from liberal arts colleges around the country will be accepted into the prestigious Watson Fellowship program, through which they will receive a $30,000 stipend and embark on a year-long global research project. No Claremont McKenna College students will be among them. In 2002, a CMC Watson recipient broke one of the program’s cardinal rules: Depending on the rumor, the student either returned to the United States during the year abroad or never left at all. “I do know that the student in question basically betrayed the confidence of the Watson Foundation and of CMC, and … ended up violating the terms associated with the fellowship,” said Brian Davidson, CMC’s director of fellowship advising. Regardless of the specific violation, CMC was eliminated from the pool of eligible Watson schools. Davidson, who started his current job in 2015, said the college has had “a number of positive discussions” with the Watson Foundation both before and after he arrived at CMC. Ultimately, he said, it comes down to space. “I think some students and administrators, even, may have this perception that Watson is out to get us or holds a long grudge — I don’t
FEBRUARY 23, 2018
THE STUDENT LIFE
think that’s true,” Davidson said. “They have this list and they’re sort of set up to only receive a certain number of applications. They’re definitely happy to keep us under consideration, it’s just that another opening needs to arise on their list. Either that or they need to raise more funds to expand the number.” Watson Foundation members did not reply to requests for comment. Davidson said he’s made the case to Watson that CMC differs from other colleges that might be considered for fellowship eligibility because the other four Claremont colleges are Watson Fellowship members. A Pomona College student, for instance, might “talk about the Watson a bit with other students, they say, ‘Oh hey, that sounds great, let me go talk to Brian about it,’ and I have to say, ‘Well, I’m sorry, it’s not open to you,’” Davidson said, noting that he fields Watson questions from about two or three curious CMC students each year. “If we were another random liberal arts college isolated from Watson schools, there wouldn’t be this strong undercurrent of interest,” he added. Three students from the other Claremont colleges were awarded fellowships last year, including Julia Thomas SC ’17. Thomas has traveled to Nepal, India, Zimbabwe, and South Africa studying
citizen journalism, and plans to visit Spain and Ecuador before she returns home. “My fellowship experience has been incredible,” Thomas said. “It’s a constant balancing of careful planning and reaching out/organizing, living in the moment, reflecting, and winging it.” Thomas thinks the fellowship’s requirement that recipients remain outside the U.S. “is important, for reasons of immersion and being fully present in the experience without a disruption or return to familiarity,” but believes the rule “could be more flexible and accommodating for personal situations.” She hopes CMC students will be able to apply for Watson in the near future. “I knew a couple of people at CMC who would have loved to apply but were unable,” she said. “It is unfortunate that one student’s breaking of a rule strictly upheld by the Watson has eliminated the possibility for others students to participate as fellows.” Meanwhile, CMC students interested in foreign cultures and studying abroad after college will have to look elsewhere — or be patient. Davidson is “close to pretty confident” CMC will eventually be restored to Watson eligibility. “It’s really hard to say when,” he said.
Pomona Launches Humanities Studio To Promote Research Miranda Sheridan Pomona College will launch a humanities studio — a new initiative for interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities — in the fall of 2018, Dean of the College Audrey Bilger announced in an email to students Jan. 16. “The humanities studio is conceived as a process-oriented space that models and demystifies the process of producing research and new knowledge in the humanities,” she wrote. The center will feature weekly seminar conversations, visiting speakers, professional development workshops, as well as other campus and public programming, according to Bilger. The physical space for the program has not yet been chosen, but Bilger wrote in an email to TSL that it will not involve building a new facility. Costs have not yet been finalized, as administrators continue to apply for funding. Kevin Dettmar, the English department chair, has been appointed to be the founding director. Dettmar was chosen because of his involvement in initiating the speaker series in 2013 and 2014, Bilger wrote to TSL. His term will last for five years, beginning this summer. Dettmar said one of his primary objectives will be to pursue research opportunities for both faculty members and humanities
students. The studio will question the part of “humanities research being ‘hidden’ from students, while our science faculty do a very good job of inviting students to be part of that process — they ‘demystify’ it,” he wrote in an email to TSL. “I thought that we could do a better job of giving our students a sophisticated research experience, the way my colleagues in the science disciplines do,” he added. “In the sciences, the lab is the space of collaborative discovery, modeling of research practices, mentoring; but most humanities scholarship takes place ‘off the clock’ — at night, on the weekends, over the summer — and behind closed doors.” The studio will give faculty and rising seniors interested in the humanities the chance to become studio fellows, who will facilitate seminars and research, Bilger wrote in her email to the student body. Dettmar wrote that fellows will be free to pursue research topics of their choice. The applications for prospective fellows will open in a few weeks and Dettmar is assembling a steering committee of faculty and students to review them. In addition to stimulating interdisciplinary thought, the humanities studio will focus on a theme every academic year. The 2018-2019 theme will be “Fail Better,” inspired by the late Pomona English professor Arden Reed, Bilger announced. “[Reed] was a great proponent
of the idea that important things can happen when, to embrace the familiar criticism, your reach exceeds your grasp,” Dettmar wrote. “The student and faculty fellows and I, along with visiting speakers, writers, and thinkers, will take a deep dive into failure, to bring back the treasures that only failure has to offer us.” English major John Flanagan PO ’19 said he believes the studio will be a positive addition to Pomona. Like Dettmar, he is appreciative of the efforts to create more integrated research opportunities between faculty and students, similar to those available in STEM departments. “In my experience with the English department, it’s gone either of two ways,” Flanagan said. “Either you have a personal connection with a professor to help them with their research, or you have a completely independent research opportunity. It’s really hard to get in tandem with a professor in research. I see this studio as potentially giving us the opportunity to find that balance.” Flanagan said he would be interested in applying to be a fellow both to pursue his own research and to honor Reed’s memory. “Even if I don’t get the opportunity to reap the benefits of this studio, I would love to help institute the studio so that two or three years down the line, students are able to get solid research opportunities,” he said.
Courtesy of Pomona College
Pomona College recently announced that Kevin Dettmar, chair of the English department, will take on a new position as founding director of the Pomona College humanities studio, a process-oriented space to increase interdisciplinary scholarship in the humanities.
SAS: ASHMC Pursuing Similar Vending Machine Project
SPEAKERS: O.J. Prosecutor ‘Brought Back Memories’ Of Trial
Alec Lei • The Student Life
Lukas Menkhoff PO ’21 shares a meal with his mother during Pomona College’s Family Weekend on Marston Quad Saturday.
Continued from Page 1
Elodie Arbogast • The Student Life
Continued from Page 1 Other potential products include laundry detergent, band-aids, and other wellness items, all of which were mentioned in the Oct. 1, 2017 minutes. The Oct. 1 minutes cited residence halls and the student union as potential locations for installing the machine. ASHMC’s Student Philanthropy Campaign is also currently raising
money from students and alumni for a similar vending machine, which would be available to students from all 5Cs, according to emails from from the SPC committee. It will carry items including Plan B, tide pods, deodorant, and soap, although Executive Board minutes from Feb. 11 indicate that ASHMC is also having issues adding Plan B to the vending machine. Pomona’s wellness vending machine, which SAS minutes from
Oct. 1 cite as similar to the proposed machine at Scripps, opened in 2014. It carries discounted Plan B, other forms of contraception, vibrators, and general health products like chapstick and Neosporin. At the time, Pomona’s decision garnered some criticism from a vocal minority of students who worried that students would be more likely to take Plan B more often if it was available in a vending machine. Pomona was one of the first
schools in the nation to install a vending machine carrying Plan B, but other schools have since followed. Stanford University installed a machine in 2017, which was directly inspired by Pomona’s machine, according to The New York Times. The University of California, Santa Barbara; the University of California, Davis; Boise State; and Dartmouth University have also installed machines.
he faced throughout the trial. “There were a lot of people that thought, ‘Hey, that guy didn’t do it,’” Darden said. “There was a racial divide in this country. And I was a black prosecutor in the agency that was prosecuting O.J. Simpson and I was a black man. So which side of the divide was I going to be on?” Darden’s son wrote in a message to TSL that he hopes audience members were able to learn from his father’s experiences. “Sometimes you have to do what you think is right, even if it goes against the status quo,” younger Darden wrote. Stavros Lambrinidis, the European Union’s special representative for human rights, concluded the event by challenging common arguments against human rights. “The first thing that people tell me around the world when they want to continue violating
human rights is that human rights are a luxury,” Lambrinidis said. “The question really is, are human rights a luxury we cannot afford? And I answer that question with another question. The question I ask them is: ‘What’s so scary about smart girls?’” Although the audience was significantly smaller than the one at last year’s family weekend presentation at Pomona by “Seinfeld” actor Jason Alexander, attendees seemed to enjoy themselves. “I thought they were excellent,” said Lisette Chambers, whose daughter is a current junior at Pomona. Chambers said Darden’s talk brought back memories of watching the O.J. trial play out on television. “I decided to get cable because of the whole O.J. Simpson trial, so I was really engaged in the trial at the very beginning and had no idea [Darden] was speaking today,” Chambers said.
NEWS FEBRUARY 23, 2018
THE STUDENT LIFE
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Can Campus Safety Use STEM: Students, Faculty Cite Resource Shortages Force On Students? In Humanities, Social Sciences Sam Norrito
As the Yule Ball descended into chaos last semester and students forced their way past Campus Safety officers, the officers remained generally calm and tried to use their bodies to block the students. However, Campus Safety policy would have permitted them to use force against the students if they felt threatened, according to Director of Campus Safety Stan Skipworth. “It is important to remember that threats and security concerns are a very real part of the ongoing work that we do,” Skipworth wrote in an email to TSL. According to Skipworth, in addition to investigating suspicious activity, officers must also be prepared to defend themselves and others. Although officers are trained to de-escalate situations whenever possible, situations in which danger is immediate have to be handled differently, he wrote. In such instances, Campus Safety also requests back up from the Claremont Police Department, Skipworth added. Although Campus Safety has the ability to apprehend criminals, according to its website, it is not a law enforcement agency. For example, Skipworth cited an instance where Campus Safety officers were required to chase a subject 200 yards after he struck another officer. During the incident, the CPD assisted Campus Safety. “The Campus Safety officer required medical attention for his injuries,” Skipworth wrote. “The subject was charged with battery.” Sam Horowitz PZ ’20 said he supports the policy. “I think that they should be able to use force if a person is posing a threat to someone else, or the officer,” Horowitz wrote in a message to TSL. “That being said, I think it should be a last resort.” However, according to Skip-
worth, Campus Safety is not a force-focused organization, and officers are trained in a variety of other methods for handling situations. Officers are also trained to incorporate customer service and community-based policing methods. “Community policing promotes a collaboration, with a goal of working together with the community to proactively identify and solve problems and to develop strategies for reducing the opportunity for crime,” Skipworth wrote. Campus Safety also works to develop customized security plans for each college. Sergeants in the department are assigned to work one-on-one with the colleges and rotate to a different college every year. “It provides an opportunity to become more familiar with the college’s culture, as well as with the students, staff, and faculty,” Skipworth wrote. Officers complete a severalweek field training program and the department participates in weekly, monthly, and semi-annual reviews. Although Horowitz said he believes Campus Safety successfully uses force sparingly, he thinks the department could be more transparent about its policy regarding force. “I was not aware of [the policy] beforehand, and couldn’t find it online,” Horowitz wrote. “This is something that should change.” He suggested that Campus Safety publish their policy online and share it more openly. According to Skipworth, prepreparation is a critical part of Campus Safety’s work. “I believe it is … important to assess and review our activities on a daily basis because waiting for significant events is too late,” Skipworth wrote.
Corrections Due to an editing error in “Mudd Students Accidentally Make Groundbreaking Physics Discovery,” Kemper Ludlow was misgendered twice. In the Pitzer Senate article in Issue 3, Shivani Kavuluru PZ ’19 was listed as the junior class president. She is the junior class representative. In “Nearly A Year After Student Protests, HMC Curriculum Review Chugs Along,” Giselle Sarate’s last name was misspelled. In “HMC Peer Academic Liaisons Given Housing Pre-Placement Despite Student Criticism,” Maggie Gelber’s and Aely Aronoff’s last names were misspelled. In “New-Look Athena Softball Wins Two Of Three On Opening Weekend,” Carly Roleder’s last name was misspelled. In “In Memoriam: Professor Arden Reed,” Arden Reed’s last name was misspelled in the photo caption.
TSL regrets these errors.
Continued from Page 1 economics and STEM fields to be clearer paths to high-paying jobs. However, she added that there are many benefits to receiving an economics degree at a liberal arts school over a business school. “Economics is about incentive structures and is really useful in a lot of policy contexts,” Brown said. “Many of the best applications of economics are not business-related. In general, liberal arts students are more creative, critical thinkers and are better policy problem solvers.” Pomona has recognized students’ interest in STEM and provided some STEM departments with significant resources, according to students. “Pomona provides ample support for the math department,” Donnay said. “We got a beautiful new building. I always feel like if I need some supplies I can go to the supply closet in the math department and they’ll have what I need. … The main reason I majored in math is because the department has so many resources in place to develop and make a community.” Even though math is one of the most popular majors at Pomona, Donnay said he has not had problems registering for the classes he wants, and all of his classes have had fewer than 30 students. Niles said it was not difficult to get the classes he wanted in biology and geology, and the class sizes are fine as well. High interest has, however, created resource shortages in other STEM areas, particularly computer science. Pomona computer science majors have had difficulty registering for courses due to a faculty shortage in the department. Some students in the humanities lamented what they perceive as a lack of resources in their departments. “It’s kind of crazy that media studies, English, and women’s studies are all in the same building,” said Skye Mitchell PO ’20, an English and media studies double major. “I think media studies can be frustrating because it is an intercollegiate major, and it can be difficult to get the classes you want because non-majors take them as electives and compete for spots. Sometimes I feel there aren’t enough courses available.” According to data up to spring 2013, provided by Menefee-Libey, humanities courses have the highest total enrollment, despite being one of the least popular divisions
Dominic Frempong • The Student Life
in which to major. Changes in popularity have not been evenly distributed within each division. “The politics major is oversubscribed and understaffed,” said professor Susan McWilliams, chair of the politics department. Some social science and humanities professors said high STEM enrollments are due in part to a culture
that encourages students to focus on STEM subjects before college. “Part of it is the admission process and who gets admitted,” Wolf said. “I wonder if our high school system is one where math gets over-taught and writing gets under-taught because it is harder to grade essays with a larger crowd. If that’s the case, then a student in high school who excels in math will have gone the furthest and
get into places like Pomona. Then the question is whether they will step off the math path.” Others view the trend as a temporary change in interests. “We’re in a historical moment where there’s a lot of attention to the so-called STEM fields,” MenefeeLibey said. “We saw this in the 1950s and 1960s and we’re seeing it again. So, some of it is cyclical.”
Acclaimed Poets Compete For Professorship At Pomona Will Howard
CGU President
Jacob Adams began his term on as CGU’s interim president Jan. 1. He is the university’s first alumnus to serve as president, and will fill the position for the next 18 months. “My hope is that ... my combined insights as an alumnus, professor, and administrator will be helpful as CGU continues the momentum of change and innovation … on our campus,” he said in a press release on CGU’s website. Adams is a Pitzer College alumnus with a doctorate in education from Stanford University and an MA in Public Policy Studies from CGU. — Alexandra Branscom
PZ Constitutional Referendum
Pitzer College students ratified a constitutional amendment expanding the student Senate’s executive branch from 5 to 10 members and altering the positions and responsibilities within the executive board, Senate communications secretary Anna Frietas PZ ’20 announced in an email to students Thursday. A total of 88.8 percent of voting students supported the amendment. — Marc Rod
PZ Israel-Palestine Working Group
Faculty and student members of Pitzer College’s Israel-Palestine working group made a presentation at the Feb. 18 meeting of Pitzer’s Board of Trustees. They discussed the results of a recent community survey, plans for topical events, and some of the key issues of the Israel-Palestine Debate. About 20 members of Students for Justice in Palestine attended the meeting, and briefly chanted in support of Palestine at the conclusion of the working group’s presentations. — Marc Rod
PZ Treasurer
Pitzer College’s Treasurer and Vice President of Administration Yuet Lee will be leaving the college following the end of this semester, President Melvin Oliver announced in an email to students Wednesday. Lee will be completing his 10th year at Pitzer this semester. Among other projects, Lee helped Pitzer weather the Great Recession, supervised renovation of Pitzer’s landscaping, including the installation of succulents across campus, and oversaw the construction of LEED-certified buildings, according to Oliver. — Marc Rod
7Cs Cancel Classes
Starting in the fall of 2018 the Claremont Colleges will no longer hold classes the day before Thanksgiving, the 7C Deans Committee announced in an email to the 7C community. “This change reflects the fact that a great many of our students travel on that day,” the email said. — Alexandra Branscom
Pomona College is nearing the end of its search for a poetry professor to join its English Department. The process began after the acclaimed Claudia Rankine, who taught at Pomona for a decade, left in 2015. The English department received approval from the the Faculty Position Advisory Committee to replace Rankine in fall 2016 and put together a search committee consisting of six people — English Department chair Kevin Dettmar, associate professor Aaron Kunin, associate professor Sarah Raff, art professor Mercedes Teixido, and English majors Phoebe Kaufman PO ’18 and Tom Lin PO ’18. The committee members have a daunting task in replacing Rankine, a New York Times bestselling author and winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Award, National Book Critics Circle Award, and NAACP Image Award, among other accolades.
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You don’t have to go out there and amass wealth and destroy nations. You can be a poet.
- English Associate Professor Aaron Kunin
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They a compiled a list of 115 poets they were interested in hiring, and reached out to many of those candidates directly, rather than solely advertising the job in academic journals as they would for a literary criticism professorship. “For something like this where the expectation is that you’re going to bring someone in who would
have tenure immediately and it’s kind of a prestigious job, you advertise it, but you’re also asking people if they’d be interested and try to get them in the pool,” Dettmar said. The group whittled the list of candidates down to 12 and conducted interviews via Skype, after which they chose four finalists, all of whom are acclaimed poets: Anne Boyer, Natalie Diaz, Ross Gay, and Simone White. “I’ve been doing searches since the 1990s and I’ve never seen a short list like this. People across the country see who we’re talking to and say, ‘Oh my God. That’s an incredible list,’” Dettmar said. Boyer currently teaches creative writing and literature classes at the Kansas City Art Institute. She is the winner of the inaugural Cy Twombly Award for Poetry. The New York Times described her most recent book, “Garments Against Women,” as “a sad, beautiful, passionate book that registers the political economy of literature and of life itself.” Diaz, who is Mojave and a member of the Gila Indian River Community, writes about life on the reservation in her book, “When My Brother Was an Aztec,” which the literary magazine The Rumpus described as a “commanding debut.” She has received numerous honors and awards for her work, including a Lannan Literary Fellowship, and currently teaches creative writing at Arizona State University. Gay’s most recent and wellknown work, “Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude,” won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2015. He is an associate professor at Indiana University and teaches in Drew University’s low-residency Master of Fine Arts program. White is the author of three collections of poetry and the winner of a 2017 Whiting Award. This semester, she is a visiting associate professor of poetry at the Iowa Writers Workshop. She received a Juris Doctor from Harvard Law School, a Master of Fine Arts from the New School, and recently completed a doctorate in English at the City University of New York Graduate Center.
Gay and Diaz have already visited campus to read their work to an audience and to teach sample classes with a handful of Pomona English majors. The other two candidates are visiting campus soon — White will give a reading Feb. 26 in the Ena Thompson Reading Room and Boyer will do so March 5 in the same place. The committee hopes to announce an appointment by the end of the semester. Regardless of who fills the position, Kunin, a poet himself, is excited to have a new professor in the department. Though he prefers not to teach poetry writing classes, he stressed the importance of offering creative writing classes of all genres in literature departments. “Students who are reading poetry, who are studying poetry, and don’t get the chance to do some executive work — that’s a recipe for madness,” Kunin said. “I mean you would go crazy if you were reading poems all the time and you didn’t get to try writing poems.” Kunin said poetry professors can serve a few important functions, including helping students develop a sense of the kind of poetry they like to read and write. Beyond actual guidance, Kunin thinks having a poet around reminds students that poetry is something they can spend their lives doing. “This is an option for you. You don’t have to go out there and amass wealth and destroy nations,” Kunin said. “You can be a poet.” English major Celia Eydeland PO ’18 echoed this sentiment, adding that what she sees as a lack of students interested in pursuing poetry after college may instead be a reflection of the dearth of poetry classes offered in the last few years. “I don’t know any English majors right now who want to get a [Master of Fine Arts] in poetry, whereas there are actually a number of students who have been writing fiction every summer,” Eydeland said. “I think if people had taken a poetry class, they would’ve realized it wasn’t a super insane thing to do.”
LIFE & STYLE PAGE 4
FEBRUARY 23, 2018
THE STUDENT LIFE
How 5C Vegans ‘Turnip’ At The Dining Halls Leah Kelly As a vegan, entering a college dining hall can be a struggle. Even at the 5Cs, where vegan options are almost always available and mostly labeled, I still sometimes find myself hesitating as I approach the meal stations. What if I can’t find anything to eat? As great of an effort the dining halls put into labeling food and trying out more sophisticated vegan recipes, there is always room for improvement. I’ve heard horror stories of mislabeled hamburgers making it into the mouths of unwitting vegan students. I’ve personally encountered difficulties getting clear answers about ingredients from dining hall staff (most of the time, they just don’t know the answers themselves). I’m used to being disappointed. Scripps College’s Malott Dining Commons offers about a dozen types of bread, and none of them are vegan. And why does Claremont McKenna College’s Collins Dining Hall advertise its vegan desserts if they don’t provide them every time? That’s why my number one piece of advice to aspiring and fellow vegans in college is to know your favorite vegan foods, along with when and where you can find them. For instance, I can always count on Pitzer College’s McConnell Dining Hall’s Saturday night pasta bar to deliver superb bowtie pasta with marinara sauce, broccoli, mushrooms, and asparagus, over which I’ll sprinkle my own vegan parmesan. Still, making a personalized inventory can take time and effort. I decided to ask for further advice from experts: the vegans who frequent these dining halls every day. Vegan student Izzy DeTroy PZ ’21 runs an Instagram account called @vegan.izm where she posts photos of the vegan foods she
makes, primarily smoothie bowls. “When you become vegan, it [has an] impact on the people around you,” DeTroy said. “Realizing that you can influence people — and that it’s a very easy diet if you let it be — has made me continue.” DeTroy recommended the vegan curry at Harvey Mudd College’s Hoch-Shanahan Dining Hall on Saturdays. She also advised students looking to try vegan foods at the 5Cs to “keep it simple.” “I think people get caught up in it but you can eat a lot of normal things,” DeTroy said. “People assume vegans are all like ‘health gods,’ and that’s not true. Be the kind of vegan you want to be.” One of DeTroy’s main concerns about the dining halls is that foods are sometimes mislabeled. She also wishes there were more oil-free options. Camryn Hollarsmith SC ’20, a member of the 5C club Claremont Students for Animals (CSA), said that Pitzer’s vegan almond coconut tres leches cake is “to die for.” Anya Krause SC ’18, another CSA member, said: “Recently, Pitzer started having quinoa with soy milk in the morning with butternut squash, mushrooms, and spinach as toppings, which I love. Also, I always take advantage of taking bananas to go, freezing them, and making ice cream/smoothies in my blender in my room.” Linda Huang PZ ’21 wrote in a Facebook message to TSL that her favorite vegan options are McConnell’s stir-fry, red velvet and carrot cakes, and Pomona College’s Texas sheet cake. Huang, who became vegan when she arrived at Pitzer, said she thinks McConnell serves the best and most abundant vegan options. “The other dining halls can be harder sometimes, especially [Pomona’s] Frary [Dining Hall], because they really only have salads,” Huang wrote. “It would be nice to see cheeseless flatbreads/
Cassie Wang • The Student Life
pizza dishes.” Vegan student Melanie Venet PZ ’20 created the Instagram account @5cveg where she posts photos of the best vegan foods she finds and shares her “veggie hacks” with others. “Veggie Hacks of the 5Cs is an Instagram page for vegans … to share and find new ideas for meals and/or across the campuses, [and] to inform people of new plantbased dining hall options,” Venet wrote in a Facebook message to TSL. Through her Instagram account, Venet hopes to reveal the experiences of vegan students at the 5Cs. “The Instagram page will be a
FOOD COLUMN
The Battle Of The Bobas: Claremont Edition
good way for people to share these experiences … and as a community, we can make some changes that we want to see in our dining halls,” Venet wrote. Kailey McNeal PZ ’21 has been vegan for three years and thinks it’s “extremely easy” to be vegan at the 5Cs. “With everything labeled and basically every dining hall offering multiple options, no one is ever left eating just salad,” McNeal told TSL via Facebook messenger. “My favorite meal is the pad thai at Pitzer on Friday nights.” McNeal also offered some advice to students who may be looking to try more vegan options.
“Don’t limit yourself to tofu, and don’t ever think that you can’t eat something because you’re vegan,” McNeal wrote. “You can totally make most things vegan.” McNeal wants to see the dining halls go meat-free or vegan for a day to “commit to our environmentally conscious missions at the 5Cs.” Pitzer professor Bill Anthes has been vegan for six or seven years and eats at the campus dining halls a few times a week. “I pretty much only eat at Pitzer’s dining hall, which is very good at labeling what’s there,” Anthes wrote in an email to TSL. “If I ever have a question, the dining
hall staff are very knowledgeable.” Anthes’ favorite menu item is McConnell’s curry bar. However, he has a few things he’d like to see changed. “It might be nice to have some vegan options that are less sugary … or less ‘carb-y’ in general,” Anthes wrote. “And if you’re avoiding soy, which some people do, that’s not always included on the label.” Anthes also gave some advice to students seeking to try a vegan diet. “If you’re an athlete, or have any health challenges, be sure to talk to a nutritionist or doctor if you’re thinking of eliminating entire food groups from your diet,” Anthes wrote.
Scripps Senior Sparks Discussion About Body Positivity And Balance Maddie Wilson Over the past year, the “#bodypositive” movement has inspired individuals, especially women, to adopt a more accepting mindset towards their bodies, further cultivating a critical discussion surrounding personal health and well-being. Through the creation of her website and Instagram account @ straighttothebutze, Olivia Butze SC ’18 is honing her creativity, intellect, and unique perspective to not only spread awareness about the movement itself, but also encourage and empower other women to share their personal stories.
Mabel Liu • The Student Life
In the hunt for the best boba in Claremont, Mabel Liu SC ’21 sampled nine boba teas, including the above four drinks from both Tocaja and T & Joy.
Mabel Lui Originally born in Taiwan in the 1980s, “boba” has become synonymous with the chewy black pearls that sit at the bottom of our favorite milk teas and fruity bubble tea drinks. Sahana Meha SC ’20, who runs the Instagram account @ boba_revolution, gave me a crash course on the background of boba. It is derived from the cassava root and has since “become part of an interesting economy of Asian goods and Asian foods in the [United States],” she said. Though the black milk tea with boba is undoubtedly the classic iteration, bubble tea shops have expanded their menus with a range of fruit-based teas, fruit jelly, and adventurous toppings. Having grown up in Asia as a self-proclaimed boba fiend, I went in search for the best boba in Claremont. For every store or cafe I visited, I opted for two different flavors: the black milk tea with boba, along with a student pick or staff recommendation. Milk and Honey First born as a pop-up, this young student-run initiative hosted its grand opening this past October. Co-founders Samuel Lin PO ’20 and Julia Wang HM ’20 has since found a permanent home for the business at Pomona College’s Sagehen Cafe. I’ll be frank: Last semester, I found that their milk tea was often too watery. But this time, I found that their black milk tea with boba — called the “Pomona” — had perfectly chewy boba, along with milk tea that had a
well-rounded, perfectly sweetened flavor. You also can’t go wrong with any fruit tea combination. Rating: 4/5 for the black milk tea with boba, 4/5 for the peach jasmine green tea with boba Harvey Mudd Cafe As a Scripps student, I hadn’t heard much about Harvey Mudd College’s boba from The Café. Unfortunately, that is for a valid reason. The black milk tea was actually the best of all I tried — the tea flavor was pronounced and the ratio of milk to tea was perfect. Unfortunately, the boba itself was undercooked. The staff recommended the chai tea, which was enjoyable but lacking in spice. Rating: 3.5/5 for the black milk tea with boba (though the milk tea itself deserves a 4.5/5), 3.25/5 for the chai tea with boba Coop Fountain The boba at Pomona’s Coop Fountain seems like an afterthought on their extensive menu. I ordered the mango green tea with boba since they don’t offer classic black milk tea. Though the tapioca pearls were decently chewy, the flavor of the tea was artificially sweet and barely tasted of mango. Rating: 3.5/5 for mango green tea with boba T & Joy This place is known as a go-to for boba at Claremont Village. The staff are kind and knowledgeable — they gave me detailed answers on the flavors and toppings. The black milk tea had a prominent tea flavor, but was noticeably thinner than the others I had tried. Fans of a
flowery, rose flavor would like the rose milk tea, but be warned that it is noticeably sweeter. “Rainbow jelly” may also sound exciting on the menu, but it doesn’t offer any special texture or flavor, so stick with the classic boba. Rating: 4/5 for the black milk tea with boba, 3.75/5 for the rose milk tea with rainbow jelly Tocaja I found this cafe’s black milk boba tea to have a strength of flavor I have rarely ever tasted from milk and tea alone. (I suspect a secret ingredient exists.) The tea and milk flavors were harmonious, though definitely untraditional, and the boba itself was delightfully chewy. I also recommend the “Purple Me,” a lychee and hibiscus drink. Light and fruity, the drink is presented with a bright purple hue. The lychee flavor is prominent, while the hibiscus is secondary. Try it with the mango or aloe vera jelly for the ultimate refreshing drink. Rating: 4/5 for the black milk tea with boba, 4.5/5 for the “Purple Me” with aloe vera jelly To conclude, my on-campus pick to alleviate your boba cravings has to be Milk and Honey, while both Tocaja and T & Joy are both safe bets when I’m venturing out into the Village. While some disappointed heavily (ahem, Mudd Cafe), ultimately, none of the drinks made me regret spending Flex or even real money. Drinking this many bobas within the span of one week has been a wonderfully successful adventure.
TSL: What was your inspiration behind #StraighttotheButze? Olivia Butze: I started the actual Instagram account after the first year of college. Looking back, it was a way to prove to myself that I could enjoy food, because around the same time that I started that account, I was having a lot of body dysmorphia issues and started to change my eating habits all based around this idea of what I wanted to look like. But then, that changed: In the middle of sophomore year of college, I started meeting with a nutritionist, and I realized that at the time, the whole [Instagram] account had been such a lie because it was not actually what I [had] believed in. #StraighttotheButze has evolved over time and was definitely born out of this anxiety and stress I felt, [along with] not [being] willing to acknowledge it. For the tagline, I was trying to come up with a way to use my last name because it’s such a huge part of me even if it was something that I hated for the longest time when I was a little girl. TSL: What does balance look like for you? OB: I think balance especially is just whatever I need to do to feel my best, and most of the time, it’s me going to bed at 9:30 p.m., eating six times a day, exercising … but other times, that could also be me staying up late spontaneously just to hang out with my friends. I believe both are individually defined, and a part of this is that I never want to try and place my experiences with body dysmorphia and an eating disorder on anyone else. TSL: What does being body positive mean to you? OB: For me, body positivity is realizing that there is no right way or wrong way to have a body and that nothing is considered perfect or imperfect. I know everybody faces these differently and for different reasons; mine is just one story. That’s why I think balance and body positivity are so unique to every individual. They shape around our own
Courtesy of Olivia Butze
Olivia Butze SC ’18 uses her Instagram (@straighttothebutze) and website of the same name to both spread awareness of the #bodypositivity movement and to empower women to share their experiences dealing with their own personal health and well being.
experiences and nobody besides ourselves truly knows what is best for us. Someone may inspire your ideas of these or encourage you to find them, both of which I hope to do with #StraighttotheButze, but ultimately it’s always up to the individual. This is also why I believe addressing the race and privilege boundaries in health and wellness is extremely important. I have a lot of privilege and am not in the place to put my experience on anyone else. TSL: When you get back into that negative mindset, what do you do to get back to your stable base? OB: I feel like #StraighttotheButze has really come in handy over the past year because when I used to get into that mindset I wouldn’t really know what to do about it, and that’s part of the reason why I think I was so closed off about it when I first started my eating disorder. I didn’t know how to talk about it because I like to pride myself as somebody who has so much control over her body and mind, and this was the first time that I really didn’t have that control, and I didn’t know how to get out of it. But, #StraighttotheButze has been something where as soon as I feel any ounce of guilt or mental or physical shame, I automatically
post something on my account. TSL: Do you feel that there is enough body positive awareness on campus? OB: In general, I don’t think there’s enough body positivity, and I think it’s something that’s cast aside almost. I think our schools are amazing because people are so passionate about so many different aspects of the world and really work hard to make change in any way they can. However, with eating disorders, they aren’t taboo and they’re something that people don’t know how to approach. It’s something that I think should be on every campus—and not even just college — because it’s not something that goes away and not necessarily something that gets better with time. TSL: Where do you want the #bodypositive movement to go? OB: I really don’t want it to be just a fad. People are saying it’s one of the big trends of 2017/2018. And I hate that because it shouldn’t be a trend. It should be something that’s permanent. I want it to become something that isn’t taboo and a naturalized part of everyday life. Thirty million women and men in the [United States] have eating disorders. That’s a big number.
LIFE & STYLE FEBRUARY 23, 2018 SEX COLUMN
How I Stopped Caring About Not Caring
Micaela Macagnone From the end of freshman year of college through the beginning of sophomore year, I hooked up with the same boy a handful of times. He cut things off abruptly, texting me that he wanted to stop hooking up since he was worried it would “complicate” our (nonexistent) friendship. I had not spent enough time with him to develop any feelings above a crush, but was still sad to receive the text, and often obsessed over the situation. I thought constantly about our most recent interactions, trying to figure out what had changed. One night when I was particularly consumed by this obsession, I came across a book entitled “American Hookup: The New Culture of Sex on Campus.” Over the next few days, I inhaled the book, which helped me make sense of much of what I have experienced and heard surrounding hookup culture since starting at Pomona College. The author, Lisa Wade, wrote a compelling description of hookup culture as something that developed as a result of particular historical conditions, rather than something inherent to human nature. Feminist activists in the 1970s wanted women to embody masculine traits, while simultaneously retaining their supposed femininity. Unfortunately, the significant focus on granting women rights that formerly belonged exclusively to men led to the rise of androcentrism — the valuing of masculine over feminine traits. Though androcentric attitudes give women some flexibility to move beyond traditional expectations of womanhood, which is a privilege for many, they still cause harm. Androcentrism can be seen in
many stages of life. For example, many (but not all) parents are thrilled if their daughter takes an interest in toy dinosaurs rather than dolls. In middle school, the coolest girl in the grade is often both beautiful and sporty. In high school, many people try to match or exceed the attitudes of male peers, whether that attitude be carefree or hardworking. Androcentrism also hurts men, who are frequently chastised for carrying out stereotypically feminine behaviors, like crying. It also impacts gender non-conforming people because androcentrism is based entirely on a gender binary. So, by the time college comes around, many students have been taught to value stereotypically masculine qualities over feminine ones. People learn that becoming sexually liberated means adopting a stereotypically male attitude towards sex and sexuality. This attitude prioritizes emotionless, pleasure-focused sex with no strings attached. When both partners are performing this apathy after a hook-up, the goal is about making clear you care less about the other person than they care about you. A few months ago, I consulted a drunk freshman sponsee living in my dorm about a text message I intended on sending to the boy I described earlier. He advised me to take out most of the vowels in my text message, to make clear I was just trying to “nut and get out.” This care-free attitude takes work. In “American Hookup,” Wade describes the process of trying to “monitor” another person’s level of friendliness, and then making sure to come in “below that level.” She argues this results in “avoiding eye contact, and pretending the other doesn’t exist” and that “non-exclusive relation-
ships are assumed to lack not only love, but all the kindnesses that come with it, both small and large.” Hookups are expected to include less respect for one another than the baseline that would already exist for two acquaintances. I speak, wave, or at least half-smile to anyone I have ever spoken to directly for more than a few hours. However, even though I spoke to him for much longer than just a few hours, and the hookup did not end for any reason other than his finding a girlfriend, I actively avoid acknowledging the first person I hooked up with at Pomona. I have never really questioned why I do this. It is just something that I do. Not only do I fail to say hello, I pretend to not see him at all. I can see his general shape and where he floats across the dining hall in my periphery, but that is where it ends. I would consider saying hello, but it is difficult to say hello to someone who appears to be ignoring you as much as you are ignoring them. He performs not seeing me so well that it seems natural. At the unfortunate times when our eyes accidentally meet, his stare is so blank and momentary that I genuinely question if he even knows who I am. So, when I see that boy in dining halls, I want to make clear that I am unaffected by his presence, and what is, ultimately, his rejection of me. This would make sense when the largest fear around hooking up is, as Wade argues, appearing desperate. The fear is doubly challenging for feminine people, who already have a reputation of being overly attached, lacking control of their emotions, and stuck with a constant need for a relationship. For me, appearing desperate to this boy in the dining hall not only
ASK JASPER
Tips For Troubles In Finding Love Dear Jasper, Everyone seems to only see me as someone they want to hook up with, rather than someone they want to spend time with and get to know. It’s flattering at times, but it’s painful more often. All I want is to find someone to fall in love with me, as I learn to fall in love with them. What should I do? Sincerely, Looking for Love Hi, Looking, First, I’m sorry about the hook-up situation you describe. Hook-up culture is toxic at times. Keep in mind that these people may not not want to spend time with you, but part of what makes this culture so toxic is that it discourages more longlasting, emotional connections. Hook-up culture favors detached physical relationships, which can be fulfilling for some people, but empty and disappointing for others. You are definitely not the only one who may feel hurt by hook-up culture. Now, on to finding love. This might be an unsatisfying answer, but I think the best thing to do is: wait. In my experience, seeking love out, more often than not, backfires. Things don’t work out, or I get hurt, or the other person gets hurt, etc. Love happens naturally. Trying to force it by actively seeking it out won’t get you very far. The more you might try to find love, the more you will lose yourself in the search. It is exhausting to actively search for love. Do yourself a favor, and take a step back. Relax. Be yourself. Focus on parts of your life that give you joy — whether those are friendships, academics, art, sports, writing, etc. Love will eventually find you. It might suddenly appear, or maybe you will one day realize it was in plain sight. Regardless of how it happens, I am a firm believer that things fall into place when they are meant to. There isn’t a whole lot that you can do aside from keeping an open mind and putting yourself out there when you feel ready. I know that it is tough. But hang in there. Wishing you love, Jasper
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PAGE 5
THE STUDENT LIFE
Hey Jasper, I’ve been feeling kind of down lately. Every girl that I ask out just straight up rejects me. I mean I have so many close friends that are girls that I think we would be good as a couple together, but they
Nina Potischman • The Student Life
seems like a social loss, but also is me openly conceding some sort of interpersonal, gendered power. If both parties base their behavior purely on fear of showing more interest than their partner, that forecloses the possibility of a more meaningful relationship, which I find extremely depressing. By the time I finished Wade’s book, I was set on being honest about my feeling towards sexual
always totally end up friend zoning me. It’s gotten to a point where I [feel that I] will never find love. I just don’t get it, I am a smart guy, who is nice, a feminist, and not a douchebag. I’m just so confused why girls want to have sex with, go to dinner, and date these assholes who don’t even care about them, when I am a perfectly good suitor who will treat them right. Thanks in advance Jasper for any insight. Sincerely, a nice guy Hi there, nice guy, First of all, good for you for putting yourself out there. No one likes getting rejected, but you have plenty of time to find love. College is not the only time or place to pursue romantic relationships. I know that rejection is rough, but keep in mind that there are a lot of different reasons why someone might reject you. You might never know why someone rejected you, and they may not even know why they didn’t have any romantic interest in you. Attraction is weird. Sometimes
we are inexplicably attracted or not attracted to people. There isn’t any logic or science to it. You could be the smartest, nicest person in the world, and that still wouldn’t guarantee anyone is attracted to you. Your friends, however, do not owe you anything. I mention this just because you use the phrase “friend zone,” which can be problematic (with its popular connotations of heteronormative assumptions and entitlement), but hopefully you don’t mean the phrase in this way. Like I said in the previous question in this issue, I recommend being the best version of yourself, and the rest will fall into place. Be patient and respectful, and don’t lose all hope. College is a singularly weird time for romance — casual hook-ups or serious relationships. There is still time and space in the future to find the kind of relationship you are looking for. Keep your chin up, Jasper
or interact with someone who rejected me on multiple, if not many, occasions (even if this one waves to me … score!), but that’s okay. Though I had failed to live up to androcentric ideals around sexual freedom, I paradoxically felt liberated by my commitment to honesty. It’s possible to break at least some parts of hookup culture; it just takes a lot of bravery to do so.
Student Shoppers Unite At 5C Thrift Room’s Grand Opening Maya Zhou
Sophie Reingold • The Student Life
partners. I committed to having a conversation with the boy who called things off in the beginning of sophomore year. I was going to unabashedly expose the fact that I thought about him in my spare time (God forbid). However, he evidently avoided all requests I made to speak about what had happened earlier in the year. It certainly is humiliating to see
For many 5C students, Macklemore’s “Thrift Shop” is a personal anthem (and for good reason). Secondhand shopping is not only environmentally friendly, but also allows you to score many unique items with “only 20 dollars in your pocket.” Feb. 16, seasoned thrifters and newcomers alike gathered at Pomona College’s Walker Lounge from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. for the grand opening of the 5C Thrift Room, a two-room space full of clothing, dishware, jewelry, and other funky finds. Books were $3, textbooks were $10, and everything else was free, as generously donated by students. The Thrift Room first came to fruition when Sara Sherburne PO ’19, an EcoRep at Pomona’s Sustainability Integration Office, had the idea of what she called a “reuse room.” Unfortunately, gaining traction and support for her idea was difficult. Inspired by this concept, Kate McWilliams PO ’19 was determined to make it happen. SIO hired her as a project intern, and she decided to turn the Thrift Room into her personal project. “I wanted to really bring the idea to life and make it a social space on campus that’s always available,” McWilliams said. With free scones, upbeat pop music blasting through the lounge, and excited groups of friends sharing their finds with each other, the grand opening of the 5C Thrift Room was definitely a social space. McWilliams credits the event’s success to her previous experience of opening a women’s-based consignment store, the first clothing store in her hometown Bethel,
Alaska. “That whole experience was really inspiring because it was more than just people reusing clothes or recycling; it was also a social space for women to be able to come in, have fun, and find clothes that make them feel good about themselves,” McWilliams said. “It was really empowering for people who otherwise wouldn’t have access to decent clothing.” Joana Rodriguez PO ’21 heard about the 5C Thrift Room through Facebook and her friends. She goes secondhand shopping at least three times per semester and had an overall positive experience at the event. “I would have [liked] the space be a little more open though, because it got pretty crowded in there,” Rodriguez said. Overcrowding was a common concern amongst a few of the attendees, and McWilliams has already asked administration about potentially expanding the room. She is currently waiting to hear back. McWilliams hopes to organize other events as well, such as documentary screenings, an upcycling workshop, and even a fashion show. In general, she wants to raise awareness about issues with the clothing industry and the detrimental consequences of “fast fashion.” Merriam-Webster dictionary defines fast fashion as “an approach to the design, creation, and marketing of clothing fashions that emphasizes making trends quickly and cheaply available to consumers.” Criticisms of this approach include its negative environmental impact, over-consumption, and increasing levels of textile waste. Other groups on campus, such as the Facebook group 5C For Sale/ For Free, also promote the reusing and recycling of clothes that would
otherwise end up somewhere in a landfill. Students will often post photos of their items, usually at budget-friendly prices. You can save money, explore new styles, and be eco-friendly at the same time. While there is still stigma attached to the idea of wearing a peer’s old clothing, McWilliams and other thrift-savvy students hope to eventually counter this. As an experienced thrifter, Elena Dypiangco SC ’19 believes the 5C For Sale/For Free group and the Thrift Room are both great outlets for those who are new to the scene. Dypiangco’s personal journey with thrift shopping began when she donated some of her clothes at a Buffalo Exchange near her home and realized she could exchange them for store credit. Since then, she’s also shopped at Savers in Arcadia as well as DeeLux in Claremont, a store full of hidden treasures that is popular among 5C students. “One of my favorite items I got from there is a Disney denim jumper with Donald Duck and Minnie stitched on the front,” Dypiangco said. “I looked it up online and discovered that there were only a select number made in the 80s!” Dypiangco also has advice for those who are looking to get into thrifting. She recommends asking different stores about free memberships, which often provide coupons and member discounts. “It’s also good to follow your favorite thrift stores on social media, so you’ll know when there’s a special event or end-of-the-season clear out,” Dypiangco said. For those who want to remain on campus, The Thrift Room will be open weekly on Thursdays, Fridays, and Saturdays from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.
Elinor Aspegren • The Student Life
Juliana Niera PO ’19 looks for shirts at the grand opening of the 5C Thrift Room on Friday, Feb. 16.
LIFE & STYLE PAGE 6
FEBRUARY 23, 2018
THE STUDENT LIFE
INTERNET COLUMN
Student Talk Is Everything We Ever Wanted Social Media To Be Liam Brooks I despise email with all of the disintegrating bones in my internetaddicted body. Please just message me on Slack, Facebook, iMessage, or even Instagram, and I will be much happier. Email is ugly, breaks a lot, and takes far too much of my oh-soprecious time. However, email offers something that social media can’t — a clunkiness that can sometimes seem ridiculous, but trades slickness for honesty and accountability. It’s not the platform we need right now, but it’s the one we deserve. This is a defense of Pitzer College’s Student Talk, and it’s an earnest one. Student Talk, an open mailing list made up of all Pitzer students and proclaimed by Pitzer’s website to be unmonitored, captures a crosssection of campus buzz, from the mundane to the controversial. A lot of it is indistinguishable from campus Facebook groups: lost ID cards, event promotion, Intro to Psychology studies. “Eat Fruit for Our Study!” reads one email; “wallet!!! help!!” reads another. Then there are the gems. For example, someone emailed out their login information for what they described as a more “shame-free” porn site, which only launched a debate into the ethics of the problematic post. And, of course, Student Talk has been the hunting ground for campus agitators seeking evidence of the ‘PC Police,’ those called for being excessively worried about political correctness. There are plenty of critiques of Student Talk that I agree with, but most of them have to do with what people post to it. Performative allyship, for example, or callout culture
(when that’s considered something bad). Underneath that self-reflecting broadcast of the best and worst of Pitzer, there’s something about Student Talk that doesn’t get talked about. Not free speech. Not censorship. It’s the simple fact, easy to overlook but always in your face, that it’s email, and therefore looks like email. How does that affect how we use it? In other words, when we say social media is a “public square,” as Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy worded it in a 2017 ruling on the First Amendment, what does it matter what public square looks like — not to a lawyer, but to a resident? Public squares are often made of cement. They hurt if you fall down. They weather and degrade. None of these things happen to digital media. But email listservs come close, and Student Talk is a prime example. Most immediately and most disconcerting, Student Talk looks boring. Names of senders, subject lines, and time stamps are the only things that change — everything else is just lines and gradations, mostly gray. Nobody is forced to have a profile picture, and many don’t — and on a computer, those pictures aren’t even shown in the inbox. Viewed on a computer, the Pitzer logo at the top left is the only visible branding, and quite frankly it looks horrible. It’s pixelated, squeezed horizontally, and suffocating in the expanding vacuum of its vertical spacing. It’s a symbol that the system isn’t perfect and is clearly made by humans struggling with mechanical confines. Facebook, on the other hand, is slick enough to ice-skate on, with as many careful choices as possible to keep you glued and swiping. Image
and video uploads float to the top of the feed. A variety of background patterns are available for your post, and key words like “congrats” are wrapped in bright colors. Moving a bit beneath the surface, the listserv has loyally offered that which Facebook and now Twitter have taken away: chronological sorting. That means everyone subscribed to Student Talk sees the same emails in the same order, regardless of factors like which emails you’ve opened before or read completely, or which other websites you visit. When it comes to interaction with content, there are three options: reply, reply all, forward. The only way to boost a conversation in the feed is to contribute to it, not just hit “like,” and even that is deprioritized compared to privately responding. There is no one-click option to “share” — only to forward along to another definite context. There is no secret to virality in Student Talk. There’s no way to game the system because the system is not much of a system at all. Student Talk makes very few decisions for you, and compared to social media platforms, the lack of those comforts is palpable. But it’s a good sort of hurt. In short, Student Talk is almost exactly the answer when we describe a form of digital media that allows for discourse. Free speech, notwithstanding, allows for free listening — no bubbles for sound to bounce around with the help of algorithms. Hand-in-hand with that, there is absolute accountability — real names, no impersonation, and a defined environment. Were Student Talk a public square, it would be one where everyone has a megaphone, but must take turns sharing and wear a name tag.
Ye Olde Student Life
Capitalism has been a constant throughout TSL’s history, but marketing has come quite a long way over the years, and consumer tastes have changed more than a little. This semester, we’ll be looking back at TSL ads through the ages. This week, we’re traveling back to a time (September 24, 1940) when cigarette ads used to appear in every single issue. Every. Single. Issue. Needless to say, TSL’s editors in 2018 does not encourage turning your lungs into a black charred soup. — Compiled by Samuel Breslow
Sean Ogami • The Student Life
Facebook, meanwhile, would be a party you have to attend if you have any chance of meeting new people — a party thrown by someone who thinks they’re way cooler than they are and considers discussing racism to be a party foul, while not caring if people keep bringing up the fact they hate Muslims.
And hey, why the hell are that dude’s parents here? And all of his high school friends? And the shoes you just looked at, and the fuckbois from LadBible? Student Talk isn’t perfect. It’s a bit painful, can take longer than it’s worth, and doesn’t mesh with how we might want to see the world.
But you could use those same words to describe discourse — something that also doesn’t have to be civil let alone addictive, but something that should exist free in its own right, free from algorithmic sorting, bouncing imperfectly around the public square with a distinctive lack of sheen.
The Dark Symbolism Of American Artist Jasper Johns Sam Betanzos The Broad Museum in downtown Los Angeles debuted an expansive new exhibit on American artist Jasper Johns, a pioneer of abstract expressionism and pop art Feb. 10. The exhibit is called “Something Resembling Truth,” and it houses works from six decades of Johns’ life. This exhibit is monumentally important in the art world, but also accessible to those who might wish to be introduced to the great pleasure of viewing art, or just want to see something that will move them. Out of every exhibit I’ve seen, this one may have been the most emotionally stirring. This is remarkable given the tendency for abstract art to be more of an exercise in intellectualism than aesthetic beauty. Some background on Johns is called for, given the potentially esoteric nature of his work. Though some periods of his life were marked by the emotional viscerality of abstract expressionism, Johns should probably be called a Neo-Dadaist. This just means that he was interested in interrogating the artistic process and for the most part rejecting conventional aesthetic standards. But more than this, Johns’s artistic oeuvre can be defined by one singular characteristic: an utter fascination with symbols. More specifically, the symbols we overlook in our everyday life: numbers, letters, targets, national flags. Johns’s most famous work is simply titled “Flag” and is an exact representation of the American flag made from colored beeswax. The bare simplicity of his many paintings of the American flag cannot help but invite the idea that they are purely ironic. They sit there on the wall, saying nothing but begging you to laugh at them for the absurdity of their frankness. I think there is more to Johns’ work with the American flag than simple irony, though, and I believe this can be understood only retrospectively as one moves through the exhibit. After the flags one comes across Johns’ work with other symbols, namely the numeral system and the English alphabet. Like the flags, they sit unadorned and unassuming, only representing themselves. “Colored Alphabet” is a grid of the 26 letters of the alphabet arranged in five rows, and “0 Through 9” is a lithograph of the titular numbers superimposed on one another, forming twirls of connecting lines through which one can nearly make out the individual numerals. One cannot begin to analyze the art without becoming intimate with these unremarkable symbols — and this is by Johns’ design. At first, his bare-bones approach to symbol representation comes off as trite or selfcongratulatory, a bonafide casein-point for why I find some artists so annoying.
Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
Flag (1955), one of Jasper John’s most famous works, is featured at the Broad along with over six decades of his work in an exhibit titled “Something Resembling Truth.”
But there is a true darkness, something far beyond mere existential pessimism, in Johns’ work that courses through the art’s veins and refuses to hide behind the letters and numbers. Scale defines this darkness. I moved next to similar works that were much larger: “Gray Numbers” is a huge canvas (probably 10’ x 6’) upon which a monochromatic grid of the numerals “0” to “9” stands plainly in varying shades of gray. The piece is menacing for its size; I felt as if I were standing underneath some awesome religious relic. The darkness of color, too, transfigures the numerals and charges them with a restless symbolic energy. Johns flexes his Neo-Dadaist muscles by representing the most basic of human symbols and demanding that we parse their meaning. It is a challenging exercise, but as time passed, I found myself suddenly attuned to an unfamiliar region of my mind, to the way I must subconsciously perceive these symbols. “Gray Numbers” became, to me, a cave painting by primitive humans, an early attempt to mark the world with visual codes in order that they (and perhaps we) might make sense of the vast human consciousness. As I continued to look, this grid of numbers transformed from the familiar companion I first encountered in a kindergarten classroom many years ago into an awe-inspiring reminder of my smallness within the scale of the universe. I could see the primitive paint-
ers, making their shapes, attaching meaning to their symbols, learning about the world. I could also see myself in their place, making my own symbols. I realized that everything I do and have done in my life only amounts to one futile attempt to find meaning in my life. I’ve inscribed my numbers on my canvas, but after everything, the numbers only sit there, put there by me. A crushing, but surprisingly exciting conclusion to come to, as I walked through a museum on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I moved next to an equally evocative painting, this one titled “Map.” This is another large canvas upon which Johns paints a gory, impressionist map of the United States. Grayness broods, shadows blend the states into one another, and the colors appear to bleed down the painting. Johns brutalizes American imagery in a way that struck me as similar to the way Francis Bacon demonized the human form in his artwork. As with “Gray Numbers,” Johns convinced me that terrifying bleakness exists behind an image that heretofore brought to me the comfort of familiarity and organization. I’m aware that to invoke the societal ills of the current time in order to justify the importance of some artwork is more than trite, but I’ll go ahead and do it anyway. In an age that is notably characterized by disillusion in values and meaning, Johns’ art is a lone vista spilling over in artistic value. See it before it leaves the Broad May 13.
OPINIONS FEBRUARY 23, 2018
THE STUDENT LIFE MEGHAN JOYCE Editor-in-Chief KELLEN BROWNING Managing Editor ARIEL SO Managing Editor
SAMUEL BRESLOW, News Editor MARC ROD, News Editor ANGELA TRAN, News Associate MEGHAN BOBROWSKY, Life & Style Editor SAMANTHA RESNICK, Life & Style Editor WHITNEY WACHTEL, Life & Style Associate DONNIE DENOME, Opinions Editor ANIKKA VILLEGAS, Opinions Editor HANK SNOWDON, Sports Editor DAPHNE YANG, Senior Design Editor CASSIE WANG, Senior Design Editor MIN HYUNG LEE, News Designer KELLY HO, Life & Style Designer CHRISTINE LIN, Opinions Designer JILLIAN BATIUK, Sports Designer
OLIVIA TRUESDALE, Copy Chief AKSHAYA AMARNATH, Copy Editor EMILY JIANG, Copy Editor LORELEI BIVINS, Copy Editor JAMIE REID, Copy Editor SARAH WONG, Graphics Editor LUKE MEARES, Photo Manager LAURYN CRAVENS, Photo Editor CHRISTOPHER HU, Distribution Manager PETER YAN, Business Manager FAITH MCDERMOTT, Social Media Manager
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THE STUDENT LIFE
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PyeongChang Nathan Chen doing 6 flips when he said he’d do 5 Claremont Weather being 5°F when they said it’d be 60°F
Lunar New Year at Dining Halls Egg custard tarts at Scripps?!
Cute Yellow Bikes! They even have bells and pedal-powered lights :D
Frary during Lunar New Year Family weekend is finally over; I finally can get a seat again
Corporate Capitalism R.I.P Green Bikes
The Complacency And Hypocrisy Of Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ Misogyny Jo Nordhoff-Beard Columnist CW: Domestic violence, sexual assault White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee-Sanders has an immense amount of power to dictate the way in which the American public perceives the credibility of President Donald Trump’s administration. However, she grossly mishandles and obfuscates instances of sexual assault allegations against Congressional politicians and Trump administration officials. Her reactions to points raised by the press pool about other issues is, in fact, an abuse of her position as a supposed conveyor of accurate information about the White House and Trump. In some ways, HuckabeeSanders perpetuates even more misogyny than Trump does because of her complete repudiation of female accusations of sexual assault. Since last July, when Huckabee-Sanders was appointed to be Press Secretary, the United States has lived through what feels like a million news cycles uncovering more facets to the extent of Trump’s misogyny and denial of sexual assault allegations against him. The Rob Porter scandal, which broke Feb. 6, was the latest, but likely not the last event that demonstrates the White House’s commitment to stripping away gender equality and civil rights. In October 2017, the Trump administration Department of Health and Human Services repealed the requirement that employers had to include birth control coverage in health insurance plans. Trump endorsed an alleged child molester for U.S. Senate in Alabama, attempted to ban transgender service members from serving openly in the
military based on completely unsubstantiated evidence, and settled a non-disclosure agreement with a former porn star, all of which are incidents of his deprioritization of women’s and LGBTQIA+ people’s bodies as valid identities. Huckabee-Sanders has defended him and people who work for him through every single shocking story that has come out of the muddled, disorganized White House. This most recent instance was no different. Rob Porter, former White House Staff Secretary, was accused by his two ex-wives of emotional abuse and severe domestic violence in 2005 and 2010. Top White House staff members like Chief of Staff John Kelly and White House Counsel Don McGahn knew about Porter’s history of abuse before they hired him, yet chose to hire and give him security clearance to handle the classified information coming to the President’s desk through briefings and memos. Domestic violence, one of the most abhorrent crimes, is evidently not reason enough to prevent someone from being hired by the Trump administration. B e f o r e Tr u m p , t h i s s t o r y would permeate the media’s consciousness for weeks and would be immediately addressed by any president. It is hard for a story to pervade a constant onslaught of breaking news with so many new stories all the time. News readers and viewers have become numb to stories like Porter’s because of Trump’s penchant for creating — instead of suppressing — chaos, which allows stories like this to slip through the grasp of people’s consciousness and quickly become obsolete. It is a blip on people’s radars and treated as another side show in the Trump White House circus. Even though this story did receive sustained coverage for a few weeks, other stories have now broken and be-
come the new hot topic. This culture of quick news obsolescence allows for a person like Huckabee-Sanders to shine. If she says something in a press briefing that misconstrues the White House’s official position on an issue or hides some important action they have taken to suppress essential information, it is only briefly given its due coverage because it has happened so often that her previous missteps are washed away by the following one. Throughout the Porter scandal, Huckabee-Sanders intensely defended him, saying “the President and Chief of Staff have full confidence and trust in his abilities and performance.” She ignored that many high ranking Trump administration officials knew of the accusations against Porter, yet still permitted him to hold the incredibly powerful position of controlling Trump’s information flow for over a year before these allegations surfaced. As the most visible female face of the Trump administration, Huckabee-Sanders has the opportunity to shape the way in which the administration represents women. Unfortunately, a shift in behavior likely wouldn’t make a sizable impact, as voting patterns and unmistakable audio evidence have shown that whether or not a male candidate for president is misogynist, white women—the majority of female voters—will vote for him anyway. Trump has been tied to sexual assault and domestic violence for over 30 years. He has avoided and denied all attempts to incriminate him, as aided and abetted by his staff. The women who work for him are complicit and work to uphold the structures antithetical to the feminist resistance. Jo Nordhoff-Beard SC ‘19 is an English major from Seattle. She enjoys Sam Hunt, flavored seltzer water, and reading memoirs written by women.
Seeking Mental Health Services Shouldn’t Inspire Fear Irene Maina Columnist CW: Mental health issues, including depression and suicide As students, we live in a world where we are in constant competition with others. This is the generation of smart gadgets. However, when it comes to our mental health, our ‘smarts’ sometimes fail us. Recent studies indicate an increase in the number of cases of mental health illnesses among college students. Mental illness tremendously lesses the productivity and social role of an individual as it affects their thinking and functioning processes. Depression is often associated with feeling sad or anxious — but it is more than that. If left untreated, depression can be devastating to both loved ones and those living with it. At best, depression is a common treatable mental illness, and at worst it can lead to suicide. For individuals aged 15-29, suicide is the second leading cause of death. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), roughly one in five adults aged 18-25 experience mental illness in a given year. One of the top five most prevalent mental illnesses is depression, followed by anxiety, suicide, eating disorders, and addiction. The need of students seeking counselling services in university and college centers has shifted since the 1990s as the students are seeking services from developmental and informational needs to psychological problems. A research brief by Midwestern Higher Education Compact discovered that over the last seven years, the average percentage of students seeking counselling services on campus has remained around 10-15 percent. However, this percentage is still lacking, considering the increased rates of mental illnesses on campus. While mental health services are fairly accessible across the 7Cs, these services are still underutilized. Students may be hesitant to go to Monsour Counseling and Psychological Services when they are in crisis, especially if they have nobody to accompany them and/or advocate for them. For some, it is not lack of access; it is the fear of walking in. As much as we exist in a digital
Jordan Wong • The Student Life
age and everything we need is at our fingertips, it doesn’t stop us from taking care of each other. Even in the academic and social whirlwind of Claremont,
it is important to remember to keep up with one’s own health and the health of those one cares about. By doing so, we are not only being mindful of our own
health, but also reducing the rates of suicide and mental illnesses. Services like Monsour are not just for students in active crisis, though. Anyone can use them and
being able to confide in someone other than friends and family can be surprisingly helpful. Monsour also offers workshops on wellness, study skills, self-care, and
coping mechanisms. Irene Maina CGU ’19 is a Masters in Public Health student from Kericho, Kenya. She is a Nora Roberts addict.
OPINIONS PAGE 8
FEBRUARY 23, 2018
THE STUDENT LIFE
Sexually Transmitted Infections: Something To Investigate Amy Lowndes Columnist Student Health Services does an admirable job with several facets of sexual health. Free condoms are easily accessible, ubiquitous in dorm hallways, and obtainable at the Student Health Center. A discreet vending machine at Pomona College’s Walker Hall houses heavily-discounted Plan B, alongside Carmex and razors. Yet, a truly comprehensive approach to safe sex on campus necessitates more than free Trojans. It means creating a welcoming environment in which students can access healthcare, with the expectation that they will be free from judgement. It means encouraging a culture of radical honesty and openness both between partners, as well as between students and doctors. It means addressing what exactly no one wants to talk about: sexually transmitted infections, or STIs. For an ostensibly progressive and sexually active campus, STIs remain something shrouded in mystery and stigma. Wild rumors about the “Claremont Herpes” abound; horror stories about Student Health Services proliferate. This culture of secrecy and hysteria is harmful. Stigma makes students only less likely to disclose their status to sexual partners and exacerbates the spread of infections. And the current spread has indeed been exacerbated. In Los Angeles County, according to the latest data from the California Department of Public Health, reported cases of chlamydia increased by 14 percent, gonorrhea 75 percent, and syphilis a terrifying 80 percent between 2011 and 2015. These numbers demand radical change in the way we view STI prevention. First, there needs to be a fundamental shift in the paradigm of checking for STIs. Sexually active students should be screened for STIs as a matter of routine, instead of only when symptoms manifest. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends that sexually active persons should be screened for STIs every six months and with every new partner. The reality of the situation, though, is that a myriad of obstacles stand in the way of students getting regularly screened. Prohibitive cost — $70 for a plate that tests for gonorrhea, chlamydia, syphilis, herpes simplex virus, and HIV — combined with what several interviewed students have perceived as an unaccommodating and insensitive health center,
all make students less likely to be screened regularly. Several students I spoke with felt shamed while at SHS for routine screening. A female sophomore at Pomona, who wished to remain anonymous, described to me an unpleasant encounter with an SHS doctor during a routine screening. “The first time that I got STD tested ... was in May of last year,” the student said. “It was the end of my freshman year. I saw a male doctor, who was assigned to me. He asked me how many sexual partners I had had; I answered six. Looking at the screen, he said, ‘Whoa, that’s a little above average.’” The doctor then, according to the student, remarked that her number of sexual partners explained why she had come in, despite not having any symptoms. “I just thought of it as my responsibility as a sexually active person,” she said. “I didn’t have any ‘real’ reason to. Just to be safe.” The doctor’s probing for justification of a routine screening is evidence of exactly the kind of ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ mentality that prevails on campus, despite wisdom to the contrary. And that is exactly the kind of harmful thinking that makes students less likely to show up regularly for testing. The student explained to me that the doctor’s comment would have made her less likely to disclose personal information and symptoms to the doctor. “It made me feel like a slut,” the student continued. “I was a little bit shook by that.” Another Pomona student, who also wished to remain anonymous, told me that he, too, had felt shamed by comments from his doctor at SHS. During the spring of his freshman year, he had gone for a routine STI screening at the center. “The doctor asked if I slept with men or women, and I said I slept with men,” the student wrote in an email to TSL. “He then off-handedly commented that men’s bodies ‘retain’ STDs, and thus I would be more susceptible to them.” The student perceived the comment to be homophobic; a year later, he harbors distrust towards SHS. In an email, Vice President for Student Affairs Denise Hayes encouraged “any student that has a negative experience with a provider ... to write an evaluation in the comment box located in the lobby, or by contacting Denise Hayes, vice president for student affairs at (909) 221-8355,
or emailing denise.hayes@claremont.edu.” “As to the students, it is definitely unacceptable for providers to respond in ways that makes patients feel uncomfortable,” Hayes continued over email to students. “All providers go through the QRC Ally training, and cultural sensitivity is discussed regularly.” Despite this training, students were still left feeling judged and reticent to disclose symptoms. These first person accounts aren’t the only factors that discourage students from being properly screened. Between the hours of 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on the first
Since Greek poet Thespis’ first documented performance in 534 BC, actors have been an integral part of the human experience, ceaselessly enthralling us with their ability to take on other personas and reflect the human experience within the relative safety of the stage or screen. From ancient Greek theater through the Elizabethan era, men played men, and men played women; it was deemed unsightly for women to act until 1660. Flash forward to the 19th century, white actors are appearing in blackface to portray African Americans in cruel buffoonery. For millennia, the whole gamut of the human experience has been portrayed by a select slice of the human population. And though many of these practices have died out, the question of representation persists today, notably with queer characters. Most recently, Luca Guadagnino’s 2017 film “Call Me By Your Name” enlists two straight actors, Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer, to play two queer characters involved in a passionate summer romance. Though the film has drawn critical acclaim — securing best-picture and best-actor nominations — it has also drawn criticism for its casting. Some argue that queer characters should be played only by openly queer actors; others claim that actors are actors, whose job it is to portray roles they have not necessarily experienced. I think there’s a middle ground. A definitive casting doctrine would be problematic to the art of acting; however, there needs to be some consideration of, and effort, to use
queer actors — which is conspicuously absent in today’s films. One could argue that the issue calls into question factors other than discrimination. The pool of queer actors is undoubtedly smaller, and therefore fewer casting options exist; while around half the population has consistently identified as female, for example, a 2015 Gallup poll revealed that just 3.8 percent of Americans identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender. Though this number may be skewed by social stigma, it is nonetheless a significant minority. Nevertheless, queer actors are not an anomaly. Household names like Sarah Paulson, Neil Patrick Harris, Jodie Foster, Zachary Quinto, Laverne Cox, and Ellen Page are just a fraction of Hollywood’s openly queer celebrities. Neither are we scarce of queer roles: distinguished films such as “Carol” (2015), “Moonlight” (2015), “Brokeback Mountain” (2005), “Milk” (2008), “Blue is the Warmest Color” (2013), “Valentine’s Day” (2010), “Dallas Buyers Club” (2013), and “The Danish Girl” (2015) all center around queer relationships or have prominent queer characters, and yet not one of these characters is portrayed by an openly queer actor. I’m not arguing for a dogmatic approach to casting that compromises the very trade of acting, which rests on the fundamental portrayal of the fictitious, the unlived. Actors’ sexuality does not trump artistic vision in every instance. That being said, it should absolutely be a consideration, and some of the movies I’ve listed above should have had queer actors. This is beyond coincidence, beyond population statistics. Though the portrayal of queer characters is laudable, this
short frame, like three days, in order to catch it for it not to have most of its effects,” Mercier said. “If you have a risky encounter, you want to be checked within three days of the encounter.” Because of scheduling gaffes on the part of the Health Education Outreach Center, and Mercier’s class schedule, he had to wait more than three days after a sexual encounter to be tested. Mercier does not have HIV and remembered the test administrators as friendly and helpful, but he looks back at this a stressful time. “It made me feel that… [Student Health Services and the
Health Education Outreach Center] didn’t feel as much risk as I did during that time,” Mercier. “Especially within the gay community, [STIs] are something that is worried about a lot, and that is really stigmatized.” When STIs are on the rise, the 7Cs can either work to prioritize student health with increased compassion and accessibility, or it must accept that it is cultivating an unsafe environment for students. Amy Lowndes PO ‘21 is from Maitland, Florida. She likes Dolly Parton, iced coffee, and ’90s crime shows.
Molly Antell • The Student Life
The ‘Who Plays Who’ Of Queer Representation In Film Industry Carmin Sherlock Columnist
Tuesday of every month at the Queer Resource Center, and on the second, third, and fourth Tuesday at the Tranquada center, 7C students can drop in for free, confidential HIV testing. Despite the free testing, many students have found the time to be inconvenient, or not conducive, to their class schedules. To be tested outside of this timeframe is an additional $22 charge at the SHS. Devin Mercier PO ’20 recounted his experience trying to get the extremely time-sensitive testing last semester. “With HIV you have a very
utter lack of real-life representation in film absolutely erases the significance of these roles. Interestingly, there is significantly more real-life queer representation in television. Comedy series “Orange is the New Black” features a host of queer characters, three of whom are played by openly lesbian, transgender, and genderfluid actors. The Netflix series “Sense8” has a prominent trans character played by trans actress Jamie Clayton. However, in film — “Call Me By Your Name” being just one example — straight actors are often lauded for their willingness to portray queer roles. Actress Ellen Page told TIME in a 2015 interview that it is “borderline offensive” to call straight cisgender actors “brave” for playing queer characters. “I’m never going to be considered brave for playing a straight person, and nor should I be,” Page said. The tides in film could be shifting, though. Argentinian-born Sebastián Lelio’s new film, “A Fantastic Woman,” revolves around a trans woman played by trans actress Daniela Vega. It has been nominated for Best Foreign Language Film. “I have two different takes,” Vega told The Guardian last week. “As an actress, I don’t mind if a cisgender actor plays trans. But as a trans woman, I feel that many times we weren’t allowed to show what we can do, and we can do many things.” Carmin Sherlock SC ‘21 is an English and foreign languages major from Eugene, Oregon. Last year she was living on a farm in New Zealand shearing sheep.
Pitzer College Board of Trustees Must Respect Student Voices Students for Justice in Palestine Guest Columnist Editors’ Note: TSL accepts opinions articles and letters to the editor written by members of the Claremont Colleges. While we ordinarily ask that all letters and articles be signed by their writers, we make exceptions for extraordinary circumstances including the jeopardy of student safety. In this case, there was concern that publishing the names of the students involved in writing the piece would lead to their personal information being published by Canary Mission and their being banned from entering Israel. If you would like to submit an article or letter to the editor, please email editor@tsl.news. Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) launched a petition Feb. 7 demanding that the Board of Trustees respect the majority opinion of the Pitzer Student Senate, which voted on May 1, 2017 overwhelmingly in support of an amendment prohibiting the use of Student Activities Funds toward corporations that profit from human rights abuses against the Palestinian people. Students at Pitzer College believe that our school should not contribute to human suffering, and that Palestinians — like all people — are entitled to their basic rights. Despite such enthusiastic support, the Board of Trustees decided to rescind the amendment, breaking Pitzer’s 54-year history of “Student Senate autonomy over the funds allocated to it by the College.”
Tellingly, the Board of Trustees made this unilateral decision during summer break, when students were not present to engage with them and form a democratic response. The board’s blatant disavowal of student democracy is inexcusable. While the board is not democratically elected, it holds immense power over the college’s decisions. Still, we are undeterred by their attempt to repress student voices and remain committed to a more transparent, socially-responsible college. The Pitzer student body is not alone. Dozens of campuses across the country have voted to cut ties with corporations complicit in Israel’s illegal 50-year occupation of Palestinian land. Inspired by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement for Palestinian rights, our campaign outlined five corporations that profit from the oppression of Palestinians, who are denied basic freedoms, such as the right to vote, as well as travel freely to school, work, and home. One Palestinian affected by this daily oppression is Ahed Tamimi, a Palestinian teenager imprisoned by Israel for her unarmed protest. After the the Israeli army shot her 15-year old cousin in the face, Tamimi confronted a soldier. For that small act of resistance, she was taken from her home at 3 a.m., awakened by soldiers screaming and banging at the door, also throwing her mother to the ground. While Tamimi is just one of 300 children currently imprisoned by Israel, her case has garnered global support. Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, celebrities and civil rights icons
have called for her release. Several of these prominent figures have also backed groundbreaking legislation introduced by U.S. Congresswoman Betty McCollum to prevent the use of U.S. tax dollars toward the Israeli military’s arrest and abuse of Palestinian children. Growing up under occupation, Tamimi has been keenly aware of the oppression around her, always remaining committed to her dream for a better world: “I dream Palestine will have freedom with no checkpoints. I will not see the settlements in front of me. I will not have to worry about my family being killed or taken to jail.” Every Friday, Tamimi’s village of Nabi Saleh in the West Bank comes together to make this shared dream a reality by protesting the confiscation of their land and water resources. But this story of struggle is just one of many in Palestine. These injustices are not new, and they only continue to be possible because of international support, inaction, and corporations that profit from Palestinian oppression. As it stands, Pitzer is not neutral. We are already invested in corporations that contribute to violence and oppression. It’s time that we do the right thing and divest. We students made the right choice last year; now, it’s up to us to make sure the Board of Trustees listens. Students must take a stand to show that we will not be deterred just because our actions do not fit into the interests of the Trustees. We encourage everyone to sign our petition and join us in this growing, thriving movement for Palestinian freedom.
OPINIONS FEBRUARY 23, 2018
PAGE 9
THE STUDENT LIFE
To Fix Gun Violence, Put Emphasis On Screening And Training Zachary Freiman Columnist There are two ways to solve gun violence: take away guns or get rid of people. Since both scenarios are utterly impossible, the true issue at hand is rather how to most effectively mitigate said violence. First and foremost, to understand gun violence, one must grapple with the purpose of firearm possession as a whole. It is twofold: self-defense/home protection and hunting/sport. There are no other legitimate reasons to own a gun. Moreover, self-defense as reason for gun ownership may have more to do with human psychology than fact — gun ownership actually decreases one’s overall safety. Just as with any other right, one’s right to gun ownership ends when it infringes on the rights of another. Therefore, although the right to bear arms is guaranteed by the Constitution, it does not supercede each person’s ‘unalienable’ right to life. This most fundamental right has been violated for every one of the 96 average Americans killed each day by gun violence. Perhaps, one might argue, the Founding Fathers intended gun ownership to be an impediment to government tyranny. This made sense in 1791; soldiers used muskets in the army. The capability of civilian muskets matched the capability of army muskets and, therefore, formed a formidable preventative measure against repression comparable to what was experienced under the British monarchy. In the 21st century, the United States Armed Forces employs aerial bombs, rockets, tanks, and other previously secret, weapons that are perpetually kept hidden and then disclosed to the general public. Even an AR-15, the most extreme and warlike of all civilian firearms, holds no comparison to a precision drone. Firearms are not the tool of last resort in resistance to a totalitarian takeover; our governmental system of checks and balances and civilian control of the military are much more effective barriers to authoritarianism. However, despite both of these institutional obstructions to a seizure of power facing a daily barrage of threats, those
so keen on maintaining militant resistance to tyranny ignore the very threat itself. After tragedies such as last week’s shooting in Parkland, Florida, Republicans have been quick to point to a failure of mental health care as the culprit of gun violence. Be that as it may, at every opportunity to affect meaningful change on issues of mental health, Republicans have either taken no proactive measures or worked to undo policies imposed to prevent the mentally ill from getting their hands on guns. Furthermore, reforming mental health care policy as it relates to gun ownership does not go nearly far enough in confronting the defective system of purchasing firearms in the United States. Not only must we demand stringent mental health screenings of potential gun owners to prevent the mentally ill from ever getting access to a loaded firearm, but also mandate broad and uniform ‘universal’ background checks on all individuals seeking to own a firearm. Additionally, educational courses for all gun owners that delve into proper gun ownership, maintenance, and safety must be a mandatory step in obtaining a gun. The national age limit of gun ownership must be immediately raised to at least 21. On the manufacturing side, all new guns must be made with preventative safety measures, such as fingerprint activated gun locks. It is an outrage that children are still able to accidentally fire guns left unattended in their homes. The U.S. is host to most of the developed world’s gun-related homicides, even though there are many developed nations that matinatin low rates of gun-related homicides along with moderate rates of gun ownership. Some, including Governor Mike Huckabee, claim that Israel is the prime example of a significant correlation between gun ownership and minimal gun-related violence. They misrepresent the facts: Israel imposes strict regulations on gun ownership. Not only are 40% of gun permits rejected, but gun owners must prove to the government sufficient need to own a firearm and pass medical screenings. Suspected terrorists are unable to buy guns, unlike in the U.S. Look no further for proof of the value of Israeli gun regula-
tions than Israel’s 33% lower rate of gun related homicides. If we wish to see a decrease in gun-related deaths in the United States that comes anywhere near that of Israel, we must move past calling for such basic notions as universal background checks and the banning of assault weapons.
Gun owners should be asked to do more to help prevent tragedies of gun violence. Just as in Australia, where 51,000 guns were voluntarily turned over to the government as that country worked to effectively eliminate the issue its gun violence, so too should law-abiding Americans
What is a baby kangaroo called?
In 2011, in July, a new country formed in Africa immediately became a member of the United Nations. Name it.
From the French meaning 'on equal The tides occur due to the gravity of What bowed orchestral stringed instrument is in between the size of a viola and a terms,' what two word phrase is used for what object? bass? a foreigner who comes to another country to take care of people's children?
Name a US State that has North in its name.
What 1994 movie, starring Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves is about a bus that cannot go below 50 miles per hour?
What is the name of the largest artery in the human body?
What author wrote the Harry Potter books?
What actor appeared in all of these films: What is the past tense of the English verb Apollo 13, Big, and Angels and Demons? forgo?
In music, a note on sheet music can be designated as a natural, sharp or what third type of note?
The rapper Marshall Mathers derived his stage name from his initials. Who is he better known as?
This Brazilian football star was born Edson Arantes do Nascimento. By what name is he better known?
Tony the Tiger is the mascot for what breakfast cereal?
This US retailer based in Arkansas is the largest corporation in the world. Name it.
What brand of sodas make up over 40% of the US sales of carbonated beverages?
What author wrote 'A Tale of Two Cities,' the novel that has sold more copies than any other in history?
Vasco Núñez de Balboa led the first European expedition to reach this body of water. Name it.
Peter Roget created what type of reference book, that was released in 1852 with 15,000 words in it?
This American golfer is only four major All of the main interstate highways in the New York city is broken into 5 sub-areas: tournaments away from tying Jack United States that run from the East Coast Manhattan, Staten Island, Bronx, Brooklyn Nicklaus' 18 wins. Name him. to the West Coast end in what number? and Queens. What are these regions called?
Honshu and Hokkaido are two of the The Dalai Lama is a religious leader in what large islands that make up what religion? country?
The Tour de France is an annual competition that has occurred every year since 1903 in what sport?
What is the sequel to the movie Alien?
Alpha is the first letter of the Greek alphabet. What is the last letter of the Greek alphabet?
who may possess and wield such deadly instruments is of paramount importance to addressing this untenable epidemic. Zachary Freiman PO ‘20 is a Music and Public Policy Analysis double major from Sleepy Hollow, NY. He dreams of one day meeting Oprah Winfrey.
Sarah Wong • The Student Life
You Smarter Than a A College Student? Are YouAreSmarter Than College Student? What country of the world has the largest population?
be asked to give up their assault rifles — weapons of war — in service of the safety of our nation as a whole. Gun violence is not endemic nor is it entirely unsolvable. The monitoring and regulation of the firearms allowed onto our streets as well as the individuals
Charleston is the capital city of which US state? Anam Mehta • The Student Life
7C Food More Accessible, Affordable Than Most Other Universities Sophie Samiee Columnist It is easy to forget about the privileges we have here at the 7Cs, especially when accessing them is as easy as swiping a card. The drastic differences in food quality between ours and other colleges was revealed to me recently when I went on a trip to San Francisco. During my visit, I stayed with my sister, Lily Samiee, who is currently living at the University of San Francisco (USF), and I got a glimpse into her college’s food culture. There is only one dining hall for a school of nearly 19,000 students. In contrast, at the 5Cs, there are seven dining halls for 7,700 students. Across the 5Cs, the high quality of the food is undeniable. Pitzer College is ranked No. 37 on Niche’s “2018 Best College in Food in America,” while Pomona College is on its heels at No. 38. Even for those with dietary restrictions, all the dining halls are extremely accommodating, providing options for those that are vege t a r i a n , ve g a n , a n d g l u t e n intolerant. “There is a plethora of food,” said Isabelle DeTroy PZ ’21. “We’re really fortunate. Some of my vegan friends at other schools don’t have nearly as many healthy vegan options as I do here at the [7Cs].” In contrast, at USF, such options are a rarity. Breakfasts commonly consist of bacon and eggs with few options in between. “I have a bagel nearly every morning,” Samiee said. “Not because I enjoy that, but because that’s the only option [as a vegetarian].” Additionally, another drastic difference between USF and the 7Cs is our buffet-style dining halls. Claremont students on the 16-Meal Plan pay roughly $12
per meal and get to take full advantage of buffet meals to ensure they are getting their dollar ’s worth each time they enter the dining hall. While Claremont students have the luxury of eating as much as they want once swiping into a dining hall, this is not the case for students at USF. Since USF students have to pay for individual items, they often have to pay more than $12 for each meal. Even in USF students limit themselves to pay less than $12 per meal, the quality of their food is decreased significantly. Additionally, while the conditions of our living quarters are kept immaculate each day, the same cannot be said for USF’s cafeteria. “I was waiting for my burger at the grill,” Samiee said, “And I saw a live beetle on the counter. On a completely different occasion, my friend came up to me and said, ‘Hey, did you see those rat droppings that were next to the salad bar?’” Such prices for the quality of food and condition of cafeterias are not unfounded in the United States. In fact, the Claremont Colleges are among the minority that have such pristine dining halls. Even though less than favorable food situations are not a problem here at the 7Cs, it is a problem most elsewhere. We should be aware that not all college students are as fortunate as us to have healthy and affordable dining halls across campus. If students are paying the steep prices that they are, they should all have access to the same caliber of food and dining halls. It’s time that students at other colleges and universities fight against gross food cultures and demand for quality. Sophie Samiee is from Portland, OR and is a first year at Pitzer College. She has nine siblings and some of her favorite activities include throwing pottery, solving crosswords, and making kombucha.
SPORTS PAGE 10
Sports Calendar
February 23 - March 1
Pomona-Pitzer Friday, Feb. 23 Men’s and Women’s Swim/Dive SCIAC Championships At Commerce 9 a.m.
Women’s Lacrosse CMS EDIT At P-P PICOKR’S 7:00 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 25 Women’s Golf SCIAC 1 At Arrowhead 8:00 a.m.
Women’s Water Polo Azusa Pacific At Thousand Oaks Tina Finali Invitational 2:45 p.m.
Baseball Puget Sound At P-P 11:00 a.m.
Women’s Tennis Bates At P-P 3 p.m.
Monday, Feb. 26
Men’s Basketball At Occidental SCIAC Semi-Final 7 p.m.
Men’s Golf The Masters Invitational At Sand Canyon GC 8:00 a.m.
Saturday, Feb. 24
Tuesday, Feb. 27
Women’s Golf SCIAC 1 At Arrowhead 8 a.m.
Men’s Golf The Masters Invitational At Sand Canyon GC 8:00 a.m.
Men’s and Women’s Swim/Dive SCIAC Championships At Commerce 9 a.m.
Wendesday, Feb. 28
Men’s and Woman’s Track and Field Rossi Relays At CMS 1 a.m.
Women’s Water Polo At Whittier 7:00 p.m. Women’s Lacrosse Chapman At P-P 7:00 p.m. Thursday, Mar. 1
Men’s Tennis Brandeis At P-P 10 a.m. Baseball Chapman At P-P 11:00 a.m. & 2:30 p.m.
Men’s Tennis Pacific Coast Doubles Championship At La Jolla TBA
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Friday, Feb. 23
Women’s Tennis Brandeis At CMS 2 p.m.
Men’s and Women’s Swim/ Dive SCIAC Championships At Commerce 9 a.m. Baseball Bates At CMS 11 a.m.
Baseball Puget Sound At CMS 2:30 p.m. Women’s Water Polo Azusa Pacific At Thousand Oaks Tina Finali Tournament 2:45 p.m.
Baseball Puget Sound At CMS 2:30 p.m.
Women’s Lacrosse At P-P 7 p.m.
Women’s Tennis At Chapman 4 p.m.
Men’s Tennis TBA ITA National Indoors At St. Peter, MN
EDIT
PICOKR’S
Sunday, Feb. 25 Women’s Golf SCIAC 1 At Arrowhead 8 a.m.
Men’s Tennis Trinity (TX) At St. Peter, MN ITA National Indoor TBA
Men’s Tennis TBA ITA National Indoors At St. Peter, MN
Saturday, Feb. 24 Women’s Track and Field Rossi Relays At CMS Women’s Golf SCIAC 1 At Arrowhead 8 a.m. Men’s and Women’s Swim/ Dive SCIAC Championships At Commerce 9 a.m.
Monday, Feb. 26 Men’s Golf The Masters Invitational At Sand Canyon GC 8 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 27 Men’s Golf The Masters Invitational At Sand Canyon GC 8 a.m.
Women’s Water Polo Fresno Pacific At Thousand Oaks Tina Finali Tournament 9:45 a.m.
Softball At Chapman 12 p.m. & 2 p.m.
Wednesday, Feb. 28 Women’s Water Polo CalTech At CMS 4 p.m. Thursday, Mar. 1 Men’s Tennis Pacific Coast Doubles Championship At La Jolla TBA
Scores Pomona-Pitzer
Claremont-Mudd-Scripps
Men’s Tennis P-P 7 Bates 2
Baseball CMS 11,4,12, CalTech 5,3,3 CMS 4 Castleton 3
Track and Field All Comers Meet Men’s Basketball P-P 61 Occidental 47 P-P 93 Whittier 85 Women’s Basketball P-P 70 Occidental 63 Softball P-P 4,4 Puget Sound 0,2 P-P 8,1 Cal Luteran 1,4 Baseball P-P 5 Bates 3 Castleton 6 P-P 3 Women’s Lacrosse P-P 21 Whittier 7
U.S. Women’s Hockey Delivers Its Own ‘Miracle On Ice’
Men’s Tennis Azusa Pacific At P-P 3:00 p.m.
Baseball At Chapman 2:30 p.m.
Women’s Tennis Occidental At CMS 10 a.m.
COMMENTARY
Softball At Occidental 12:00 p.m. & 2:00 p.m.
Women’s Water Polo Fresno Pacific At Thousand Oaks Tina Finali Invitational 10 a.m.
Men’s Basketball Chapman At CMS SCIAC Semi-Finals 7 p.m.
FEBRUARY 23, 2018
THE STUDENT LIFE
Softball CMS 7 Linfield 0 CMS 9,1 Whittier 0,2 Men’s Tennis CMS 7 San Diego Christian 2 CMS 9 Colorado College 0 Men’s Basketball CMS 72 Chapman 63 CMS 75 CalTech 68 Women’s Basketball CMS 67 Chapman 58 CMS 69 Redlands 65 Women’s Tennis CMS 9 San Diego Christian 0 CMS 9 Colorado College 0 Women’s Track and Field All Comers Meet Women’s Lacrosse UC Davis 13 CMS 6 CMS 14 Occidental 10
Photo courtesy of BDZ Sports via Creative Commons
Maddie Rooney, the goalie for the 2018 U.S. Olympic women’s hockey team, led the team to a gold medal in the final match against Canada Feb. 21.
Jack Carrol The 2018 U.S. Olympic women’s hockey team accomplished what no team of American women have done for 20 years: win a gold medal. In an all-time game late Wednesday night, the U.S. and Canada fought valiantly from the moment the puck was dropped. The U.S. scored first, but Canada took over in the second period and scored two goals, taking the lead. Down by one with less than 10 minutes to play, the U.S. tied things up when forward Monique Lamoureux-Morando scored on a breakaway. With the score still tied at the end of regulation, the teams had to play a 20-minute four-on-four overtime period. Despite the frantic pace and lots of scoring chances, neither team was able to score in the extra period and the game went to a shootout. Both goalies came up big and
the shootout was tied one-one heading into the fourth round. Canada then scored and put the pressure on the U.S. to equalize. However, Amanda Kessel was able to immediately put one home and kept the shootout going. After 20-year-old U.S. goalie Maddie Rooney stopped another shot, Jocelyne Lamoureux-Davidson pulled off a ridiculous shot, dubbed the “oops, I did it again” move, and slid the puck past the Canadian goalie to put the U.S. ahead. Rooney now had the chance to deliver the U.S. to victory with Canada needing to score. Facing down Canadian forward Meghan Agosta, she made the decisive stop and was mobbed by her teammates as they finally won gold. The win is arguably the country’s greatest accomplishment in hockey since the 1980 men’s “Miracle on Ice” team shocked the Soviet Union in Lake Placid and went on to win gold. The
1998 women’s team victory over Canada, in the inaugural Olympics for women’s hockey, was also special, but this year’s win seems to be more meaningful. Before Wednesday night, the U.S. had lost to Canada in the gold medal game three times (and twice in a row). Some of the players on this year’s team have tried to beat Canada in the Olympics again and again, only to come up just short each time. It would have been devastating if the U.S. had lost again this year and watched Canada accept their fifth gold medal in a row, but this team refused to let it happen. The greatest thing about the game — and the U.S. win — was that it was the purest form of hockey: a battle fueled by raw competitiveness, passion, and love for the game. The players were only playing for their teammates and their country, not money or sponsors. While women’s hockey does
not get nearly as much attention as men’s does, the U.S.-Canada rivalry is one of the best in all of sports. Many players on both teams train and prepare for this exact match-up, because there aren’t many women’s professional hockey teams and no other country is as good as these two. The game also reaffirmed that women’s hockey is a more skillbased and team-oriented game than men’s. There is no checking, but it is more aesthetically pleasing. Instead of dumping the puck into the zone and crashing into defenders, like the men do, the women play a possession-based passing game that is all but extinct in the modern-era of the NHL. Overall, the game was an absolutely special event to witness, as the U.S. women showed the resilience and determination of true gold medalists. Ultimately, because of that effort, the thrilling matchup will go down in Olympic history forever.
CMS WOMEN’S BASKETBALL
Athenas Get Revenge In Win Over Chapman, Clinch Share Of SCIAC Regular-Season Title Bryan Williams The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women’s basketball team (21-4, 15-1 SCIAC) defeated conference-leading Chapman University (22-3, 15-1 SCIAC) 67-58 in a sensational senior night game Saturday, thanks to a relentless scoring outburst early on. The victory clinched a share of the SCIAC regular-season championship for CMS, and prevented Chapman from going undefeated in the conference and winning it outright. The Athenas’ win was particularly impressive because the only SCIAC team CMS lost to earlier in the season was Chapman — the Panthers won 68-56 Jan. 13. “As a team, we take a lot of pride in dictating the tempo of the game, so in our last Chapman game we really struggled to play at the pace that we typically like to,” senior guard Corinne Bogle CM ’18 said. “We let Chapman control the tempo and that took us away from our game plan.” CMS head coach Kristen Dowling was impressed with the Athenas’ ability to flip the script on the Panthers this time around. “This was a completely different game,” Dowling said. “Our team did a great job making offensive and defensive adjustments against Chapman from the first game.” Because CMS and Redlands were tied in the SCIAC standings, a coin-toss immediately following the game decided the No. 1 seed in the conference postseason tournament. CMS won the toss, and will host the tournament. The tournament champion will receive an automatic bid to the Division III
NCAA tournament. “It feels amazing to be seeded first in the SCIAC tournament,” Bogle said. “For the seniors, we’ve only ever been seeded first so we know how important home court advantage is for the tournament. There’s nothing like being able to play in front of your home crowd, so we look forward to using the crowd’s energy to our advantage.” The Athenas hit the ground running in the first quarter, jumping out to an early lead and never looking back. Chapman never got closer than five points after Maya Love CM ’20 scored a layup to put CMS up 7-2. The gap between the two teams continued to grow throughout the game, and by the end of the third quarter, CMS had built a 30-point lead. Ellery Koelker-Wolfe’s CM ’19 free throw with 2:22 remaining marked the moment when the Athenas doubled Chapman’s score at 52-26, a remarkable feat late in the game. “The third quarter was a big quarter for us,” Kailee Severt CM ’18 said. “There were so many people scoring and assisting and rebounding that it made the game fun for us. That is what team basketball is about.” While the Athenas held a commanding lead, Chapman put up a valiant effort in the fourth quarter attempting to come back. The Panthers began to pressure CMS in a full-court trap, and forced the Athenas into many turnovers as they succombed to the pressure. However, CMS had created too large of a safety net for the Panthers to overcome. Chapman managed to cut the lead to single digits, but as time expired, the Athenas were able to call themselves cochampions of the SCIAC regular
season and cut down the net with a 67-58 victory. Dowling was ecstatic about the victory, the No. 1 seed, and the team’s performance on senior night. “This team has been led from start to finish by our three seniors,” Dowling said. “They completed their fourth straight [regularseason] SCIAC championship on Saturday. It has been a joy to coach such a great group of athletes. I am very grateful to be a part of their journey.” Severt, the team’s leading scorer, reflected after the game on her final year playing CMS women’s basketball. “I have been so lucky to play with such a great group of girls, who are my sisters that I never
had,” she said. “From team dinners to practices to locker room speeches, it has been a senior season I will not forget.” At the beginning of the season, the team had its share of doubters, but the Athenas have shown growth and maturity. “I’m so proud of how far we’ve come,” Bogle said. “I think a lot of people wrote us off at the beginning of the year because we lost six seniors from last year that were crucial to the program’s success. We could have made excuses about how young we are, but every single person has stepped up immensely and has pushed themselves to become better.” CMS will face off in a rematch against Chapman Sat. Feb. 22 in the SCIAC tournament final.
Photo courtesy of Alisha Alexander via CMS Athletics
Maezelle Millan CM ’21, elated after the Athenas’ senior night victory and No. 1 seed in the SCIAC tournament, cuts down the net in celebration.
SPORTS FEBRUARY 23, 2018
PAGE 11
THE STUDENT LIFE
Analyzing The Numerous Options For 2018 Dodgers’ Main Uncertainty: Who Will Play Left Field Hank Snowdon There aren’t many question marks for the 2018 Los Angeles Dodgers. The team, which was nine innings from its first World Series title in 29 years and barely lost anyone this offseason (with the exception of Yu Darvish), remains in very good position to get back to the Fall Classic. However, there is one clear uncertainty for the club: left field. In 2017, Chris Taylor started the most games in left with 46 and super-rookie Cody Bellinger followed with 37, according to Baseball-Reference. However, by season’s end, the two were firmly cemented as the full-time center fielder and first baseman, respectively. After them, the list becomes significantly more bleak. Curtis Granderson had 23 starts in one of the most unsuccessful trade deadline experiments in recent memory, and current free agent Franklin Gutierrez underperformed in his 14 starts before suffering a season ending back injury, hitting .232/.317/.339. Andrew Toles followed with 13 starts before his ACL tear, and Kiké Hernández had 12. Fan-favorite Andre Ethier had eight, somewhat forgotten Trayce Thompson had three, and Joc Pederson and Scott Van Slyke added two each. Of those 10 players who made a single start, only four have any shot of playing in left next season. Taylor and Bellinger are more than locked-in at their respective positions, while Granderson, Gutierrez, Ethier, and Van Slyke are no longer Dodgers. The most clear option figures to be Andrew Toles, but his future is uncertain at best. After an unlikely path to the majors, which included a brief stint working in a grocery store, Toles burst onto the scene in 2016 and was one of the Dodgers’ biggest break-out players. After making his MLB debut July 8, he put up very respectable stats for the rest of 2016, hitting an .865 OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage) over 48 games. This success let Toles gain Dave Roberts’s trust enough to slot him in as a starter in many playoff games, and he even hit leadoff in the season-ending Game Six loss. Toles was the Dodgers most frequent leadoff hitter at the beginning of last season, and was
continuing to produce. However, tragedy struck: he tore his ACL in early May. He has reportedly made a full recovery since, and will be ready to go for Spring Training. While Toles has the best chance to become the Dodgers’ every-day left fielder, no one knows how well he will respond after missing the better part of an entire season. It’s also entirely possible that his brief stint in the majors was a blip on the radar, and he will never produce at that rate again. The second option is likely Hernández. The super-utility man has played left field plenty of times over the last few seasons, and has become a solid platoon option against left-handed pitching, with career splits of .270/.364/.518. It’s his performance against right-handed pitching that holds him back from becoming an everyday player, as he’s hit only .207/.265/.324 off righties in his career. Those splits became even more drastic last year, as the difference between his OPS vs. RHP and LHP climbed to an astonishing .447. Although Hernández is only 26 and could certainly go through adjustments that would improve his numbers against righties, it’s unlikely that he will be able to become an everyday player so quickly. Pederson also has a shot. His case is quite interesting, as he had such a terrible regular season last year that he was sent down to OKC in August. However, his electric performance in the World Series has seemingly erased the struggles of the regular season from the memory of much of the fan base. He slashed a dismal .212/.331/.407 with a -.04 WAR (wins above replacement) until October, and then in staggering comparison, clobbered three pivotal home runs while hitting .333/.400/.944 in the Fall Classic. The fact of the matter is that the World Series is much too small of a sample size to claim that Joc has turned a corner, similar to how it’s unfair to judge Darvish by his two blowups against the Astros. Pederson’s career has been marked by a number of adjustments to his swing, all of which have come with mediocre results. It’s reasonable to expect that he’ll have a new addition when he shows up to Camelback Ranch, and maybe he’ll return to the elite
Photo courtesy of Dirk Hansen via Wikimedia Commons
Former Dodgers’ superstar Matt Kemp is back with the team in 2018 after three years in San Diego and Atlanta, and will fight for playing time in a crowded outfield as the Dodgers look to get back to the World Series.
player he was during the first half of his rookie season. But for now, it’s tough to predict that Joc will have a great spring and get slotted into left field everyday. From there, the situation becomes even more complicated. Somehow, Matt Kemp is a Dodger again in 2018. Re-acquired in the money-shedding trade that let the Dodgers clear the books on Adrian Gonzalez, Scott Kazmir, and Brandon McCarthy, it was rumored that Kemp would just be released outright, but it appears as if the team is going to give him a shot in spring training. It’s very unlikely that Kemp will break camp and still be on the 40-man roster. FanGraphs ranked him as the fifth worse defensive outfielder last season, and we can’t
forget that he was one of the first pieces to be traded once Friedman’s regime took over because of his negative clubhouse presence. Kemp’s somewhat redeeming quality is his hitting. Although he’s never returned to his 2009 to 2011 numbers, he is still a fairly productive major league hitter, as he managed to put up a .276/.318/.463 clip with 19 home runs in 115 games last season. And who knows — considering how well the Dodgers research department does with shifting their players, maybe they will be able to turn Kemp into a serviceable everyday left fielder. However, the odds of this happening, and the chance the organization forgets his terrible clubhouse behavior, are slim to none. But it appears he’ll at least be given
a chance in Spring Training, unless Friedman can offload his massive salary to another team before then. After Kemp comes Alex Verdugo, the Dodgers second-ranked prospect in 2018 by Baseball America. The lefty will come into camp with a chance to make the opening day roster, but it’s not likely. He struggled mightily in his September call-up last fall, and looked uncomfortable at the plate. OKC is the likely destination for Verdugo. The last option is Thompson, who probably faces the biggest uphill climb back to the majors this season. After missing most of last season from an injury, he didn’t look much like the electrifying outfielder we saw in 2016 when he returned late in the season, hitting a dismal .122/.218/.265 in 27 games. In the end, a platoon in left is the
most plausible option. Friedman is notorious for favoring platoon matchups, and it’s somewhat unlikely that any of these candidates will emerge as an everyday player. The most likely scenario is Hernández getting most starts against lefties, with some combination of Toles and Pederson facing off against right handers. However, there will certainly be an interesting and exciting position battle during spring training, as each player will try to make their case to play every day. Maybe Matt Kemp will surprise us all and return to his previous level of stardom in L.A. No matter what, there will certainly be plenty of speculation over the next 40 days before Clayton Kershaw takes the mound on Opening Day.
Three Takeaways From An Exciting, Action-Packed All-Star Weekend In Los Angeles Danny Klain It’s no surprise that in Los Angeles, the land of cinema and Hollywood, the NBA’s stars shone bright this weekend. After days of press conferences that players used to speak out on political issues and give hints about the looming free agent class this summer, we finally arrived to Friday, Saturday, and Sunday night’s events: the Rising Stars Challenge, Skills Contest, ThreePoint Contest, Dunk Contest, and All-Star Game. While the overwhelming narrative from the weekend was the brand-new “team captain” All-Star game format, there are lots of storylines and questions coming out from this weekend that will play out interestingly over the rest of the season or this summer. 1. Young players are ready to make their mark on the playoffs. Heading into the weekend, rookie Donovan Mitchell had generated significant buzz by leading the Utah Jazz to an 11-game winning streak and vaulting them back into the playoff race. Mitchell showed off his playmaking ability Friday and Saturday, leading a crop of young players who displayed how much of a factor they will play in the postseason and future. Friday night in the Rising Stars Challenge, we saw players like Jaylen Brown and Jamal Murray come out and catch fire, scoring 35 and 21 points respectively. Brown and Murray will both be starting and will play key roles for teams in the playoff hunt, yet only Brown is over 21 years old. Brown’s athleticism and defense will be crucial for the Boston
Celtics once they go up against the top tier teams in the East, while Murray will need continue to his efficient shooting for the Denver Nuggets to stay in the Western Conference playoffs. In addition to the game Friday night, we saw young players in the main event Sunday who have already established themselves among the game’s elite. Four of the 10 All-Star starters — Joel Embiid, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Anthony Davis, and Kyrie Irving) are 25 or younger, and similarly young Victor Oladipo, Bradley Beal, and Karl-Anthony Towns were all reserves. Barring career-ending injuries or other issues, basketball fans should see these players at a high level for another 10 years or so. As the pillars of the NBA ride off in their banana boat into the sunset this weekend, fans are assured there’s much to look forward to. 2. The Los Angeles Lakers could soon be contenders LeBron James and fellow AllStar Paul George are expected to be free agents this summer, and many speculate they could sign with the Los Angeles Lakers. After the Lakers cleared enough cap room space at the trade deadline for two maximum salary roster spots, it was clear Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka were basically opening the door for James and George to come play in L.A. Many signs point to the two superstars heading to Los Angeles: George is from L.A. and has made his interest in playing for his hometown team clear. James owns two homes in Brentwood worth $43 million and his media enterprise is based out of Los Angeles. If he wants to age from basketball great
to superstar/media mogul, what place better to do it than L.A.? With all of this in mind, and the All-Star game being hosted in Los Angeles, the two players’ free agency was a constant topic. George has been consistently putting out confusing comments about his decision, and has only stoked debate about where he’ll end up. James, when asked about Los Angeles as an All-Star host, quite graciously complimented the city, and said he and his family enjoyed the weekend, prompting mass speculation. However, in the aftermath of All-Star weekend, executives across the league anonymously stated that they would be surprised if LeBron left, citing the Cleveland Cavaliers’ deadline trades as evidence that the Cavs are attempting to build a future around him. 3. The 2018 free agent class could shake up the NBA landscape Beyond James and George, free agency was on the minds of everyone at All-Star Weekend. Klay Thompson, a free agent in the summer of 2019, said he wants to stay with the Golden State Warriors for the rest of his career. However, unless Thompson is willing to take an undeservedly small contract, that’s not financially possible. The pending free agency of New Orleans Pelicans center DeMarcus Cousins, who earned an All-Star spot before rupturing his Achilles tendon, was on people’s minds as well. Last season, in the middle of the All-Star game itself, Cousins was traded from the Sacramento Kings to the Pelicans; the Kings
anticipated that the center would sign with a contender when he had the chance. New Orleans looked like a rest-of-his-career location for Cousins, who suddenly had the opportunity to play for a good, young team. But even with Cousins healthy,
his pairing with fellow All-Star forward Anthony Davis only brought the Pelicans to the bottom of the Western Conference playoff spots. With Cousins being 27 years old, and given the uncertain history of players — especially big men — struggling to recover from
Achilles injuries, Cousins might want to cash in on teams willing to offer a max contract salary. The Pelicans may not be able to offer that, given that they are already committed to long-term deals for Davis and point guard Jrue Holiday.
Photo courtesy of Keith Alison via Creative Commons
LeBron James and the rest of this year’s All-Star class lived up to their billings during the 2018 NBA All-Star game in Los Angeles last weekend.
SPORTS PAGE 12
THE STUDENT LIFE
FBERUARY 23, 2018
P-P MEN’S BASKETBALL
Sagehens Take Down Tigers In Convincing Fashion On Senior Night
PZ ‘19 Ontario, Canada The Sagehen softball team got off to a smashing start this past week, due almost entirely to the performance of Liz Rodarte PZ ’19. The junior started on the mound in the Sagehens’ opening game, and delivered an astonishing performance: a no-hitter with 14 strikeouts. She started two more games in the four-game weekend, posting another win and striking out seven more batters. On the offensive end she also hit three home runs, while batting .385. She will lead the Sagehens back into action Friday at Occidental.
CMS Athlete of the Week Women’s Basketball As the half wore on, the Sagehens kept the Tigers at bay, holding onto a small double-digit advantage. The teams traded baskets, yet Oxy was unable to cut into the lead. “I feel like we were really moving the ball well and passing up good looks for great shots,” said Rees, who shot a scorching 80 percent from beyond the arc. With under a minute remaining and the game already decided, the three seniors took the court for the Sagehens, greeted by applause from both fans and teammates. “It is definitely not just about basketball with this team,” Leininger said. “Everybody I have met who has coached, played, or been involved with the program here
is a quality person, and when you have people like that, it is easy to go out on the court and go to battle with them.” The game held big playoff implications for both teams: It was already guaranteed that P-P and Oxy would play each other in the first round of the SCIAC postseason tournament, but home court advantage was still up for grabs. Despite the Sagehens’ win, the Tigers still controlled their own destiny, and by beating Redlands in their final game of the year, Occidental clinched the No. 2 seed in the tournament. The two teams will face off in the playoffs with their seasons going in different directions. The Sagehens have now won 12 of their
Rodarte’s No-Hitter Has Sagehen Softball Rolling
last 14 games and are playing their best basketball of the season. Saturday’s 14-point loss was Occidental’s largest of the year; the Tigers have dropped four of their last seven. “We just need to keep playing our brand of basketball, continue to execute on both ends of the floor, and bring our competitive spirit,” Leininger said. The final meeting of the year between the two teams will take place Friday at Occidental. If the Sagehens get the win on the road, they could potentially meet top-ranked Claremont-MuddScripps (17-7, 15-1 SCIAC) in the conference championship, which would take place Saturday at Roberts Pavilion.
Maya Jotwani • The Student Life
Olivia Campion PZ ‘20 bats during the Feb. 17 game against Cal Lutheran.
In the first game against Puget Sound, Rodarte threw the first nohitter of her career, striking out 14 batters, and hammered a two-run home run to center field. In the second game, she added another two-run shot to center, and played first base. “Being a two-way player does change my approach in that I get a better sense of the umpire’s strike zone and give insight to my teammates,” Rodarte said. “It also motivates me in that I can help both score and keep the other team from scoring.” She doesn’t have to do it all alone — the team features five returning seniors, each of whom knows what it takes to be successful on the field. Kelsey Buchanan PO ’18 boasts an impressive .385 career batting average, while Haylee Sindt PZ ’18 slugged .328 last season. Also returning to lead the team are Natalie
Ireland PZ ’18, Missy Pekarek PZ ’18, and Emily Rockhill PO ’18. With six first-years, four sophomores, and three juniors, their leadership will be essential. “We have great team chemistry this year and it’s showing through on the field and in our training sessions,” coach JoAnne Ferguson said. “I’m impressed with how well they are playing together already and we’ve only had a few games. This season the team is laserfocused on working hard together.” Rodarte echoed her coach’s sentiment. “Team chemistry is huge in the game,” she agreed. “We need to trust each other on the field and know that we’ve got each other’s backs, whether it be cheering each other on or picking each other up.” The Sagehens will next travel to University of Redlands for a double-header Friday.
CM ‘20 Denver, Colorado In the Athenas’ most important game of the year so far, Maya Love CM ’20 turned in her finest performance of the season. With CMS needing a win to clinch a share of the SCIAC regular-season title with Chapman, Love posted a monstrous statline in the 67-58 victory last Saturday, scoring 19 points and adding 20 rebounds — six of them on the offensive end. The Athenas will next face Chapman in a rematch this Saturday in the SCIAC tournament final, and the winner will receive an automatic bid to the NCAA tournament.
CMS SOFTBALL
Athenas Split Doubleheader With Whittier Behind Strong Pitching Performances Lauren Stanislaw
2017 was largely a year to forget for the Pomona-Pitzer softball team (13-27, 9-19 SCIAC), but one positive has carried over to 2018: the success of Liz Rodarte PZ ’19. Rodarte, a two-way player, batted .384 with 43 hits, 11 doubles, and six home runs in 2017. From the pitcher’s mound, she posted a 2.47 ERA with 110 strikeouts, racking up nine of the team’s 13 total wins. Her work earned first team All-SCIAC and second team All-West Region honors as a utility player. And now, Rodarte has her team (3-1, 1-1 SCIAC) off to an auspicious start this season. The Sagehens swept the University of Puget Sound in a doubleheader last Friday, then split their two games against Occidental College Saturday.
Maya Love
Sarah Sundermeyer • The Student Life
Alex Preston PO ’21 prepares to shoot a free throw during the Pomona-Pitzer men’s basketball game Saturday.
P-P SOFTBALL
Torrey Hart
Softball Liz Rodarte
Noah Shapiro The Pomona-Pitzer men’s basketball team (14-11, 12-4 SCIAC) picked up a big 61-47 win over Occidental College (19-6, 12-4 SCIAC) at home Saturday. It was senior night for the Sagehens, and Hiawatha Davis PZ ’18, Jack Gale PO ’18, and Glenn Leininger PZ ’18 were all honored before the game. Strong defense was key for P-P; the Tigers shot only 37 percent from the field in their lowest scoring output of the season. Offensively, the Sagehens were led by Adam Rees PO ’20 and Daniel Rosenbaum PO ’19, who each had 14 points. Both teams struggled with shooting the ball in the first half, but P-P was still able to open up a controlling lead over the Tigers. With five minutes left in the half, a three-pointer by Rees put them ahead 25-10. At halftime, the score was 2715; the Sagehens shot an abysmal 26 percent, but the Tigers were even worse at 20 percent. Both teams knew they needed to play more strategically in the second half and get easy looks at the basket. “We never let them get comfortable and made everything tough for them offensively,” Rees said. “All of their shots were contested and we rebounded the ball very well.” Occidental’s shooting woes had to come to an end eventually, and coming out of halftime the team began to redeem itself. In the opening 10 minutes of the second half, the Tigers scored more points than they had in the entire first, pulling to within six of the Sagehens. While the Tigers mounted their comeback, P-P continued to create open shots and work hard on the glass. The Sagehens outrebounded Occidental 49-30 and their 18 offensive boards led to 15 second-chance points, far more than Oxy’s two.
P-P Athlete of the Week
The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps softball team (4-2, 2-2 SCIAC) played its second conference doubleheader this past Saturday, and split with Whittier College (5-4-1, 1-1 SCIAC). The Athenas won their first game by run-ruling the Poets 9-0 in five innings, as Anna Gurr CM ’18 pitched a shutout. In the second game, Chloe Amarilla CM ’19 delivered a solid performance on the mound, but CMS couldn’t pull ahead and ended up losing 2-1 in eight innings. In the first game, the Athenas jumped out to an early lead and never looked back. They tacked on three runs in the bottom of the first, and later added six more in the fourth. Gurr notched five strikeouts in her third win of the season. “Our team came out really hard on Saturday and put up runs early,” third baseman Ky-
lie Hetzel HM ’19 said. “In the first game, we were able to string together a lot of hits and played solid defense behind Anna, who pitched a great game as always.” However, the second game was a different story. The bats fell silent for CMS — the Athenas could only push across a single run on a double steal in the bottom of the fifth. That tied the game at one, but as the teams headed into extras in the eighth, the Poets finally pushed ahead. The Athenas failed to even the score, and dropped the second game of the afternoon. “While the second game didn’t go our way, our defense was still solid and [the Poet’s pitcher] pitched an awesome game,” Hetzel said. “Our hits just didn’t fall when they needed to.” First baseman Molly Spaniac CM ’21 agreed with Hetzel’s assessment of the doubleheader. “The team played really well,” she said. “The first game show-
cased our potential when we string hits together, but unfortunately, the ball didn’t find holes the second game.” The Athenas hope to be the top team in the SCIAC this season. “We have a pretty small roster this year but … we have great team chemistry and enjoy being together, which I think will go a long way in how successful we’ll be,” Hetzel said. “Of course, our ultimate goal is to be in the national championships in Oklahoma City, but we are taking things one game at a time. Winning SCIAC is our focus right now and I think we have a really good chance of accomplishing that this year.” The Athenas play Chapman University next weekend in another conference doubleheader, and are also looking forward to the 2018 Leadoff Classic in Tucson, Arizona at the beginning of March, where they will have a chance to compete against several other top teams from across the country.
Jojo Sanders • The Student Life
Molly Spaniac CM ’21 steps up to bat in a separate game against Linfield College Feb. 16.