Vol. CXXIX, No. 3

Opinions

Life & Style

Food columnist Molly Edison PZ ‘18 digs into composting at Pomona and Pitzer dining halls.

Jolo Labio PO ‘20 critically examines American neocolonialism in the Philippines.

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Page 9

THE

STUDENT

LIFE

The Student Newspaper of the Claremont Colleges Since 1889

CLAREMONT, CA

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 17, 2017

A Swing and Three Misses: Stags Win Once, Lose Thrice

VOL. CXXIX NO. 3

Bayan Claremont Declines Federal Grant Jonathan Azterbaum

Alyssa Alfonso • The Student Life

Emmett Covello CM ‘20 makes contact during the game against Whitman College on Feb. 11.

See page 10

CMC Professor Sets Sights on Claremont City Council Emily Diamond Since the 2016 presidential election, many people have voiced their dissent by participating in marches, writing letters to government officials, or donating to organizations.

Zachary Courser CM ‘99, a government professor at Claremont McKenna College, chose to act on his discontent by getting involved in his community. In January, he decided to run for Claremont City Council in an attempt to instill change at the local level. “[The election] made me feel like I should do more than be a spectator; I should get involved,” Courser said.

Courser is one of eight candidates running for two open positions in the Mar. 7 City Council election; the field includes two incumbent council members and five other challengers.

Courser is currently a Claremont traffic and transportation commissioner, but said he feels limited in implementing practices.

“I continue to see how there are so many more opportunities for me to get involved in policy-making in the city,” Courser said. “I really want to contribute my knowledge and experience both as a professional and a resident who cares a lot about Claremont.”

Though this is Courser’s first time running, he has been involved in public policy in the City of Claremont and around the 5Cs. As the research director of Dreier Roundtable—a public policy education program—Courser has worked to interest students in public policy careers.

He also organized a student networking trip to Washington, D.C., and runs the Dreier Scholars Program, in which students spend a semester in the nation’s capital working at an internship, taking classes, and meeting with political figures.

Courser graduated from CMC

with a bachelor’s degree in government and returned from 2006 to 2008 to teach while finishing his dissertation. He returned as a professor in 2014 after working at Boston College, Washington and Lee University, and various schools in Europe.

“Courser has a general knowledge of the world as well as a deep understanding of the colleges and city of Claremont,” said Eric Helland, co-director of the Dreier Roundtable and CMC professor of economics. Helland and Courser co-teach a government course called Policy Lab and are co-editors with CMC professor Ken Miller of the upcoming volume “Parchment Barriers: Political Polarization and the Limits of Constitutional Order.”

“It was always a secret hope that I could finagle my way back to 91711,” Courser said. “I’ve done it, and I think I have an appreciation for the place, which is one reason why I want to get involved on council.”

Despite Courser’s familiarity with Claremont, he said that this election campaign has helped him gain new insight into the city and observe “the whole fabric of the Claremont political community.”

“I have gained a fuller understanding of our current political moment,” Courser said. “Politics right now is more salient for people than it has been. It’s on their minds, and it’s led to a lot of constructive conversations with people sharing their confusion, disappointment, but also engaging them in local politics.”

Together with his campaign managers, Sophia Helland CM ’20 and Zayn Agn, a senior at Claremont High School, Courser is striving to increase voter turnout in the upcoming election. He noted that in the last six elections, the average

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Bayan Claremont, the Islamic graduate school at the Claremont School of Theology, announced on Feb. 10 that it would decline the $800,000 grant it had been awarded from the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Community Partnership through its Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) Grant. Bayan is the fourth grant awardee to decline the grant under the Trump administration.

“We have and will continue to work with our government where there is no conflict of interest, but given the anti-Muslim actions of the current executive branch, we cannot in good conscience accept this grant,” the school’s Board of Trustees wrote in a Feb. 10 statement.

Bayan students lauded the Board’s decision to decline this grant, including Masters of Divinity and Islamic Chaplaincy student Muhammad Ali. “I think it’s very important for Bayan to maintain its integrity,” Ali said. “This is not because Bayan doesn’t want to challenge violent extremism; this is because this administration seems to be fixated on the idea of extremism

being inherently related to Islam, which is completely inaccurate.”

According to Jihad Turk, the president of Bayan Claremont, the strongest impetus for declining the grant was Trump.

“Once Trump took office, he started issuing executive orders and followed through with some very bigoted campaign pledges-the Muslim ban, appointing people to his cabinet that have long histories of bigotry against Muslims and other marginalized communities or minority communities … It poisoned the well. It made the narrative that we know that it would be somewhat of an uphill climb--it made it insurmountable,” said Turk.

Turk also asserted that rejecting the grant came from Bayan’s accountability to its students.

“We could not explain sufficiently to our students, to our faculty, to our supporters and donors that yes, we object to some aspects of CVE and this and that, but what we’re going to do with the money is not controversial, does not involve surveillance, and we’d be completely transparent about everything. There’s no way that that nuance would get through

See BAYAN page 3

Pomona Natural Sciences Manage Rising Enrollments Marc Rod Natural sciences departments and programs at Pomona College have experienced massive growth in recent years.

In 2005, natural sciences accounted for 28 percent of majors completed at Pomona, or 112 completed majors; by 2016, they accounted for 49 percent of all majors completed, or 204 completed majors, according to data published on Pomona’s website.

At Pomona, the natural sciences designation applies to sciences, computer science, and mathematics.

“This increase reflects national trends, and so it is not surprising that we have seen this increase at Pomona College,” Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College Audrey Bilger wrote in an email to TSL. “The challenge for us at Pomona is to encourage the exploration, growth, and discovery that make a liberal arts education so special.”

The natural sciences departments have had to adjust course

offerings and class loads and add faculty to keep pace with their growing sizes, but some faculty say that Pomona has accommodated their needs. Various departments have added additional course sections, especially introductory ones.

“We now offer more sections of certain courses in an attempt to accommodate student demand,” computer science chair Tzu-Yi Chen wrote in an email to TSL. “For example, while we used to offer only one section of the second course in our major each year, this year we are offering four sections.”

Other natural sciences departments have also hired temporary and visiting faculty to teach the new sections. Permanent faculty, like biology chair André Cavalcanti, said that Pomona has generally accommodated additional staffing needs, but hiring visiting faculty can be challenging.

“The college has made adjustments to accommodate growth when and where possible,” Bilger

See POMONA page 3

Balking National Trend, Most Mudd CS Grads are Women Emma Hsu Last school year, for the first time, women made up the majority—54 percent—of computer science majors graduating from Harvey Mudd College, according to a Jan. 4 Los Angeles Times article.

Men have traditionally had much higher representation in computer science. The gender imbalance begins as early as high school, where more male than female students are likely to take computer science courses—seven percent versus four percent—according to the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP). Of the students who enroll in AP Computer Science, 81 percent are male.

In higher education, only 17.9

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percent of bachelor’s degrees in computer science are awarded to female students. At HMC, as elsewhere, these numbers have begun to balance out over the last few years.

Still, HMC stands somewhat alone; according to the Times article, which cites the Computing Research Association, more than 84 percent of computer science majors nationwide are male.

In its workforce demographics reports, Google revealed that their percentage of female employees grew from 30 percent to 31 percent between June 2015 and Jan. 2016.

This small uptick maintains a percentage consistent with national averages; though women make

See CS page 3

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Dominic Frempong • The Student Life

Oh, the Places You’ll Go CMC Leads California Colleges in Graduates’ Income Mobility Amanda Larson Claremont McKenna College leads all California colleges in the rate of students who enter school in the lowest income quintile and become members of the top one percent within a decade of graduation—a trend known as income transformation—according to a Jan. 24 Sacramento Bee article.

Twenty-nine percent of poorer students moved from the bottom to the top of the income distribution at CMC, while Harvey Mudd College, Pomona

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College, and Scripps College were also relatively successful at increasing post-graduate wages for low-income students.

CMC Vice President for Admission and Financial Aid Jeff Huang said that the data in the Sacramento Bee article used different metrics of measuring income than what was previously the norm. The article sourced the data on the colleges from the New York Times, and shifted the focus from colleges across America to California colleges.

“The New York Times did a

See INCOME page 2 NEWS................................1 LIFE & STYLE.....................4 OPINIONS........................7 SPORTS.............................9

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THE STUDENT LIFE

COURSER: CMC Prof One of Eight Vying for Two City Council Seats Continued from Page 1 turnout has been around 32 percent.

In 2015, the election was cancelled because no one wanted to run.

“I get excited when I get emails from people who say ‘I’ve never voted in a local election before.’ That makes me feel like I’m doing some good,” Courser said.

The local election is nonpartisan, so Courser is attempting to unite the entire Claremont community.

“It’s been almost therapeutic for me in the sense that it’s a nonpartisan race,” Courser said. “The idea is to focus on the entire community instead of on partisan divisions. I enjoy that.”

Courser describes his platform as a “hands-on approach” to governance; he aims to work closely with staff, talk to the community, and propose beneficial policies.

If elected, Courser plans to focus on three main areas: decreasing burglary and property crime, lowering the cost of water, and reducing homelessness rates in the city.

To decrease property crime, he wants to renovate the police station and increase community-based policing as well as watch programs.

Courser also said that Claremont pays disproportionately more for water compared to neighboring cities. In 2014, the city failed in their court case to pass Measure W, which sought to use eminent domain to make the water company both owned and operated by the city. The Council has now decided to appeal this decision, and Courser said he plans to help the Council improve their case in support of this measure.

The third main issue Courser wants to address is reducing homelessness in LA county. Courser supports the homeless advocacy program and wants Claremont to pay more attention as well as provide more resources to combat this issue. Courser also advocates for Measure H, which would increase sales tax by a quarter of a percent in order to fund homeless services for ten years.

Courser’s colleagues and stu-

Austin Huang• The Student Life

CMC Visiting Assistant Professor of Government Zachary Courser is running for Claremont City Council.

dents said that several of his personal qualities make him a strong candidate for City Council.

“One thing I really like about Professor Courser is he does not seem to have that instinct as a politician to hold back from voicing what he believes in,” Eric Helland said.

Rebecca Chong CM ’19 said that

one of his strengths is facilitating discussions that are inclusive of all opinions. Courser has a strong understanding of both the intended and unintended consequences accompanying different policies, according to Lindsey Matilla CM ’19, and Sophia Helland believes he will “go through the policies with a

fine-toothed comb.”

“It felt like all of the dots were connecting when I heard he was running,” Matilla said.

Though this position is entirely voluntary and unpaid, Courser said it was “an extra hat that [he is] happy to wear.”

Ultimately, Courser said that his

aim is to improve Claremont’s sense of community while engaging in local politics.

“Too many people view Claremont as a place to live but not a city,” Courser said. “I’d like to convince more people that it’s a city and [that] we have a lot to be proud of. With more people contributing

their voice, we will have better governance overall.”

Courser will continue his campaign for the next month, and Pitzer College will host a forum for all City Council candidates at Benson Auditorium from 7 to 9 p.m. on Thursday, Feb. 23.

Pitzer Forms Working INCOME: 5Cs Perform Well in Study Measuring PostGraduate Earnings of Low-Income Students Group to Uphold Sanctuary Status Continued from Page 1

Julie Tran In response to the White House’s hardline stance on immigration policy, Pitzer College has formed a sanctuary working group of staff and faculty members, whose aim will be to flexibly and proactively uphold Pitzer College’s commitment to being a sanctuary college.

On Jan. 30, Pitzer President Melvin Oliver wrote a letter to the Pitzer community in response to the widely-criticized executive order by the Trump administration that enacted an immigration ban on Jan. 27. The ban has since been ruled unconstituional by a federal appeals court.

“As our understanding of unfolding events deepens, we are reviewing and expanding ways to improve assistance to our community members,” Oliver wrote in the letter. “We are seeking ways to provide legal counsel for affected students and their families.

And our newly formed sanctuary working group convened by Associate Dean of Faculty Kathy Yep is compiling critical resource information for community members.”

According to Adrian Pantoja, Pitzer Sanctuary Working Group member and Pitzer professor of political and chicano studies, the group was created in response to “what was anticipated to be some harsh policies.”

Pantoja said the group focuses on protecting the Pitzer community from the threats posed by the recent executive order.

“The sanctuary group was formed as a way of operationalizing that statement of diversity,” he said.

As colleges and universities are “bastions of diversity,” Pantoja wants to ensure that the working group provides students, staff, and faculty with the support that they need in order to foster an inclusive environment and thrive at Pitzer.

The members of the working group were chosen for their diversity of expertise, research, and

activism on campus. Pantoja has expertise on presidential politics, executive and congressional relations, and U.S. immigration policies, which allows him to help the working group anticipate and react to potential new policies.

Pantoja clarified that the working group does not decide the policies of the college. Rather, it offers recommendations and takes input from other stakeholders, including Oliver, faculty, and student representatives.

“The collective expertise of the college is what is really going to move us forward,” Pantoja said.

The group anticipates releasing bi-weekly memos to the community regarding the progress and actions of both the working group and the institution.

“We want to make sure that we are as prepared as possible in anticipation of different types of assault that the members of our community may feel,” Pantoja said.

Furthermore, the working group is reaching out to individuals—particularly alumni— trained in immigration law to run workshops and further the group’s understanding of individual rights.

Pantoja said the group is interested in working with Pomona College due to its proactive sanctuary stance.

“We want to know what it is that they are doing and if there are things we can replicate as well,” he said.

The working group will act as an ongoing advisory committee that will exist at least through Trump’s administration, or even until comprehensive immigration reform is passed.

“This is something that all universities need to have,” Pantoja said. “We need to seriously look at these types of issues and think about the game plan to ensure that students, staff, and faculty members are successful regardless of citizenship status.”

massive study with it seems like professional researchers, and then they did a report on access in college education, and a ranking,” Huang said. “The Sacramento Bee story then, simply as a recall, just looked at the California institutions in [the] New York Times study.”

Huang said the data allows for a new perspective on students’ fiscal success.

“That data would probably come from a number of different sources that the New York Times got, some of which is available to us and some of which is not,” he said. “They tracked students who attended each institution and their families’ tax returns, and came up with this metric.

So this was new not just to CMC, but to everyone in higher education.”

However, all 5Cs admit a relatively low number of low-income students, with the percentage of students in the bottom income quintile at each school under 10 percent, according to the Sacramento Bee. Pomona Associate Dean of Admissions Ashley Pallie said that the Office of Admissions works to combat the issue of educational inequality. She emphasized that while socioeconomic status doesn’t always correspond to educational attainment, her office focuses on outreach to under-resourced public schools and low-income communities.

“In different parts of the country, [this outreach] means different things,” she said. “So in North Carolina, that meant our director drove two hours to meet with counselors at rural public schools. In Chicago where I recruit, it means getting outside of the suburbs or the city center and visiting charter schools, under-resourced public schools, and community-based organizations in areas that may not know as much about us.”

HMC Director of Admissions Peter Osgood said that HMC is working to increase HMC’s small percentage of low-income students by partnering with a new nonprofit foundation called

Raise.me.

“The whole point of [Raise.me] is to get a few students at an earlier stage in their education, and to put in an incentive for them to do the kinds of things that make them more eligible for colleges, and particularly, the more prestigious colleges,” Osgood said. “If a student meets that minimum bar — which is determined by family income and their overall GPA — they can be in ninth grade and earn money that can accrue ...

They can end up getting as much as $40,000.”

Raise.me does not require students to attend Harvey Mudd or any of the colleges that have partnered with it. Rather, it seeks to give students the initiative to succeed academically, and to help transform the lives of students who are attending underresourced schools.

CMC’s admissions office also partners with nonprofit organizations to help make CMC more accessible to low-income students, according to Huang.

“Questbridge finds students from underserved high schools, where there aren’t a lot of recruiters from colleges coming through,

and they find those superstars,” Huang said. “They vet [students] for need, and if we admit them, we give them a full scholarship to attend CMC. There’s a program that I participated in, in New York City, called Prep4Prep, and there are various regional ones across the country that find low-income kids in different cities and [help] them with their partner institutions, in this case CMC.” The low-income students who do attend the 5Cs, however, have access to alumni associations that maintain the community developed at the schools long after graduation, and help with income mobility.

Jennifer Green, the Director of Alumni and Parent Relations at HMC, described how this network creates career opportunities for students.

“Alumni frequently advertise internship and job opportunities at the college and avidly attend on-campus career fairs to recruit and hire graduates,” Green said.

“Current students are encouraged to join the robust alumni LinkedIn network as early as their first year at Mudd to expand their professional connections.”

Craig Arteaga-Johnson, Pomona’s Assistant Vice President for Advancement, Alumni, and Parent Engagement, said this community aids students in achieving not just fiscal success, but lifetime success.

“We provide opportunity for alumni to connect with each other through their careers, and ... for lifelong learning,” Arteaga-Johnson said. “One of the most valued experiences for our alumni is simply staying in touch with what they know to be a wonderful community of people characterized by intellectual vitality, passion, and an interest to make a difference in the world.”

Arteaga-Johnson also emphasized that his office works to make alumni programming available to alumni of all socioeconomic backgrounds.

“We’re sensitive to making sure that all alumni can take part in our alumni programs,” he said.

“There are several programs that have costs associated with them, but we work to keep those low, and many of our programs are free.”

Mary Jane Coppock • The Student Life

NEWS FEBRUARY 17, 2017

THE STUDENT LIFE

PAGE 3

CS: HMC Provides Opportunities for Women in CS

POMONA: Natural Sciences to Increase Courses, Faculty Continued from Page 1

Courtesy of Rachel Levy

Attendees of Stanford University’s Women in Data Science screening event at Harvey Mudd College on Feb. 3.

Continued from Page 1

Dominic Frempong • The Student Life

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7 4 2 8 1 3 7 5 3 1 8 6 4 3 8 9 4

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3 4 9 1

Answers from previous week

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Correction In the Feb. 10 article “In Memoriam: Willie Zuniga,” the name of Annisa Dea HM ‘17 was misspelled.

TSL regrets this error.

BAYAN: Islamic Graduate School Rejects Homeland Security Grant

Sudoku 1

up half of the U.S. college-educated workforce, only 29 percent work in the science and engineering fields, according to NGCP. Within the computer and mathematical sciences concentration, only a quarter of scientists and engineers are female.

Computer science major Priyanka Agrawal HM ‘20 is from the California bay area, home to major technology powers such as Google and Apple. Despite living in a STEM-focused region, she recalled significantly fewer females in her engineering and computer science classes.

“This was somewhat deterring, just because I had joined the field later than many of my male peers,” she said.

An article on computerscience. org notes that “there is a clear disconnect between the computer science industry and the message girls receive about their ability to succeed in tech organizations.”

However, Agrawal said that HMC has empowered her.

“Many of my peers are female, and I have female role models, such as the teachers, to look up to,” she said. “[HMC] has given us so many opportunities already, such as attending the Grace Hopper

conference.”

This past October, HMC sent several students and faculty members to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, “the world’s largest technical conference for women in computing,” which results in collaborative proposals, networking, mentoring, and professional development.

Earlier this month, HMC participated in the Women in Data Science Conference, which “aims to inspire future scientists and shine light on data science regardless of gender, ethnic or educational backgrounds.”

Agrawal said that people with different backgrounds bring different perspectives to the field.

“Especially with minorities in a field, their experiences may be so different that their perspective really contributes to the field,” Agrawal said.

Jess Wang HM ‘18 agreed that HMC is unique.

“I think the culture for a female CS major at Mudd is really different from other schools,” she wrote in a message to TSL. “My friends [at other schools] make a lot of jokes that they’re literally surrounded by guys all the time ... I like the equality of gender here.”

wrote. “One of the factors that the Faculty Position Advisory Committee takes into account when recommending possible hires within departments is the number of majors.”

Some departments—like chemistry, for instance—have been limited in the amount of permanent faculty they can add due to constraints on laboratory space. However, Pomona has provided the necessary resources to add permanent faculty where possible.

“We are undergoing a ... $4.5 million renovation to build a research lab [and teaching lab] for [Nicholas] Ball, who joined us as our first inorganic chemist,” Chemistry chair Daniel O’Leary said. “By adding [Ball], all of the subfields of chemistry are now present … but that came at some investment by the college, and we’re grateful for the fact that they’re allowing us to do that.”

Other departments have also had to increase class sizes and hours worked by professors to keep pace with increasing enrollment.

“We’ve put in more hours to accommodate larger classes—we now routinely have enrollments of around 30 in multiple sections of calculus, linear algebra, and statistics, and up to 50 and 60 in some of our single-section, upper-level classes—and more senior thesis advisees,” mathematics chair

Ghassan Sarkis wrote in an email to TSL. However, other professors said that their departments have reached their enrollment limits and will need additional resources if they continue to grow at the current rate.

“With an average of seven theses each, we feel pretty swamped with the existing thesis supervision workload,” neuroscience chair Karl Johnson wrote in an email to TSL. “I don’t believe we could grow the major much larger than it currently is without hiring new faculty.”

According to Sarkis, the mathematics department is also facing similar challenges and needs additional resources to continue to grow.

“The increase in resources hasn’t been quite in step with the increase in demand,” Sarkis wrote. “We understand that resources are finite even at a place like Pomona, and we continue to work with the administration … in order to find long-term solutions that make sense.”

Bilger anticipates that natural sciences enrollments will level off, if not decrease, in the coming years.

“I predict that in the coming years, we are likely to see a resurgence of interest in social sciences and arts and humanities,” Bilger wrote. “Ultimately, it is our hope that Pomona students will find that a liberal arts education provides them with a set of skills that transcend any major.”

7 5 3 1 6 8 4 9 2

By Elizabeth Leader SC’19

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the chaos that this administration is unleashing,” he said.

The Trump administration has been discussing changing the program’s name “Countering Violent Extremism,” name to something along the lines of “Countering Islamic Extremism,” according to the Associated Press—further solidifying the Trump’s administration’s antiMuslim rhetoric.

Several students shared opposition to Bayan’s initial decision to apply for the program, however.

Jihad Saafir, a student at Bayan Claremont, compared the CVE program to COINTELPRO, an FBI program aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting and disrupting political organizations such as the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam during the Civil Rights movement. Saafir was also skeptical of Bayan’s decision initial decision to apply for the CVE grant.

“By getting the grant, does that mean we support surveillance from the community? Do we support our communities

being heavily surveilled by our government? What does that exactly mean by accepting the grant?

What type of programming would be useful to even help with surveillance or countering violent extremism? That’s what I mean by ambiguity … There’s too much ambiguity and uncertainty attached to that money,” said Saafir.

Noor Hamdy SC ’18, a politics and Middle Eastern and North African studies student and Muslim Student Association member, also expressed opposition toward Bayan’s decision to apply for the grant in an email to TSL. “I personally disagree with their decision...I believe it perpetuates the idea that Muslim communities are responsible for violent extremism and should therefore assist with its eradication,” Hamdy wrote in an email to TSL. “The grant money comes with strings attached, and I think the same objectives would be able to be achieved through true grassroots work and community engagement. I would wonder why they applied for the grant money as the institution seems to understand the problematic nature of the government CVE program.”

According to Hamdy, who has

studied the program in question in depth, “CVE is a government sponsored program to counter extremist thought/recruitment through ‘soft powers’ such as partnering with relevant communities or through FBI sting/surveillance operations.”

She has heard stories where “FBI approaching khateebs [sermon leaders at the mosque] to ask them to change their sermon to reflect a more extremist position in order to surveil those who inquire about the extremist ideas after the khutbah [sermon].”

“The loyal Muslim citizen is not a new classification used to fight Islamophobia but I feel it may be a growing (and problematic) label in the future to argue against Trump’s policies,” Hamdy wrote.

Rana Osman, a student at George Mason University who is currently auditing classes at Bayan, said that she would have gone back home if Bayan had not declined the grant. Osman shared skepticism.

“There’s not a big difference between the Obama administration and the Trump administration.

In a way, the idea [Islamophobia] was there, but Trump just likes to blab about it,” Osman said. “But the Obama administration did not

incite this much awareness—or this much hatred, rather—as the Trump administration.”

Turk admitted that Bayan was aware that the CVE program, as it was conceived under the Obama administration, “seems to be focused exclusively on Muslims” and has “an assumption about something called a ‘pathway to violence’ that had to do with your religious beliefs.”

Initially, Bayan Claremont had planned to allocate $250,000 to twenty local non-profits in the area of ‘social justice,’ while the other $550,000 would be ‘to facilitate training,” according to Turk.

Whatever plans Bayan had for this money are now gone.

The question then remains: so if Bayan was aware of these flaws, why did they choose to initially apply for the grant? Some say money, which would make sense for the burgeoning school, as the proposed $800,000 grant would have accounted for half of Bayan’s annual budget.

In the meantime, Bayan has taken to GoFundMe to raise money to make up for the rejected grant that could have been and has currently raised over $15,000.

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LIFE & STYLE PAGE 4

THE STUDENT LIFE

LIFE & STYLE

SEX COLUMN

PO Alum Judge Discusses Dissent at the Ath Elinor Aspegren Los Angeles County Superior Court District Judge Halim Dhanidina PO’ 94 spoke about the growing importance of dissent in the United States at Claremont Mckenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum on Wednesday, Feb. 16.

Dhanidina attended UCLA for law school and said that as a law student, he did not spend much time reading dissenting opinions, because “why do I need to know what the losers thought about the case?”.

However, according to Dhanidina, dissents prove just as valuable as majority opinions. Central to his talk was the very significance of dissent to American society and the idea that democracy should facilitate disagreement and selfexpression.

One of the most important parts of dissent in judicial cases, according to Dhanidina, is the ability to “time travel.” Oftentimes, he said, justices or judges write dissenting opinions with the knowledge that they will be read in the future.

As an example of the importance of dissenting opinions, Dhanidina recalled that the government used

Tim Hernandez • The Student Life LA County Superior Court Judge Halim Dhanidina PO ‘94 on Feb. 15.

MOVIE COLUMN

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

to be able to incarcerate one for one’s comments, even under the First Amendment. The modern view of the First Amendment, he said, appeared in a dissent by Oliver Wendell Holmes.

Dhanidina also mentioned the dissent’s ability to maintain the credibility of the court and give voice in society to those who disagree.

“Courts really only work if people think that they work,” he said. “The same way that democracy only works if people participate.”

Dhanidina said that in today’s world, where there is a certain fluidity to the truth, dissent is more important than ever. Ultimately, arguing both sides allows us to figure out which side has less merit. What we think is true today, he noted, may not be true tomorrow, and the only way to determine that is by looking at both sides of an argument.

“The moment we stop being skeptical, the moment we stop allowing other people to be skeptical of us, is when society is doomed,” he said.

Claremont Journal of Law and Public Policy leader April Xiaoyi Xu PO ’18 said that the journal brought Dhanidina to campus because of his status as an alum, his standing as the first Muslim judge in California, and because “he’s a law professor, so he knows both the academic side and the practical side [of the law].”

According to Xu, Dhanidina attended several events that day.

After the talk at the Athenaeum, he spoke to the Muslim Student Association and Pomona Professor of Politics Amanda HollisBrusky’s constitutional law class.

Xu said that she enjoyed the talk, finding it very informative and easy to understand for those who don’t know about law.

“I think the central message is how important dissent is to American society and especially the legal system and the judicial decision-making process,” she said.

Dealing with the Stigma Behind STDs

I’m sitting in my dorm room when a facetime notification pops up on my computer. A friend from my native Vancouver is calling.

I’m caught off-guard—she’s not one to reach out in such an impromptu fashion.

I pick up. “Hello?”

She sniffles. “Hey, Jill.” I can tell she’s crying.

“What’s wrong?”

She whimpers, then tells me: “I have an STD.” Pause. I want to take a moment to credit myself for keeping my composure. This was the first time a friend had openly told me about an STD. Many of us had gotten yeast infections, even UTIs, from time to time, but this felt worse. It felt permanent... even… tainting.

I suppressed any reaction that would expose what I genuinely felt in that moment—that this was bad news.

“Which one?” I ask neutrally.

Sniffle. “HPV.” “Oh honey, shit, I’m sorry,” I say. “You have Gardasil, right?”

She tells me yes, and we rehash what her doctor told her--that it goes away within a year at most, that with the vaccine it’s very unlikely this will turn into cancer, that she just has to use condoms until they’re sure it’s gone. Everything is okay. She won’t be in pain, she can still have sex, and she’s definitely not going to die—she just has to be careful with any sexual partners for a while.

“I know it’s not a big deal,” she says, “but I just feel so dirty. Like I’m not pure anymore.”

I scoff. “That is ridiculous.” I truly believe that it is.

First of all, this isn’t her fault.

With any sexual partners she’s had, she has always made them get tested before she allowed sex without a condom. It was bad luck.

There is no male test for HPV, so it slips under the STD radar, even when couples are careful.

More importantly, even if this was due to her being irresponsible, it would mean nothing more than that—that she was irresponsible.

Sexual screw ups like that don’t make you any dirtier than anyone else. They don’t warrant shame because sex is not a shameful act.

Audrey Jang• The Student Life

Nonetheless, she’s still taking it hard. She feels like she got a bad grade on a test, or was rejected from a job she wanted. She feels like she failed. She feels less valuable.

I try to communicate to her that society has conditioned her to feel this way, that she didn’t do anything wrong, that anyone who shames those who have STDs is misguided and, frankly, a total jerk. Still, after years of “sexual education” propagating a normative, Judeo-Christian agenda, my words can only undo so much damage.

My interpretation of STD shaming in our culture is as follows: we’ve collectively agreed, at least in secular circles, to curtail our shaming of each other for having sex outside of marriage. We still do it, but we do it much less than our parents did, and even less than their parents did.

This is mostly out of necessity-we’ve, intelligently, decided to delay the age of marriage. This allows us to have better, more meaningful partnerships, as we have more time to grow and discover our preferences before we pick our ideal companion. However, for people with

average to high sex drives, waiting until age 32 to have sex would significantly reduce our quality of life.

It’s simply too miserable to wait that long.

That said, we still feel uncomfortable letting go of the shame around sex entirely. We still force both men and women to feel uncomfortable about “their number,” we still tell girls to hold out on sex so that boys will like them more, we still see abortions as highly taboo outside of any religious reasoning.

We still shame people who have STDs. It’s counterproductive, but it represents the dissonance we have when society sends us mixed messages about sexual liberation and purity.

It’s time for us to take another step. It’s time to recognize that STD shaming is just a mechanism to shame others for having sex, while we (at least those of us who don’t have STDs) don’t have to feel shame ourselves. When we recognize this, we can let go of STD shaming.

On Saturday night I find myself in bed with my current “consistent hookup”. We’re not dating, and we don’t plan on dating, but we’ve had

sex. One can assume that we’re not each other’s first sexual partner and that we won’t be each other’s last. Last time we had sex, we did it without a condom. But after this week’s events, I remind myself how important it is to be careful.

As he starts to move towards intercourse, I stop him. “Hey, do you mind if I grab a condom?”

“Ugh, you’re gonna kill my boner,” he says slowly. “I thought you were on birth control.”

“I am, but, like, STDs, you know.”

His body tenses, as he angrily spits out, “I don’t have STDs, do you have STDs?”. I can hear the offense, and a bit of disgust, in his voice.

I roll over, turning my body away from his. “I’m actually very tired,” I announce. We don’t have sex that night, and we don’t see each other again after that.

As of now, I’m done spending my nights with people who think they can screw all they want and still find a way to shame others for enjoying sex, too.

-Jill Unexpected

TSL’s 2017 Oscar Awards Predictions

Victoria Anders Oscar season is here again, and all of Hollywood’s finest stars will walk down the red carpet to be asked who they’re wearing by an overly eager Ryan Seacrest. If all previous award shows from this year serve as predictors, this last, biggest show will likely turn very political very quickly. The ceremony’s In Memoriam will be one of the longest on record, honoring everyone from Carrie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds to Alan Rickman and Gene Wilder. La La Land leads with a record-tying 14 nominations (along with 1997’s Titanic and 1950’s All About Eve). Jimmy Kimmel will host, and Justin Timberlake, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Sting, and John Legend will perform.

The Contenders Best Picture The nominees are: Arrival, Fences, Hacksaw Ridge, Hell or High Water, Hidden Figures, La La Land, Lion, Manchester by the Sea, Moonlight The Oscar will go to: La La Land Could/Should win: Moonlight should and could Dissed: Loving, 20th Century Women, Nocturnal Animals Best Actress The nominees are: Isabelle Huppert (Elle), Ruth Negga (Loving), Natalie Portman (Jackie), Emma Stone (La La Land), Meryl Streep (Florence Foster Jenkins) The Oscar will go to: Emma Stone Could/Should win: Isabelle Huppert should and could Dissed: Amy Adams (Arrival), Annette Bening (20th Century Women), Taraji P. Henson (Hidden Figures) Best Actor The nominees are: Casey Affleck (Manchester by the Sea), Andrew Garfield (Hacksaw Ridge), Ryan Gosling (La La Land), Viggo Mortensen (Captain Fantastic), Denzel Washington (Fences) The Oscar will go to: Denzel Washington Could/Should win: Casey Affleck could Dissed: Joel Edgerton (Loving), Andrew Garfield (Silence), Tom Hanks (Sully) Best Supporting Actress The nominees are: Viola Davis

Courtesy of Dale Robinette Victoria Anders PO ‘18 predicts a Best Picture win for La La Land at the Oscars.

(Fences), Naomie Harris (Moonlight), Nicole Kidman (Lion), Octavia Spencer (Hidden Figures), Michelle Williams (Manchester by the Sea) The Oscar will go to: Viola Davis, who will likely inspire all with her acceptance speech Could/Should win: Michelle Williams could Dissed: Greta Gerwig (Jackie), Janelle Monae (Hidden Figures) Best Supporting Actor The nominees are: Mahershala Ali (Moonlight), Jeff Bridges (Hell or High Water ), Lucas Hedges (Manchester by the Sea), Dev Patel (Lion), Michael Shannon (Nocturnal Animals) The Oscar will go to: Mahershala Ali Could/Should win: Jeff Bridges could Dissed: Kevin Costner (Hidden Figures), Aaron Taylor-Johnson (Nocturnal Animals)

Best Director The nominees are: Damien Chazelle (La La Land), Barry Jenkins (Moonlight), Kenneth Lonergan (Manchester by the Sea), Mel Gibson (Hacksaw Ridge), Dennis Villeneuve (Arrival) The Oscar will go to: Damien Chazelle Could/Should win: Barry Jenkins should Dissed: Denzel Washington (Fences), Garth Davis (Lion), David Mackenzie (Hell or High Water) Best Adapted Screenplay The nominees are: Arrival, Fences, Hidden Figures, Lion, Moonlight The Oscar will go to: Moonlight Could/Should win: Arrival could Dissed: Loving, Nocturnal Animals Best Original Screenplay The nominees are: 20th Century

Women, Hell or High Water, La La Land, The Lobster, Manchester by the Sea The Oscar will go to: Manchester by the Sea Could/Should win: La La Land could Dissed: Captain Fantastic, Zootopia Best Animated Feature Film The nominees are: Kubo and the Two Strings, Moana, My Life as a Zucchini, The Red Turtle, Zootopia The Oscar will go to: Zootopia Could/Should win: Kubo and the Two Strings could Dissed: Miss Hokusai, The Little Prince Best Documentary The nominees are: 13th, Fire at Sea, I Am Not Your Negro, Life, Animated, OJ: Made in America The Oscar will go to: OJ: Made in America Could/Should win: 13th should Dissed: Gleason, Cameraper-

son, Weiner Best Foreign Language Film The nominees are: Land of Mine (Denmark), A Man Called Ove (Sweden), The Salesman (Iran), Tanna (Australia), Toni Erdmann (Germany) The Oscar will go to: The Salesman Could/Should win: Toni Erdmann Dissed: My Life as a Zucchini (Switzerland), Paradise (Russia) Best Original Score The nominees are: Jackie, La La Land, Lion, Moonlight, Passengers The Oscar will go to: La La Land Could/Should win: Lion could Dissed: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Kubo and the Two Strings Best Cinematography The nominees are: Arrival, La La Land, Lion, Moonlight, Silence The Oscar will go to: La La Land Could/Should win: Lion could,

Moonlight should Dissed: Nocturnal Animals, Hacksaw Ridge, Hail, Caesar!

Best Costume Design The nominees are: Allied, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Florence Foster Jenkins, Jackie, La La Land The Oscar goes to: Jackie Could/Should win: La La Land could Dissed: The Dressmaker, Live

by Night I’ve developed my predictions through personal opinions of film topic and story originality, and depth of performance.

Don’t hold me to any of these predictions, but do comment if you think I missed the mark or didn’t mention something that you think should have been nominated!

Laemmle Theaters in the Village are screening the Oscar Nominated Shorts in all three categories (Animated, Live Action, Documentary) this weekend.

LIFE & STYLE FEBRUARUY 17, 2017

PAGE 5

THE STUDENT LIFE

FOOD COLUMN

Eat Better, Clean Better: Tackling Composting At The 5Cs Molly Edison

Up to 40 percent of food in the United States and one-third of food globally is wasted, according to the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). That’s nearly $1 trillion lost every year to inefficiencies and neglect in the food system.

When food is wasted, we throw money away. With the prevalence of malnutrition, poverty, and hunger both internationally and close to home, we must question how we could possibly be wasting so much food so often.

The institutionalization of our food system, including agro-business farming practices, government corn and soy subsidies, and countless other mechanisms, has allowed countries like the United States to produce a bounty of food beyond what its people need.

Restaurants, cafés, and large-scale food service entities—like dining halls—are some of the greatest producers of food waste.

This waste can be split into two major categories. From the kitchen, or back of the house, comes food waste like fruit peels, vegetable scraps, eggshells, meat scraps, and other parts of the ingredients that won’t be served. Second, there is food waste from consumers—food that isn’t eaten, as well as food that is prepared, put out for serving, touched by people, but not eaten.

The latter is known as post-consumer food waste, and is the main source of waste in dining halls.

While the ultimate remedy to food waste involves changing the industrialized food system to reduce how much food is made, along with when and what food is discarded, students can still take steps to mitigate the food waste that we do contribute.

For example, six of our dining

halls and many smaller eateries on the campuses such as the Shakedown and Grove House at Pitzer compost food waste in some way.

Pomona College also participates in a composting system operated by the Pomona College Organic Farm.

The farm receives most of its food scraps from Frary Dining Hall, with some also coming from Frank Dining Hall. These food scraps come mostly from the back of the house, but the farm also accepts post-consumer food waste.

The scraps are taken from the dining halls in a cart to the composting area at the farm by student farm employees.

The farm uses a thermophilic compost system (also known as hot composting) where piles containing layers of food scraps and leaves are made, according to Farm Director Aaron Cyr-Mutty PO ‘16.

These piles are turned using a tractor, which the farm owns for exclusively for turning compost on a weekly to monthly basis.

Ten to 100 pounds of food scraps are composted by the farm every day. Even still, a majority of the post-consumer food waste that could be composted doesn’t end up in the piles. Cyr-Mutty said that the trash that ends up in compost bins hinders their efficiency and stops a lot of compostable food scraps from getting to them.

“Unfortunately, a lot of the things Pomona buys that are compostable are not compostable for us,” he said. “And so it’s kind of a little bit of an empty gesture, like the compostable spoons, compostable cups, compostable plastic, those need to go into municipal or industrial size compost.”

If more students were aware of what could and could not go into compost bins, more food could be

composted and fewer hours could be spent sorting through the trash.

By using compostable cups and cutlery, Pomona puts forward an image of sustainability, but if those things aren’t getting composted, they are just as wasteful as normal plastics.

Compost at Pitzer is exclusively student-run through Pitzer’s Garden Club. According to Gabe Elliott PZ ‘18, the club’s member in charge of compost, they compost pre-consumer scraps from McConnell Dining Hall, the Grove House, and the Shakedown, as well as compost from individual students.

The food scraps then go through a similar journey to Pomona’s composting system.

Both Pomona’s and Pitzer’s composting systems are limited by space, but due to the size of the Pitzer garden, Garden Club is not able to compost all of the food scraps they receive. Huerta del Valle, a community garden in Ontario that Pitzer partners with, takes and composts the food scraps that Garden Club is not able to process.

While Pitzer’s Garden Club used to compost post-consumer food scraps, it has encountered problems in the last few years.

“It became too difficult to manage the post-consumer waste due to the trash, silverware and other harmful materials that made up a significant percentage of the collection bins,” Elliott wrote in an email.

“Plastics, metals and other miscellaneous objects don’t break down even under significant heat and the amount of trash was impossible to filter out adequately.”

The problem of lazy and uninformed sorting of food waste is not only present at Pomona and Pitzer, but across all compost efforts. To Elliott, greater awareness of what

U.S. Diplomat Discusses Post-War Afghanistan

Lia Francis-Bongue • The Student Life Ambassador Karl W. Eikenberry addresses the audience at the Claremont McKenna Athenaeum during his lecture “America’s Long War in Afghanistan: Fifteen Years after 9/11” on Feb. 13.

Andrea Hernandez Karl Eikenberry, OksenbergRohlen Distinguished Fellow and Director of the U.S.-Asia Security Initiative at Stanford University’s Asia-Pacific Research Center, gave a lecture on the impact of the War in Afghanistan on Monday, Feb. 13 at Claremont McKenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum.

“The Athenaeum collaborates with students, faculty, and our research centers to invite speakers who are experts and leaders in their areas; having guests like Ambassador Eikenberry is an honor and provides comprehensive information, analysis, and opportunities for intellectual engagement for our community,” wrote Priya Junnar, director of the Ath, in an email to TSL. Eikenberry, who served as the U.S. ambassador to Afghanistan from May 2009 until July 2011, talked about the state of Afghanistan from 2001 to today.

“After 9/11, the United States of America under President Bush put a small expeditionary force into Afghanistan with the mission to topple the Taliban government and to find al-Qaeda leadership and bring them to justice,” Eikenberry said.

Over the course of the lecture, Eikenberry briefly explained how the Afghan war was initiated

and how the U.S. army and other resources helped alleviate potential threats from terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda and ISIS, and he outlined the rest of the work that continues today.

The initial operation was only partially successful, he said, as it toppled the Taliban government and al-Qaeda was removed from Afghanistan. But the Taliban leadership escaped into Pakistan and started to reconstitute themselves under newfound sanctuary, which complicated the U.S. mission beyond the previously calculated risks.

Eikenberry said that fifteen years later, Afghanistan still faces great challenges. In some areas of Afghanistan there is still significant activity by the Taliban and the Islamic State, and sometimes both.

Over the past year the Afghan government has seen changes in their control of the country; two years ago they controlled about 72 percent whereas now, due to Taliban gains, they only control 63 percent of the country.

Eikenberry said that Afghanistan also struggles with security, especially when it comes to the opium cultivation in the past couple of years. There has been a worrying increase of 40 percent in recent years, meaning that in 2015 Afghanistan was the largest producer of poppy, which can be

turned into opium.

“This goes beyond providing revenue for the Taliban; this also is a huge source of corruption and criminality throughout the country,” said Eikenberry.

Eikenberry went on to say that all of these challenges, along with the fact that the the U.S. government has been withdrawing soldiers from Afghanistan, add up to a new fear for the Afghan people. Surveys show that 70 percent of civilians now fear for their safety, up from 40 percent in 2004. The decrease of U.S. forces within the country has also affected the economy.

Eikenberry ended the lecture by talking about possible courses of action for President Donald Trump’s administration.

“When you talk about warfare, if you’re going to commit military sources, you have to have a politically defined objective,” he said.

Wendy Sheng CM ‘17 described the talk as “a very nice introduction about the situation in Afghanistan.”

“I think his suggestion for the Trump administration and his ideas about future policy are really insightful and I really liked his discussion about what America should do in Afghanistan, whether it should stay or not,” Sheng said.

Alexa Strabuk• The Student Life

can and cannot be composted is the key to more food waste getting composted and less ending up in landfills.

“It takes a maximum of 15 seconds to separate uneaten food into a compost bin,” he wrote. “And once the routine is established, it becomes a mindless habit that adds up over time.” Some may think that a small bit of food does not

matter, but ultimately, a little more effort on everyone’s part can save countless food from ending up in the landfill.

“Even at a highly sustainable, progressive school, there is a willful ignorance about where our food is grown, harvested (or slaughtered), the conditions it is processed in,” Elliot wrote. “This emotional disconnect between the

steak on our plate and the cow it came from makes it easy to disregard the importance of minimizing and disposing of food waste properly.”

Before we can tackle systemic problems of food production and food waste, we need to put in the effort and be intentional about how much food waste we produce and how we dispose of it.

A Capella Songsters Steal Claremont Spotlight Tarini Sipahimalani

Students, parents, and fans from Southern California eagerly gathered for the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella (ICCA) Southwest Quarterfinal at Pomona College’s Bridges Auditorium on Saturday, Feb. 11. Starting with over 400 groups from around the globe, with multiple quarterfinals simultaneously occurring in different locations across the country, two of the eight groups from Saturday’s competition will move on to the the semifinals at University of California, Los Angeles, on Mar. 11.

With royal blue curtains framing the empty stage, the audience keenly awaited a night of warming melodies, stories, and raw emotion evoked by the complexities of the human voice.

The first group to take the stage was the 5Cs’ very own Midnight Echo. Dressed in gold and blue, the group performed their rendition of Selena Gomez’s “Can’t Keep My Hands to Myself.” With a quick tempo directing the soloist to work the stage with an upbeat energy, the rest of the group carried the song with harmonic sustained notes.

Another notable piece was Amy Winehouse’s “Back to Black.” Retaining Winehouse’s raw style, Midnight Echo sang the charged song with a heightening intensity and sultry tone.

The second group to entertain the audience was UCLA’s Resonance. The group commenced with Jessie J’s challenging “Mamma Knows Best,” as the male soloist’s smooth blending voice sang melodic riffs in line with the

group’s homophonic progressions.

The discreet dissonance exuded from the arrangement allowed for moments of harmonic contrasts while the female soloist’s fierce yet sweet voice belted out the notes.

The group’s tight unisons paved way for the loud silences. The duo stunned the audience as her highs complemented his lows.

UCLA’s Scattertones, one of the favorites from SCAMFest, returned to Bridges to share their music.

Dressed in their signature pink and black outfits, they stood tall as the soloist sang a low, husky, soulful introduction to Beyonce’s “Drunk in Love.” With only two singers accompanying her, the soloist sang a riff ascending into a quiet lightness before the rest of the group came in with a series of open sustained notes eliciting a sense of nostalgia associated with Coldplay’s “Magic,” which the male soloist carefully delved into. They sang with a soft delicacy until the soloists climaxed into the high note, where the beat picked up and the rest of group heightened in texture and emotion.

Another noticeable group was Naked Voices from UC Santa Barbara, performing in their signature barefoot style. After performing a wild and sassy mash-up, what really drew the audience in was their rendition of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” partly eerie, partly true to the original, for which the soloists ultimately went on to win the “Outstanding soloists” award.

With the female soloist’s addictive, elastic voice combined with the male soloist’s, the group highlighted their duet with a slower chilling tone gradually sliding into the original chorus at a quickening tempo, playing around with rubato.

Naked Voices’ melancholic version of Sia’s “Chandelier” was also very gripping. The male soloist started isolated at center stage singing a soft, slow and intimate verse. While Sia’s voice was raw, his performance was emotionally palpable. There were no crazy notes or belting tricks but just a delicate and emotional performance, which in itself made it strong.

After a long interval of deliberation, the kudges crowned UCLA’s Scattertones the Quarterfinal winners. Second place went to UCLA’s Resonance, sending them to the semifinals as well. UCSB’s Naked Voices took third place.

Sreymich Lach PO ’20 thoroughly enjoyed the event.

“Every group had such a refreshing and unique take on all the pop songs.,” she said. Lach was particularly drawn to the Bollywood-Western fusion group from the University of Southern California (USC), appreciating the cultural integration they incorporated into their pieces in addition to their beat boxer’s impeccable skill that led her to win the ‘Outstanding Percussionist’ award.

Lach also detailed the wholesome moment “when the Afterschool Specials brought out all the a cappella groups on stage with them during their last performance.”

Michelle Timmins PO ’20 really enjoyed SCAMFest last semester and therefore decided to attend this event. She loved hearing Naked Voices and Scattertones, among a few other groups.

“It amazes me that they’re just using their voices because it sounds like a recording sometimes,” she said, “and I really enjoy [seeing] their costumes and choreography.”

Adela Pfaff • The Student Life Claremont Colleges group Midnight Echo finishes off their opening act at the ICCA Southwest Quarterfinal in Bridges Auditorium with “You Make My Dreams Come True” by Hall and Oates.

LIFE & STYLE PAGE 6

FEBRUARUY 17, 2017

THE STUDENT LIFE

Scripps Humanities Chair, Author Calls For Empathy in Post-Earthquake Haiti Riley Mang

Jo Nordhoff-Beard • The Student Life Hartley Burr Alexander Humanities Chair, Myriam J.A. Chancy, discusses post-earthquake Haiti at a talk on Tuesday, Feb. 14.

Since Haiti’s devastating earthquake on Jan. 12, 2010, Haitians both living on the island and abroad have been in the process of reclaiming the stories that were buried in the rubble. Myriam Chancy, Haitian-Canadian author, Guggenheim Fellow, and Scripps College Hartley Burr Alexander Chair in the Humanities, spoke about the role of fiction in combatting the politics of exclusion which undergird one of the most tragic natural and humanitarian disasters of our time. The event, which took place on Tuesday, Feb. 14 in the Hampton Room at Scripps, was part of the Scripps Humanities Institute’s “Walls, Borders, and Fences” Spring Series.

Combining readings from Douze, photographs, and her research amassed from the past 17 years, Chancy exemplified the power that stories have to create empathy for and give agency to the voices that are often silenced, such as those most deeply affected by the earthquake.

Douze tells the stories of twelve interconnected narrators living in Haiti after the earthquake. The narratives are borrowed from stories that people have shared with Chancy throughout her experiences in earthquake relief and research.

“Maybe just giving voice to twelve is a way to remember all the nameless dead, and to make it mean something,” Chancy said in response to a question about her role as a writer in the aftermath of the earthquake.

A literary authority on the history and reconstruction of Haiti, Chancy has written several books which center on the lives and roles of women in development, including her 2012 book, From Sugar to Revolution: Women’s Visions of Haiti, Cuba, and the Dominican Republic. In her talk, she explained that her work is deeply personal, as it is largely inspired and affected by her Haitian roots, particularly her relationship with her grandmother.

The stories in Douze are harrowing, and Chancy makes no attempt to mask the realities of the devastation. They are also complex and richly laced with Haitian culture.

Her readings were imaginative and lyrical and placed the audience firmly within the scenes she described. Chancy gracefully integrated Creole into her prose, presenting an authentic voice of those for whom post-earthquake trauma has become part of daily life.

Nearly 15 billion dollars was donated to Haiti aid relief in the months following the earthquake, according to a report by CBS Interactive Inc. Much of Chancy’s work presents a darker reality of foreign aid in exposing the ways that local voices are often kept out of the reconstruction process. She urges her readers to consider the importance of grassroots development led by local actors over the fuel that foreign aid so often brings to an already burning fire.

“So much money has been poured into Haiti and what happens in this kind of situation is that it pours in, and then it pours right out,” she explained. “NGOs that work in Haiti will bring in their

own labor. They will not necessarily train Haitians to do the work for themselves so another kind of infrastructure is built into the country that creates more walls, more fences in terms of the people that are on the ground.”

Chancy uses fiction as a tool to break down the exclusionary borders erected in Haiti by outside influences and prejudices. The central character throughout her novel, a market woman, binds all other characters and stories together. She is the eyes and the wisdom of the community, and the community trusts her authority above all. She, and other market women like her, protect Creole tradition in a modern context and, as Chancy argues, are the key to social, economic, and political rehabilitation in Haiti.

By inserting voices of women such as these into the center of her writing, Chancy hopes to shift the popular perception of Haiti and its people toward a more authentic lens of grassroots change.

“What do we think fiction is there to do?” Chancy asked the audience. “My answer is that regardless of skin color or ethnicity or background, fiction exists to move us. It is a kind of call to empathy.

There is an emotional tenure in writing that moves us from observers to empathetic participants.”

In a media climate saturated with headlines about walls and borders, Chancy offers fiction as a respite and a solution against exclusion, prejudice, and misunderstanding. The stories she shares bridge the gaps made by geographical, cultural, and political difference.

5C Slam Poets Prove They are ‘Hidden No More’ Ariel So In celebration of the 2017 Black Arts Festival, 5C Spoken Word group Motormouth held another night of slam poetry at Scripps College’s Motley Coffeehouse on Feb. 10. The event was in partnership with Wanawake Weusi, an organization committed to supporting Scripps students who identify as black.

Motormouth’s performance followed an open mic opportunity, where people from the audience could perform onstage, especially “black folks who wish[ed] to voice themselves and share oral art with their community,” according to the event’s Facebook page.

The theme for the night was

“Hidden No More,” encouraging more people to take pride in their true identities. Many audience members loved the poems and seeing people of color come together.

Sabina Villalobos SC ‘20, a frequent attendee of “Brown Noise,” thought the night was particularly beautiful and wonderful.

“I think the fact that it is Black History Month made a big difference [to the event],” Villalobos said.

“The theme ‘Hidden No More’— just really having that [theme] in our minds, and remembering like, ‘yeah, we’re worth it’; we have so much worth that people need to value and understand.’”

Villalobos also said that the performances were especially strong at conveying emotions to the audi-

ence.

“Listening to everyone speak, their words really get to you,” Villalobos said. “They make you think, and they make you reevaluate how you feel. I felt that a lot tonight. I feel proud in my community, I feel proud to be who I am, and I really feel proud of my peers.”

Villalobos said her favorite poem performed was one about hair, which she considers one of her “defining features as a person of color.”

Another audience member, Alexa Johnson SC ‘20, commented on how powerful the event was to her.

“I was very impressed with the eloquence and the creativity of the poets,” Johnson said. “They successfully communicated ideas that

many people in the audience were strongly affected by—ideas like oppression and racism, which are very prevalent, especially with our current political situation.”

“I think events like this poetry slam are necessary to bring people together in order to talk about and fight oppression,” Johnson said.

Motormouth was formed precisely to support different groups of people. Founder Avery Jonas PO ‘20 got a group of his friends together over the summer after realizing there was no slam poetry group at the 5Cs. Jonas was part of a New York City competitive slam team, Urban Word, during his high school years, and decided to bring the tradition with him to college in hopes of

creating a safe space for young writers to express themselves through Spoken Word.

Eliamani Ismail SC ‘20, another prominent member of Motormouth, was also part of a youth slam team in Washington, D.C. “Carrying slam over to college was kinda just like the next rational thing to do,” Ismail said. “[Spoken Word is] an aggressively healing place, especially for people of color and marginalized communities, and so we wanted to bring some of that here.”

Although POC-oriented, Jonas acknowledged that the group was founded on creating a safe space for everyone.

“Motormouth is a group open to anybody,” Jonas said. “But at

the same time, we want to make sure that we balance things out for people of color … [We want to] create a place where [people of color] can share their work, especially when their positions are politicized because their identities are often politicized, so giving them that space to be political without being [condemned] like, ‘What the hell are you doing?’” he said.

Motormouth has been an important resource for people of color wanting to connect with different opportunities on campus, including writing poems, stories, speeches, and delivering them at various events at the 5Cs. Motormouth members are also working hard to form an official competitive slam team soon.

INTERNATIONAL SPACES

Foreign Idioms Are No Cakewalk Helena Shannon

I d i o m s h a ve a l wa y s b e e n intriguing to me. For most English speakers, or really anyone speaking their native language, they sort of slip under the radar in our speech and go completely unnoticed. But when you start to notice them, you’ll notice two things: first, they are very strange; second, we use them all the time.

For instance, I’ve already used one, if you noticed: slip under the radar. That one isn’t so odd, but others that we use are just astonishingly bizarre. Something can be the cat’s pajamas or the bee’s knees, but I’m fairly certain that cats do not wear pajamas nor do bees have knees.

Something can be a cakewalk, a piece of cake, or easy as pie.

Why are baked goods so frequently linked with the idea of a task easily completed? I haven’t the foggiest. But despite our lack of understanding, we use them so naturally. One could say that using idioms in your native language (or languages) is easy as pie. But what about using and understanding idioms in a nonnative language? Not easy as pie.

Not a cakewalk. Most certainly not a piece of cake.

You could, possibly, be having a wonderful conversation with a French person about a fine wine. They take a sip, explain the flavor, the texture, and then suddenly they’re talking about Jesus.

As my father sometimes would say when I’d swear: “What’s Jesus got to do with this?”. Well, I will tell you what Jesus has to do with a fine wine. While we, in America, would call a fine wine or a really great steak “the cat’s pajamas” or, if you weren’t born in the 1920s, “bomb af” or maybe “lit,” the French would say that the steak or wine is “Le petit Jesus en culotte de velours!”. This

roughly translates to, “It’s baby Jesus in velvet shorts!”

What imagery! Little baby Jesus, struttin’ his stuff in Juicy Couture sweatpants. Luckily, I happened to know this fun little phrase, but there are still plenty of idioms that I don’t know, and that make it all the more difficult to communicate with other French people. Also, not only have I gained a whole set of new idioms I don’t know, I have lost the set of idioms that I do know.

This experience has really made me appreciate our dependence on roundabout ways of speaking, including idioms.

When talking in French, I frequently feel a bit frustrated because I know exactly what I want to say, but I just don’t know how to say it. And often when I do know how to convey a phrase, it’s only in the most basic language.

All of the color has been sapped out of my language, and I didn’t realize that I would miss it until it was gone.

Despite the frustration, speaking consistently in French has also made me see how complex a language can actually be. Language is not just a set of words and grammar. (And I say “just” as if learning the words and the grammar was easy. After seven years of speaking French, my mental lexicon is still only that of a 12-year-old, and I make grammar mistakes left and right.)

Language is metaphors, and idioms, and connotations, and register of formality, and intonation. And yet, as we go about our daily lives, as native speakers of some language, we never once stop to think about any of these facets (unless you study linguistics, in which case you are probably thinking about these things all the time).

It was not until I embarked on the journey of trying to communicate and comprehend in French

that I realized the complexity of French, and of English. And though this realization has made my life in France incredibly difficult, it has also made me more self-aware of my own language, and of other dialects of English.

For instance, I am currently traveling alone through the U.K., which means a lot of meals in crowded restaurants on my own, which means I have a lot of time to eavesdrop. And as I eavesdrop, I try to be less creepy by putting an academic spin on it. Can I identify slang words? Idiomatic phrases? Do the Scots systematically change the “th” In “three” to a “t” in the same way that the Irish do?

How is formality different in Ireland, Scotland, and Paris?

In answer to some of these questions: The Scots, the Irish, and the Brits share a subset of slang words, but the Irish and the Scottish have an additional set that come from Gaelic. In Ireland, if you’d like to say, “what’s up?” or “what’s the 411?” you could say “what’s the craic?,” craic meaning “fun” or “general enjoyment.”

The Scots don’t change the “th” to the “t,” and formality is wildly different among countries. In Paris, conversations are, for the most part, very formal. In Ireland and Scotland, the level of formality is generally lower, and having long conversations with cashiers and waiters is somewhat more normal.

In any case, I would highly recommend eavesdropping in this way. Perhaps it’s not the most empirical way to document change in language, but it is eye-opening and gives one an appreciation for the complexity of each language and, furthermore, the dialects in those languages.

Ye Olde Student Life The Claremont Colleges today are not exactly known as a dry campus, but back in 1925, during the height of the Prohibition era (which lasted from 1919 until 1933), the temperance movement was going strong. It’s impossible to know exactly what thenEditor In Chief George W. Savage—who wrote this editorial for our February 23, 1925 issue—would think if he could spend a Friday night at CMC in 2017, but I feel fairly confident in predicting that he would not approve.

- Compiled by Samuel Breslow PO ‘18

OPINIONS FEBRUARY 17, 2017

PAGE 7

THE STUDENT LIFE

THE STUDENT LIFE SEAN OGAMI, News Editor KELLEN BROWNING, News Assignment Editor ELINOR ASPEGREN, News Associate LIAM BROOKS SAFA ARSHADULLAH, Life & Style Editor Production Editor SOPHIE PETERS, Life & Style Editor ANIKKA VILLEGAS, Life & Style Associate CHRISTOPHER ESKILSON KATE DOLGENOS, Opinions Editor Content Editor JO NORDHOFF-BEARD, Sports Editor LAUREN ISON Editor-in-Chief

GRACE OZONOFF-RICHEY, Senior Design Editor ELIZABETH LEADER, Senior Design Editor DAPHNE YANG, News Designer MEGAN ROBALEWSKI, Life & Style Designer NOOR DHINGRA, Opinions Designer CHRISTINA BECK, Sports Designer

The Student Life, the oldest college newspaper in Southern California, is produced and managed by students of the Claremont Colleges and published weekly.

The Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief and two Managing Editors. Aside from the editorial, the views expressed in the opinions section do not necessarily reflect the views of The Student Life.

Email letters, questions and concerns to editor@tsl.pomona. edu. Email tips to liaison@tsl.pomona.edu; email advertising inquiries to business@tsl.pomona.edu.

MATTHEW LEE, Senior Copy Editor DONNIE DENOME, Copy Editor ANDREW MEDINA, Copy Editor DOMINIC FREMPONG, Graphics Editor ALYSSA ALFONSO, Photo Editor MEGHAN JOYCE, Photo Manager DONOVAN NEW, Video Director

What Does Beyoncé Need to Do to Win Album of the Year?

MONICA ACOSTA, Distribution Manager WESLEY LIANG, Business Manager ALEXA STRABUK, Senior Advisor

TSL welcomes Letters to the Editor, which can be submitted by mail, by email, or in person at the Fishbowl in Walker Hall.

Letters must be under 400 words (although when an issue is particularly salient, we reserve the right to allow letters to run at a longer length) and submitted by 4 p.m. Wednesday of the week of publication. We reserve the right to decline publication of submitted letters and will not accept anonymous letters, letters containing profanity, factually inaccurate letters or letters making personal attacks. TSL also reserves the right to edit for spelling, punctuation and grammar. Letters may be signed by a maximum of three persons. All letters become the property of TSL and may not be reprinted without prior permission from the Editorial Board.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Work is Work is Work

One of our front-page stories this week is about Harvey Mudd College’s nation-leading gender balance in computer science majors. Last year, 54 percent of HMC students awarded bachelor’s degrees in computer science were women, a remarkable statistic when you compare it to the nationwide average of 17.9 percent. Even though major technology companies are still struggling to update their hiring tendencies, a more diverse range of possible applicants is a step in the right direction.

At the same time, coding as a job is losing its romantic, highstakes high-reward, companyin-a-garage status in the eyes of employers and employees alike.

Wired declared coding to be “the next blue collar job.” And, historically, jobs that shift from majority men to majority women also see a significant drop in pay.

Which makes one wonder what those HMC statistics are really pointing to—an increased recognition of women’s talent, or a devaluation of the work such that it becomes level with sexist social stereotyping?

While important female computer scientists such as Grace Murray Hopper have finally started to receive their due credit, men still dominate the board rooms and executive offices of tech companies. Some may say it’s just a matter of time and that we need to allow the equality seen on Mudd’s graduation stage to somehow “trickle up” to the leading thinkers of our technological world. But others may counter that by the time this process has occurred, coding will be replaced by a new field, one enabled by rapid technological development.

However, regardless of

TSL SAYS

Senate confirmations The Treasury Secretary’s name sounds like a sneeze

changes in the labor market in the coming years, we should continue to value the contributions of women and other underrepresented groups to computer science and other STEM fields.

We must emphasize the importance of the talent, skill, and dedication of real-life women before we worry about robot factories. Part of this should come from the recruiters and hiring teams of Silicon Valley’s incubator-satiated startups. But we must do our own work, too, as we judge and classify our peers, consciously or not.

We encourage everyone, including ourselves, to critically analyze why you judge certain people to be smart or worthy of your time. As we graduate and enter the workforce, the stereotypes we’ve developed in college will stay with us and help to shape future generations.

Renaming schools Female coders finally getting recognized

Senate confirmations Who even needs public education?

Lying to get the job “Flynn, you’re fired!”

Wearing your Iron Man suit in pulic “I wasn’t at the Grammys”

Finding new continents Pluto can’t be a planet, but Zealandia can be a continent

Wearing your golf pants when North Korea goes nuclear

Global warming Rising sea levels will surely deter tourism

Audrey Jang • The Student Life

Adela Pfaff Guest Columnist Can anyone really say they did more than Beyoncé last weekend? Pregnant with twins, the singer perfectly executed a ten-minute performance on live television—just after being snubbed for four awards.

Beyoncé was nominated for seven awards but only ended up taking home two: Best Music Video and Best Urban Contemporary Album. Four of the other awards—Album of the Year, Record of the Year, Best Solo Performance, and Best Pop Solo Performance—went to Adele.

Don’t get me wrong, I think Adele is an extremely talented artist who deserves recognition and admiration—but c’mon.

Even Adele wanted Beyoncé to win.

While accepting her award for Album of the Year, Adele Kanye West-ed herself and called Beyoncé “the artist of [her ] life.” She continued to praise Lemonade, calling it “monumental” and emphasizing how empowering it has been for the black community.

Beyoncé teared up during this exchange, and mouthed “thank you” back to Adele.

While 25 gave us some great crying music, Lemonade’s entirety is worth praising. The album not only showed off Beyoncé’s musical range, but also her emotional range, from the terrifyingly bitter “Sorry” and “Don’t Hurt Yourself” to the tearful and raw “Sandcastles,” “Formation,” and “Freedom.”

These unabashed anthems of b l a c k e m p o we r m e n t s h o o k the world with their surprise releases. So what the f--- happened?

Surprisingly, Lemonade sold fewer copies than 25, perhaps because Beyoncé’s album was originally a Tidal exclusive and still isn’t on Spotify. The public’s reception to the two albums was pretty different, however.

25 gets a 75/100 rating on Metacritic, while Lemonade scores a whopping 92/100. Spin gave 25 a 6/10, but gave Lemonade a 9/10. Pollstar’s 20 Global Concert Tours of 2016, which uses box office data to generate a list of the most popular musical acts, charted Beyoncé’s Formation World Tour at number one, whereas Adele’s concert series wasn’t even featured on the list.

So what happened?

Vox suspects that “vote-splitting” among the Grammy committees is to blame. Since Adele was the only adult contemporary artist in her nomination categories and Beyoncé was one of three pop/hip hop artists nominated, Adele secured the entire population of Grammy award judges who like melancholy nostalgia music, while the pop and hip hop-leaning judges were somehow torn between Justin Bieber, Drake, and Beyoncé.

But this still doesn’t explain the most unbelievable snub since the 2016 election: The visual album Lemonade losing out to a Ron Howard documentary about the Beatles.

If you’re one of the fourteen people who saw The Beatles: Eight Days a Week, congratulations, a film you saw just won a Grammy! If you’re literally everyone else in the world, I know what you’re thinking and yes, the guy who directed the Jim Carrey Grinch just won a Grammy over Beyoncé effing Knowles.

I have to say that it’s pretty odd for a film that no one has heard of to win a Grammy over a visual album that pretty much broke the entire country. What started with just a four-minute music video released on a private streaming site with no prior publicity, then a Super Bowl performance that Beyoncé didn’t even technically headline, then a feature length film once again only available through subscription, then another album available only through subscription, and then a world tour grossing over $250 million, has become

the global phenomenon we understand as Lemonade. But how does this even come close to yet another film about the same four white guys?

What’s troubling to me isn’t just that Beyoncé and her team didn’t win enough awards for their incredible work of art. It’s the fact that Beyoncé has won these awards in the past.

Isn’t it questionable that a long-time Grammy winner and acclaimed performer suddenly lost in four categories she’s bagged in years past? What could have been the difference? Was it because Beyoncé sang about her “negro nose” and said the n-word? The Grammys can’t be racist. Chance the Rapper won Best New Artist! This definitely wasn’t a race thing. Right?

At the end of the night, Beyoncé did end up with an award, winning Best Urban Contemporary Album. Since the award’s institution in 2013, this is the first time its announcement has ever been televised. It was a divine sight; the goddess herself, bathed in gold, gracefully ascended the stairs as her husband and daughter cheered from the front row.

It was almost enough to distract from the fact that no one had ever heard of this award before.

At the mic, Beyoncé highlighted the reasons she made Lemonade in the first place: “It’s important to me to show images to my children that reflect their beauty, so they can grow up in a world where they look in the mirror, first through their own familie—as well as the news, the Super Bowl, the Olympics, the White House, and the Grammys—and see themselves, and have no doubt that they’re beautiful, intelligent, and capable.”

Despite it all, just in the smile she gives her daughter at the end of the speech, Beyoncé has done that and more.

Adela Pfaff PZ ‘19 is a psychology major from San Diego. Their future aspirations include running a lab, giving a TEDtalk, and handfeeding sharks.

Weekly Comic: Salty Language

Sophie Reingold • The Student Life

OPINIONS PAGE 8

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

THE STUDENT LIFE

The Philippines: An Empire of Starbucks Cups and Steph Curry Jerseys

Alexa Strabuk • The Student Life

The Free Trip that Comes with a Price

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Across 1. Main character in beloved Mean Girls (2004) Simone Bishara PZ ’18 5. Celestial object or protagonist 9. Popular arcade game set to music and filled with arrows 6. disappearing Story or epic ACROSS 12. Dealcharacter issued in court defendant’s 7. 40-across in Arabic 1. Main inregarding beloved Mean guilt 13. Not cool 8. Harvests Girls (2004) 14. Vowel-heavy refrain sang often around toddlers 9. Popular destination for sandwich 5. 15.

Celestial To-Do or object Dean’s or protagonist meat 9. 16.

Popular arcade game set to Therapeutic plant goo 17. Parking areafilled with 10. Chic French luxury brand music and 18. What you might’ve done on Feb. 13th to get a11. table at a nice restaurantwhen you leave What happens disappearing arrows

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DOWN 1. New York laws having to do with juris. and liab.

2. Ironically, Washington “cannot tell ___” 3. End of the night bites, maybe chocolate covered strawberries on Feb. 14th 4. Attorney General who legally rejected the #MuslimBan 5. Eastern European

food out too long 19. Parks and ___, Knope and Swason’s dept.

21. Harambe relative 23. Lightbulb over the head 24. Non-profit media producer 25. French pie order 27. In the distance 28. Hi-___ graphics 30. Nickname for your boo, words uttered often on Valentine’s day 31. Complaint after finishing final essay, wrist affliction 32. Rare sky sighting, typically carrying strange looking creatures (not Air Force One) 37. Unfortunate result from hookup 39. The Resistance, Arab group around the Sinai 42. Confess 44. Small, furry Star Wars characters 45. Home, in Tijuana 46. Person interacting with consumable 47. Back or fanny ending 48. To and ___ stickers popular over the holidays 49. Dunham, ya know one of the Girls 50. Wheeze sound through stethoscope 51. Sty grub 54. Unrefined metal, straight from the ground

C P L R

12. Deal issued in court regarding defendant’s guilt 13. Not cool 14. Vowel-heavy refrain sang often around toddlers 15. To-Do or Dean’s 16. Therapeutic plant goo 17. Parking area 18. What you might’ve done on Feb. 13th to get a table at a nice restaurant 20. Amounts allowed on 59-across 22. Compass dir. pointing toward AZ 23. Special projects that receive full class credit 24. Goal number of strokes in golf 26. Potential 2/14 present, maybe saying something witty 29. Beige 33. Popular sandwich 34. Price 35. Tampa college 36. Attitude 38. Quickly, in an office 40. Mom’s hermano 41. There’s some in pits in LA 43. Necklace made up of 48-across 45. Baby with an arrow (who thought that was a good idea?)

48. Gift to accompany 26-across 52. Simile ingredients 53. An increased amount 55. Milky gem 56. 1/60 of a min.

57. Fe 58. Multiplier of a thousand, for the rest of the world 59. Noah’s creation, exclusively allowed 20-across 60. Spanish genre or theme 61. Pour over action

R U S F I O

provide, they can find other ways of supporting them. This includes creating mechanisms for consistent, sustainable funding that alleviates some of the endof-year stress.

This also means allowing them more autonomy over how those funds are allocated. For example, the Student Senate could allow these groups to set their own dollar amounts, instead of allowing senators—who may be ignorant of the needs of identity groups— to do so.

As I begin to understand where I may fit in, in the context of Pitzer, I realize that so much work must be done. It isn’t enough for spaces to simply exist, especially if their existence is constantly undermined. As Riki Robinson PZ ’18, who is involved in Pitzer-based identity groups APAC (Asian Pacific American Coalition) and MIX (Mixed Identity Exchange), wrote an email to TSL, “Identity groups exist for us to create community and support one another and this layer of bureaucracy ignores the needs of marginalized students.”

I’m proud to go to Pitzer, and I’m proud to be EgyptianAmerican. I cannot wait for the day when I can say that these identities no longer conflict.

Simone Bishara is a third-year at Pitzer studying Sociology. She hopes to one day pursue a career in juvenile justice.

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P A B L S A

My first few months at Pitzer College were a curious time for me. I had no idea what college was supposed to be like, who I was supposed to be friends with, or even where to sit at the dining hall. I was lost, more than I felt I should be. I felt very, very small at a school that was one-fourth of the size of my high school. And even worse, on the days I didn’t feel incredibly invisible, I felt like there was no way I would ever fit in. Something about my tangled curls and olive skin just simply didn’t belong anywhere at Pitzer.

Two and a half years later, I still sometimes feel small. Yet more often I feel I’m starting to find my niche. I grew up in spaces where most people looked like each other

is productive and enriching for all members of the community. In fact, when diversity is discussed and celebrated in these ways, it is easier to mitigate bigoted behavior. Thus, the existence of affinity groups improves every aspect of the community.

So, why do these groups have to fight so hard to find funding to help marginalized students on these campuses survive? The Pitzer College Student Senate currently requires that all organizations request funding on a yearly basis. In the process, you must justify why your group needs the funding. In practice, this means having to justify why your group exists.

This process is taxing. On the one hand, students who are part of these groups have less time than other students because they have the additional obligations of workstudy and leadership roles in other identity-centered groups. There aren’t always enough hours to work out budgeting for an entire year.

There is also the problem of numbers. Some groups have relatively few members, making it even more difficult for club officers to divvy up responsibilities.

It is inappropriate to treat these organizations like any other club.

They deal with different responsibilities than those a typical club does. While Pitzer can’t put a numerical value on the emotional labor and support these groups

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S L O P

Simone Bishara Columnist

but no one looked like me. Pitzer was another one of those spaces, but I arrived there at a time when I was becoming hyperaware of my differences.

Very recently, the Middle Eastern Student Association (MESA) was created at Pitzer. It quickly became the first space where I could look around, listen, see, and hear experiences that have reflected my own. MESA, in short, has become a slice of home for me, in both this moment of political uncertainty and this lifetime of figuring out how I’m supposed to fit in.

MESA is one of eight identity groups at Pitzer. Unsurprisingly, each of these groups is filled with success stories like mine. These groups act as safe havens in a community that generally doesn’t look like their members, and one in which members face increased pressure to succeed. Members of identity groups have diverse experiences, both within and outside their groups, but they share their identities with at least one room full of people at least once a week.

Now, of all times, this is something to celebrate.

My experience, and those of so many others here at the colleges and elsewhere, has been backed up with research. Having a shared space where it is safe to discuss the hardest parts of your identity has proven to be highly effective in fostering an environment that

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R A L E

Pitzer Must Support Identity-Based Affinity Groups

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D E L A I P E C U T I E P I E

nating people with pro-Israel rhetoric but also does so at the expense of indigenous populations. While Jewish students can easily access fully-funded vacations in the name of ‘self discovery,’ Palestinians in the diaspora are barred from returning or face the demolition of their families’ homes upon return.

Additionally, Palestinians within Israel and the occupied territories continue to be ethnically cleansed, exiled and actively discriminated against by the state of Israel.

We have a duty as concerned citizens of the world to stand against these acts of violence and genocide. Do not let propaganda advertising the trip as a ‘touching, beautiful way to connect with the broader Jewish community’ fool you. Birthright is a colonial tool, not an innocent, fun trip to take with your friends.

Therefore, if you have one takeaway from this article, please let it be the dire need for self-education.

Check out the “Whose Birthright?” zine created by Tufts University’s Jewish Voice for Peace. Watch Remi Kanazi’s spoken word videos on YouTube about the ongoing Nakba (Catastrophe) in Palestine.

Read about Rasmea Odeh’s court case. Unlearn. Investigate. Question. Decolonize. If after reading those sources and participating in self and community critique you still want to go on Birthright, ask yourself—who is paying for this free trip with their life?

Roxy Rozo-Marsh SC ‘19 is a planned Spanish, Latin American, and Caribbean Studies and Sociology dual major from the Bay Area. She is passionate about social justice and collective liberation.

P L E O W O K S

the trip participants where people discussed Judaism and instances of anti-Semitism. This conversation ended with a mix of American students and Israeli soldiers/Birthright employees claiming Jewish superiority and a staff member stating that others [non Jews] were “just jealous”, a comment which in turn received rounds of applause.

All of these experiences show that attending Birthright is not a passive act. One only has to look as far as the funding for the trip to become aware of just how strategic it is. For instance, Sheldon Adelson, the largest individual donor to Birthright, has also donated to the IDF and was Donald Trump’s largest individual donor during the 2016 presidential campaign.

It is crucial to recognize how his contributions to Birthright directly correlate with the trip’s colonial mission, especially given that Adelson himself has made incredibly disturbing comments such as the claim that Palestinians are a “made up people.”

Moreover, Adelson has said, “All we care about is being good Zionists, being good citizens of Israel.” To him and the Birthright Israel Foundation, this means creating the next generation of uncritical champions of the IDF and other Israeli entities that commit atrocity after atrocity against indigenous Palestinians in the name of Zionism. The purposeful erasure and miseducation I experienced on the trip is a strategy that has been and continues to be implemented in an effort to increase the population of pro-Israel advocates, advocates who, like Adelson, will go on to unconditionally support the state financially and politically.

Moreover, Birthright not only fosters an environment for indoctri-

S T A L A M A L O R V E E I C A R D F E E A S A R F L O R E R O N E M A

Last semester I first heard talk of a Birthright trip being organized by the Claremont Colleges Hillel. My fears were confirmed months later when I attended an information session held at Scripps College. Why am I so concerned? Because this time last year I was choosing a Birthright trip and preparing my application. This time last year I decided to cash in on my free trip to Israel. This time last year I made a decision that left me challenging the many ways I have been indoctrinated in the name of Zionism.

Silence is a part of the violence I am refusing to participate in any longer. So I will write and speak and resist as long as there are still people in Israel and all over the world, including at the Claremont Colleges, who condone this violence.

Although it’s approaching a year since I went on Birthright, I can recall many of my experiences as if they were yesterday. I remember the strangers on the street who tried to convince us to join the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) upon hearing we were on Birthright, and the other students on the trip who toasted to the IDF while we were out clubbing for a night. I remember hearing one of the IDF soldiers travelling with us explain the most recent attack on Gaza and the times he looked in Palestinian homes to make sure no other soldiers were inside before shooting.

I remember when our tour guide discussed an “uprising” when the Arab residents of Tsfat, who compromise 90 percent of the overall population, were exiled from the land.

How she glorified this act of ethnic cleansing and never mentioned the

word Palestinian the entire ten days we were on the trip. I remember when a journalist who claimed to be objective came to speak to the group about the conflict and purposely misunderstood any questions about his pro-Israel biases.

I remember walking with the group one morning and witnessing police officers stop two men in a car to search them and their vehicle. This incident was then described to me by an IDF soldier in a positive light, as a routine search of Arab residents implemented to make the Jewish Israeli public feel safer.

I remember hearing about a group exercise organized by Israeli soldiers where participants were asked whether they would bomb a school if it were the site from which Hamas launched its rockets, even at the expense of Palestinian students inside. All views in opposition of bombing the school were aggressively challenged.

I remember the tour of South Tel Aviv and how the guide discussed asylum-seekers as disposable and spoke of immigration policies, the wall along the Egyptian border, and violence towards immigrants in a nonchalant way that removed all state culpability. She even suggested we join a private genocide remembrance ceremony in a manner that made a spectacle out of people’s painful experiences.

I remember talking to one of the staff members on the trip who was a settler in the West Bank. How she discussed that she could never trust Palestinians, they want to bond with me, she said, but I could never love them; you should see the way Arab men look at me, she added, they have no shame.

I remember a discussion with all

Weekly Crossword

A D M I T

Roxy Rozo-Marsh Guest Columnist

between half-hearted acceptance from white America and complete alienation from our native roots.

Freedom continues to be an everelusive pursuit.

Yet someday, I want red, yellow and blue to reign over aquamarine seas and sun-kissed mountains. I want over almost five hundred years of blood—wars and scars, revolutions and constitutions—to come to its end.

I want to be free.

Jolo Labio PO ‘20 is from Manila, Philippines. Catch him every MondayThursday at 7:59 AM, furiously sprinting to his 8 a.m. at Mason.

percent are domestic Asian students, 11.1 percent come from outside the United States, and a portion are of mixed Asian heritage. To differing degrees, we all have bought into the idea of American exceptionalism.

Inspired by the ‘American Dream,’ Asian immigrant families bravely left their homes to seek out a new life in the United States. As a Filipino international student, I was attracted by the unparalleled educational opportunities that the United States offers.

Yet in our quest for success and stability, we find ourselves in a difficult position—toeing the fine line

D Y E A S T S E E S R T S S T P I A C K

Korea (84 percent) and Vietnam (77 percent). All three countries were sites of American proxy wars or colonization.

This begs the question: why does U.S. hegemony remain so loved? Is it because American exceptionalism— the belief that the United States, with its love of freedom and democracy, will transform the world for the better—is valid?

Or perhaps, have we been brainwashed into believing so?

To answer this question, we do not need to look further than our Claremont bubble. Of Pomona’s admitted Class of 2020, around 14

U S E R

Jun. 12, 1898: red, blue, and yellow flew across Filipino skies for the first time. As Ambrosio Bautista proudly read the Philippine Declaration of Independence, over three hundred years of blood at Spanish hands came to an end.

Six months later, the Philippines—a nation of aquamarine seas, sun-kissed mountains, and warmhearted people—was bought by the United States for twenty million dollars. Even now, a full century later, the Philippines has yet to attain true, absolute freedom.

For many Asian countries that have encountered American intervention, “independence” comes with strings attached. While July 4, 1946 marked the end of physical American rule in the Philippines, American political and socio-cultural hegemony continues to thrive.

Ultimately, this exemplifies the United States’ use of neocolonial-

Japan were used as launchpads for American intervention in the Vietnam and Korean Wars, respectively.

Under the guise of benevolent global security, the United States creates nodal points from which they can enforce their global neocolonialist agenda.

Neocolonialism also manifests in less explicit forms, such as sociocultural supremacy—deference to Western-centric culture at the expense of local customs. A billion dollar skin-whitening industry conditions millions of East and Southeast Asians into thinking that whiteness is synonymous to beauty and success.

A young, brown-skinned Filipina girl gazes at the television, wondering why the mestizo (half-white, half-Filipinx) actors and actresses do not look like her, her mother, or her friends.

English has become synonymous with social capital; an Americanized twang escapes Filipino lips when teenagers open up to speak, often at the expense of over one hundred native dialects. American fast food chains, sports, and clothing brands are large, relentless behemoths that trample on local Filipino businesses.

The United States has built a capitalist empire of Starbucks cups and Steph Curry jerseys, furthering its status as an economic superpower.

Yet in spite of political manipulation and cultural erasure, a study by the Pew Research Center reveals that 92 percent of Filipinos view the United States favorably—the highest worldwide. Among Asian countries, the next highest ratings come from

C A S A

Jolo Labio Columnist

ism to further its status as a global superpower.

One year after so-called Philippine ‘independence,’ the 1947 Military Bases Agreement enabled the United States to maintain twentythree naval settlements within the archipelago. While military bases were eventually phased out in 1991, the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement granted American troops access to Filipino bases. American military control extends beyond the Philippines; currently, the United States holds approximately 800 bases in 70 countries.

Ubiquitous and persistent, American military presence grants the United States undue external influence over a country’s internal affairs, thus weakening its sovereignty. For example, in 2014, a United States Marine murdered Jennifer Laude—a young Filipina transgender woman—in a fit of bigotry and transphobia. However, due to a stipulation in a previous military contract, the Philippines did not have custody over the suspect and had only limited jurisdiction over the crime.

Laude was treated as a secondclass citizen in her own country, whereas her American murderer was afforded special privileges.

Had Laude been cisgender and a United States citizen—and her killer a Filipino officer—the case would have sparked international outrage.

Yet again, the colonizer erases the narratives of the colonized.

More importantly, due to their strategic geopolitical locations, military bases in the Philippines and

SPORTS FEBRUARY 17, 2017

PAGE 9

THE STUDENT LIFE

Sports Calendar

February 17 - February 23

Pomona-Pitzer Friday, February 17th Swim & Dive SCIAC Championships 9:00 a.m., 5:00 p.m.

Women’s Tennis At Redlands 2:00 p.m.

Saturday, February 18th Swim & Dive SCIAC Championships 9:00 a.m., 5:00 p.m.

Men’s Golf SCIAC Tournament #1 At Brookside All Day Track & Field P-P All-Comers Meet 10:30 a.m.

Women’s Water Polo V. CSUN At Citrus College 12:00 p.m.

Women’s Lacrosse At Chapman 1:00 p.m.

Baseball V. Whitworth 2:00 p.m.

Women’s Water Polo V. Asuza-Pacific At Citrus College 3:00 p.m.

Women’s Basketball At Caltech 5:00 p.m.

Men’s Basketball At Caltech 7:00 p.m.

Sunday, February 19th Baseball V. Whitworth 11:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m.

Softball V. Chapman 12:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m.

Tuesday, February 19th Men’s Tennis V. Bates 4:00 p.m.

Women’s Basketball V. Redlands 5:00 p.m.

Men’s Basketball EDIT V. Redlands PICOKR’S 7:00 p.m.

Thursday, February 23rd Women’s Tennis V. Bates 4:00 p.m.

Women’s Lacrosse V. Augustana 7:00 p.m

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Friday, February 17th Swim & Dive SCIAC Championships 9:00 a.m., 5:00 p.m.

Saturday, February 18th Swim & Dive SCIAC Championships 9:00 a.m., 5:00 p.m.

Track & Field P-P All-Comers Meet 10:30 a.m.

Men’s Golf SCIAC Tournament #1 All Day Women’s Tennis V. Cal Lutheran 11:00 a.m.

V. Chapman 2:00 p.m.

Softball V. Linfield 12:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m.

Baseball V. Caltech 1:30 p.m.

Men’s Basketball V. Chapman 7:00 p.m.

Sunday, February 19th Men’s Golf SCIAC Tournament #1 At Brookside All Day

P-P TRACK & FIELD

P-P Sprints Ahead in Opening Meet Blaise Malley

The Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens track and field team opened their 2017 season with a 140-129 win over the Occidental College Tigers. The men’s team won their meet with a total score of 90-45, while the women’s team came up short in an 84-50 loss.

This was the seventh annual “Battle for the Banner” meet between the Sagehens and the Tigers, with P-P edging ahead in the all-time series, four wins to three.

“As a team we worked hard during the offseason to prepare for the beginning of our season,” Cal Neikirk PO ‘19 wrote in an email to TSL. “This work paid off for me and the team.”

Neikirk himself had a very strong individual start to the season, winning the 110-meter hurdles, with teammate Carter Johnson PZ ’18 taking second, as well the 300-meter hurdles (in which P-P claimed the top three spots) and the high jump.

Despite his solid results from the opening meet, Neikirk adds that he hopes to “add more events to my set each meet. This entails improving intra-event efficiency since I’ll be bouncing between more events that are happening simultaneously.”

Overall, the men’s team won a wide variety of events.

Alongside Neikirk’s three wins, the team also saw wins from Andy Reischling PO ’19 in the 3000-meter run, Ethan Hard-

acre PO ’20 in the long jump, Reggie Reed PZ ’17 in the shot put, discus and hammer throw, and Calvin Aylward PO ‘18 in the javelin, among many others.

Although the women’s team lost, the points they gained were nonetheless vital to P-P’s overall team success. The women’s team also had some impressive individual performances. Prisca Diala PO ‘19, won the triple jump, with a distance of 10.53 meters.

“I have a love-hate relationship with jumps, especially triple jump,” she wrote in an email to TSL. “Beginning the season with a win in this event makes me really happy. Like I mentioned before, the mark definitely wasn’t near what I hoped for but I’m more excited about the event with this win.”

The women’s team also experienced success with Abby Gardner PO ’17 in the 3000-meter run, Kaile Sauro PZ ’17 in the long jump, and as a team in the distance medley, in which Helen Guo PO ’20, Katrina Dank PO ’20, Sabrina Wilk PO ’19, and Gardner combined for the tenth fastest time in P-P history.

Both Neikirk and Diala saw hope for their teams this season.

Neikirk wrote that the team is aiming to “at least tie our third place finish at SCIAC’s from last year. This would just mean so much to all of us since being in the top three is a huge accomplishment for a track team as small as ours.”

Diala wrote that she hopes

Kendrick Morris

Los Angeles, the entertainment capital of the world, is adding to its infinite list of venues a lavish home for a well-known yet locally forgotten tenant, the National Football League. This past January, the San Diego Chargers announced their relocation to Los Angeles beginning in the 2017 season with plans for a new stadium in Inglewood.

The proposed stadium will reflect the city’s “bigger than life” mantra with its proximity to Hol-

lywood, record-setting estimated 2.6 billion-dollar price tag, and surrounding collection of gaudy hotels, restaurants, and concert venues. The future world-class stadium will also be shared with the Los Angeles Rams, who returned to the city last year after a two-decade hiatus in St. Louis.

In a city with a knack for glitz and an endless assortment of investor groups, the major question about the success of professional football in LA will not depend on the construction of a spectacular new stadium but rather the fran-

Monday, February 20th Men’s Basketball At Occidental 7:00 p.m.

Tuesday, February 21st Women’s Tennis V. Brandeis 4:00 p.m.

Courtesy of MANICA Architecture

Proposed design of the new L.A. Chargers Football Stadium.

Pomona-Pitzer

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps

Softball Puget Sound 5 P-P 0 P-P 5 Puget Sound 2

Women’s Water Polo St. Francis 10 CMS 7 Princeton 12 CMS 2 CMS 12 Mercyhurst 5 Wagner 16 CMS 3

Men’s Tennis P-P 9 Cal Lutheran 0 P-P 9 Occidental 0

Baseball Whitman 6 CMS 2 Whitman 10 CMS 6 Whitman 8 CMS 4

Baseball Pacific Lutheran 8 P-P 3 Pacific Lutheran 8 P-P 0

Women’s Basketball CMS 65 La Verne 50 CMS 63 Cal Lutheran 58 OT

Women’s Tennis Chapman 0 P-P 9

Men’s Basketball La Verne 75 CMS 68 Cal Lutheran 61 CMS 58

Men’s Basketball P-P 68 Occidental 59

chises’ ability to build a strong fan base.

The first barrier that both teams must overcome is the ironic notion that the NFL, America’s most popular sports league, never really caught on in a city that runs on entertainment. This is likely because college football teams, specifically those of USC and UCLA, are kings in Los Angeles. Both schools, which have filled their halls with celebrities and trophies alike, have dominated the city’s gridiron demands even during the era of the Raiders and the Rams.

Baseball At Caltech 11:00 a.m., 2:00 p.m.

Scores

The track and field season kicks into full gear soon, with both teams continuing their seasons next Saturday, Feb. 18, when P-P hosts the Collegiate All-Comers meet at 10:30 a.m.

LA: The New City of Stadiums

Women’s Golf V. Chapman San Dimas Canyon

Women’s Basketball V. Chapman 5:00 p.m.

Women’s Basketball Whittier 73 P-P 49 Occidental 67 P-P 56

and expects that a number of school records may be broken this season.

“Watching each of the girls, I see not only raw talent but determination and dedication,” Diala wrote.

KENDRICK’S CORNER

Lacrosse EDIT PICOKR’S V. Redlands 7:00 p.m.

Track & Field P-P 140 Occidental 129

Audrey Hector • The Student Life

To add to the challenge, neither the Rams nor Chargers are currently in a good state, as they have struggled over the past few years to have both a winning record and a solidified fan base in their respective cities. An underrated aspect of the teams’ popularity will be the ability of older demographics to rekindle the city’s former relationship with its past NFL teams, especially the Rams.

However, the bottom line is that Los Angeles is getting two below average professional football teams in a city where professional football has never mattered, with the exception of a few good seasons of college football, one of which was led by USC Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Allen.

Until the new stadium is completed, the Chargers will be playing their next season at the StubHub Center and sharing a home with the LA Galaxy soccer team. If the organization cannot fill up the stands, it will be a major disappointment, because the venue will be the smallest stadium in the NFL next season.

The Rams will continue to play in the Coliseum, but as this year proved, they may not even be the most popular football team in their own stadium behind USC. The hope is that the new Inglewood stadium will follow in the footsteps of its predecessors—the Forum, Staples Center, and the Coliseum—by bringing sports to the top of the entertainment world in Los Angeles. However, the addition of a beautiful new stadium to an already stadium-filled city will likely only improve the city’s candidacy for hosting the Olympics.

Perhaps the better news is that the city’s taxpayers will not have to pay for it.

P-P Athlete of the Week CMS Athlete of the Week Men’s Track & Field

Women’s Basketball Quinn Glosniak

Cal Neikirk PO ‘19 Roanoke, Virginia

CM ‘17 Kirkland, Washington

On Saturday, Feb. 11, the P-P men’s track team outpaced the Occidental College Tigers in their opening track meet.

Cal Neikirk PO ‘19 led the team with first place finishes in the 110-meter hurdles, the 300-meter hurdles, and the high jump. He also ran a leg in the winning 4 x 400 meter relay, helping the Sagehens finish the meet with a final score of 140-129 over Occidental. This is only beginning of Neikirk’s season, which looks like it will shape up to be a stellar one for the sophomore.

The CMS Athenas basketball team came out on top with a grueling win against California Lutheran University in overtime, this Wednesday, Feb. 15. Quinn Glosniak CM ‘17 had a double double in this game, playing 35 out of 40 minutes and scoring 10 points and a career-high 16 rebounds. In CMS’ game against La Verne on Feb. 11, Glosniak had 12 rebounds, a quarter of the team’s total. This season, Glosniak has started every game of the Athenas’ 24 and is averaging 5.3 points and 5.8 rebounds, the best averages of her career. Throughout Glosniak’s career, her team has won the SCIAC championship for the past three years and looks to four-peat this year.

SPORTS PAGE 10

FEBRUARY 17, 2017

THE STUDENT LIFE

P-P WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

Despite Improvements, Sagehens Shot Down by Whittier

Melissa Petito & Jo Nordhoff-Beard Sometimes hard work does not quite pay off. The Pomona-Pitzer Sagehens (1-20, 1-12 SCIAC) women’s basketball team learned that the hard way as they battled against the Whittier College Poets (7-15, 1-12 SCIAC) and lost 73-49 on Saturday, Feb. 11. The Sagehens showed both improvement and flashes of consistency throughout the game, but in the end their efforts were not enough.

In the first quarter, the Poets started strong and had an early lead of 14-4. Alaina Woo PO ’17 led the Sagehens in scoring and scored four points later in the quarter to stifle the Poets’ run and bring the score to 17-10.

The second quarter was a defensive battle. Neither team had great offensive success, but the Poets’ strong defense forced seven Sagehen turnovers in the second quarter and allowed the Poets to extend their lead to 3817 at the half. The Sagehens’ field goal percentage was only 18.2 percent, which, combined with their turnovers, did not set them up for success.

Naomi Baer PO ’19 said that “we worked hard for 40 minutes but just couldn’t focus the energy in a productive direction.”

The third quarter was where the Sagehens shone. They outscored the Poets 20-18, made

43.8 percent of their shots, outrebounded the Poets 11-5, and cut down the lead to 19 points heading into the fourth quarter.

Anita Romero PZ ’19 had five points and Keilani Ikehara PZ ’19 added three rebounds off the bench.

“We work really hard in practice and definitely could have come out stronger against Whittier,” Woo said. “Our goal has just been to improve game to game, and moving forward we are hoping to continue to do that.”

This year, the Sagehens are in a rebuilding year because new coach Jill Pace is trying to find a rhythm and a few players decided not to return. However, Woo said that the team culture has been strong this year.

“Our coaches push us in practice, and we really support each other on and off the court. Being a part of that as a senior has been really special,” she said.

Even though the Sagehens had a strong showing in the third quarter, the Poets’ lead was already too far ahead for them to catch up. Woo had 10 points in the fourth quarter, but the Poets shot 61.5 percent from the field and outscored them 17-12.

The Sagehens faced the Occidental College Tigers on the road on Wednesday, Feb. 15, and lost 67-56. They next play at California Institute of Technology on Saturday, Feb. 18.

Meghan Joyce • The Student Life

Pomona-Pitzer guard Keilani Ikehara PO ‘19 dribbles across the court in their game against Whittier on Feb. 11. The Sagehens lost the game 73-49.

CMS BASEBALL

Stags Start Strong, Falter in Final Games

Alyssa Alfonso • The Student Life

Freshman pitcher Cameron Cash CM ‘20 hurls a pitch at the top of the sixth.

Jack Carroll The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps baseball team (1-3) took to the field for the first time in the 2017 season this past weekend. Their opening series against Whitman College from Walla Walla, Washington, was a set of four home games.

Although they got off to a good start by winning the first game, the overall results were disappointing as they dropped the last three.

The Stags did not lack for offense, as they scored a combined total of 19 runs. They allowed 26, however, which was simply too much. In each of their three losses, they were outscored by four runs.

Their first game was a victory nonetheless, and it broke a decade-long streak of opening-game losses. Pitcher Sam Baughman CM ‘17 started the first game and went five innings strong, giving up two runs. When he left the game, CMS was up 4-2, but reliever Cameron Cash CM ‘20 surrendered the three runs that put Whitman ahead by the end of the eighth inning.

CMS tied the game in the bottom of the ninth when Henri Levenson CM ‘20 advanced home on a wild pitch by Whitman. The inning was a series of errors and miscues

by Whitman, and the Stags were probably considering themselves lucky to push the game into extras.

In the top half of the 10th inning, Whitman retook the lead with an unearned run off the Stags’ third pitcher of the game, John O’Malley CM ‘18. Facing a situation where they needed to score, the Stags delivered and walked off on a Levenson single that brought Kevin Nakahara HM ‘20 home. It was quite the first game for firstyears Levenson, Nakahara and Emmett Covello CM ‘20, as they combined for four runs and five RBIs. The result of the second game of the Saturday doubleheader was not so inspiring for the team and seemed to indicate what would come for the rest of the weekend.

The final score of this shortened game was 6-2 and the Stags never really had a chance. They did not score either of their runs until the bottom of the final inning when they were already losing 6-0.

Starting pitcher Brandon Louie CM ‘20 suffered the first loss of his career in a five-inning outing.

Lefty Daniel Enzmango CM ‘18 finished the game in relief with a decent showing.

Hoping they could finish the weekend strong on Sunday, the Stags were to be disappointed as they suffered two more losses. Things looked good halfway through the third game of the series, but their one-run lead was

incinerated by the seven runs Whitman put up in the 5th and 6th innings. The two runs that Whitman added in the top of the eighth made the two CMS added in the bottom useless. Pitchers Nick DeGallier CM ‘19, Konnor Kwok CM ‘20, and Jacob McGowan CM ‘18 all gave up runs in the loss.

The final game was similarly frustrating. Alex Clemens CM ‘18, Chase Eller CM ‘18, and Evan Opperman CM ‘17 did their part to match Whitman’s four runs through five but the Stags unraveled late again. Whitman took a 5-4 lead when they scored in the sixth and put CMS away with three runs in the seventh.

Looking further into the season, CMS Coach Walkenbach is confident that the team will experience success.

“We just need game experience,” Walkenbach said. “We have a lot of young players getting significant playing time and they need a chance to get themselves settled. As the weeks go on in the spring, I expect them to become more comfortable and confident as they get innings and at-bats under their belts.”

The players will get another chance to prove themselves in their upcoming series against California Institute of Technology this weekend.