Vol. CXXX, No. 3

THE STUDENT

LIFE

The Student Newspaper of the Claremont Colleges Since 1889 CLAREMONT, CA

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 2018

VOL. CXXX NO. 3

NEWS

Game, Set, Match:

Sagehens’ Season Off To Smashing Start

CMS Men’s Track Banned From First Three Meets Of The Season Laney Pope

Pomona’s longtime Dean of Students Miriam Feldblum has left the college to lead the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration.

NEWS

A pilot program for bike sharing company ofo will be launching at the 5Cs, but members of Pomona College’s Green Bikes have concerns about the program. Read more on page 2.

LIFE AND STYLE

Love is in the newspaper!

Check out our Valentine’s Day spread for Claremont love stories, the sex column, and an upcoming art event on page 6.

OPINIONS

Chloe Ortiz • The Student Life

Jack Bernstein PO ’21 and Avery Bicks PO ’20 celebrate a hard-fought point during their doubles match against Cypress College Feb. 10.

See page 11

Pomona Dean Of Students Miriam Feldblum Departs After Decade Of Service Opinions columnist Aalia Thomas PO ’21 questions traditional advice on how to quit technology and monitor one’s time. Read more on page 10.

SPORTS

Danny Klain CM ’20 discusses the enjoyment he’s found in the more obscure sports in the 2018 Winter Olympics. Read more on page 12.

Lauren Koenig & Marc Rod Pomona College’s longtime Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Miriam Feldblum has left the college to become Executive Director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration, President G. Gabrielle Starr announced in an email to Pomona students Tuesday morning.

Feldblum, who had served as vice president and dean since 2007, was on sabbatical this semester to study immigration policy issues at New America, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank. She previously took a sabbatical in spring 2016 to work as a visiting fellow at the Migration Policy Institute.

The Presidents’ Alliance is a new initiative that advocates for the legislative interests of immigrant, undocumented, and international students on college campuses. Starr recently joined the alliance, along with

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former Pomona President David Oxtoby, the co-chair of the alliance’s steering committee.

“When President [Emeritus] Oxtoby asked me to join the initiative to launch the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration … this past fall, it was such an exceptional and meaningful opportunity,” Feldblum wrote in an email to TSL. She credits her background as an immigration scholar and her work on campus supporting students and partnering with other campuses as her motivations for joining the initiative.

“For so many, this past year tremendously increased the urgency to act and support immigrant, undocumented, and international students, families, faculty, staff not just at Pomona or the Claremont Colleges, but also nationally ... and it was important for me to commit to this work for a longer term than just the sabbatical,” she wrote.

The alliance chose well in

See DEAN page 3

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Nearly A Year After Student Protests, HMC Curriculum Review Chugs Along Miranda Sheridan Harvey Mudd College’s core curriculum restructuring project took another step forward when HMC published internal and external reports studying the core and recommending changes late last year.

These reports are the latest step in a process begun in March 2017, when TSL published a leaked report by researchers from Wabash College on Mudd’s core and student morale as a result of the school’s intensive workload and campus climate.

The report’s contents — which included quotes from students who felt so overwhelmed with homework that they didn’t have time for basic tasks like eating, sleeping, and showering — sparked multiple protests, causing HMC to cancel classes for two days.

Since then, the school has striven to restructure core in a way that will continue to challenge its students while prioritizing mental health, and has worked to provide additional

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funding to diversity and mental health programs.

Last semester, Mudd also received $750,000 in grant and award money, and plans to spend at least part on diversity programs and revising HMC’s rigorous core curriculum, President Maria Klawe told TSL in November 2017.

A self-study report on HMC’s academic and student life published in November 2017 found that the core curriculum was excessively strenuous for students, and said that “except for the technical elective, HMC’s Core requires more study in each subject than either [the California Institute of Technology] or [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology].”

Similarly, an external review team consisting of professors and deans from a variety of universities was formed to study HMC’s core. This external review team published a report in December 2017 recommending several different ways to handle the rigor expected of the college and the

See REVIEW page 2

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The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men’s track team has been banned from the first three meets of the season, following an investigation into alleged hazing activities the night of Feb. 3, including a naked scavenger hunt and an alleged assault on a Pomona College student.

CMS athletic director Terrance Tumey delivered the news in an email to Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College students Monday. Tumey also announced that some members of the women’s team, who allegedly participated in separate hazing incidents, are barred from participating in one meet.

Both the men’s and women’s teams were suspended Feb. 5 while the athletic department investigated the incident. The women’s team suspension was lifted Feb. 8, while the men’s suspension remained in place until Monday.

Even though the suspensions have been lifted, members of the teams may also have violated conduct policies at CMC, HMC, and Scripps, which are each investigating the situation. The students’ actions “may result in disciplinary and educational sanctions for individuals as warranted” from their home schools, Tumey wrote.

The Claremont Police Department is also still investigating the incident.

The men and some women will miss the Pomona-Pitzer All Comers meet Feb. 17, and the men will also be barred from CMS’ own Rossi Relays Feb. 24 and the SCIAC multi-dual meet March 3. The men’s season will resume March 10 at the Occidental Distance and Sprint Carnival.

The incidents under investigation “involved groups of students engaging in actions across the campuses such as entering locked buildings and pools after hours, public indecency, theft, and an alleged physical altercation, involving both Campus Safety and the Claremont Police Department,” HMC Dean of Students Jon Jacobsen wrote in an email to HMC students.

These incidents were part of “scavenger hunt” initiation events, sources familiar with the CMS track teams said. For the men’s team, these activities allegedly involved entering Pomona’s Rains Center while naked and stealing a photo, as well as allegedly assaulting a student employee who attempted to stop them. The student declined to comment.

Dylan Elliott PO ’21 said he and his roommate were walking toward Frary Dining Hall Feb. 3 when they saw a group of naked men on Sixth Street, which is next to Rains, with a photo in hand. They were accompanied by fully-clothed older-looking students who seemed to be supervising them, he said.

When Elliott noticed one of the men holding the photo, he said he yelled “Hey, where did you get that?” but the group of students ran away.

Elliott said he recognized the photo as one that usually hangs on the wall at Rains, so he went inside to see what had happened. There, he said he saw the on-duty Rains monitor being interviewed by Campus Safety.

CPD police logs of the incident said “one of the subjects attacked another student ... and held [him] down when he attempted to stop them” from stealing the photo.

A Campus Safety officer took Elliott’s statement, he said, and showed him stills of security footage of naked men at CMC’s Cube from earlier that night to confirm if it was the same group of men.

Elliott said he thought it was, and a Snapchat video obtained by TSL shows the presence of naked men in the Cube. This coincides with a Campus Safety report of indecent exposure near the Kravis Center at 8:32 p.m.

Another Snapchat video obtained

by TSL shows multiple shirtless CMS athletes running onstage at the International Championship of Collegiate A Cappella at Bridges Auditorium the same night. The incident is also believed to be part of the men’s initiation scavenger hunt, according to reports from multiple sources familiar with the team.

The CMS women engaged in

See CMS page 2

NEWS................................1 LIFE & STYLE.....................4 OPINIONS........................8 SPORTS...........................11

NEWS PAGE 2

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

THE STUDENT LIFE

CMS: Alumni Detail Hazing Rituals Continued from Page 1 similar initiation events, according to a source familiar with the women’s team, including running naked in dorms at each of the 5Cs, taking body shots off of random people, and skinny dipping in fountains.

The CMS Hazing Policy prohibits “any act associated with being initiated into [a CMS team]” that would have the effect of “humiliating, intimidating or demeaning the individual or endangering the mental or physical health of the individual.”

The policy gives examples of hazing, including “forcing a student into a violation of the law or College policy such as indecent exposure, theft, or trespassing.”

Although members of the track team have been tight-lipped about the suspension, some alumni confirmed the tradition

of an initiation scavenger hunt.

The hunt is a “completely voluntary” annual tradition at the beginning of the season, according to Garrett Ryan CM ’17, a CMS track alumnus.

“We’ve had interactions with Campus Security before [during the scavenger hunt],” Ryan said, adding that the team has never before faced any serious consequences from the authorities.

Ryan was visiting Claremont Feb. 3 and met up with his former teammates late in the night after the incident at Rains, he said.

The team did not know about the suspension until the coming week, but Ryan said that “a majority” of his former teammates thought their stunt in Rains had gone too far.

“It is supposed to be a night of fun, as long as you’re not harming anybody else,” he said.

However, Ryan, along with

several other CMS track alumni, found it hard to believe that their former teammates would physically assault someone.

“That night, they told me the whole story, and at no point did they mention [the assault],” he said. “None of them seem like the type to assault someone else.”

Another CMS men’s track alumnus who wished to remain anonymous said he never participated in initiation himself but that it was “pretty highly encouraged” and “definitely more encouraged for freshmen.”

“Most of the time [initiation] doesn’t really cause any issues, but people are aware that it is happening. I don’t think it is any secret that it goes on and no one has ever really complained,” the alumnus said.

REVIEW: No Final Results Yet Continued from Page 1 students’ mental duress.

The report recommended restructuring core “from the ground up” to effect persistent change. It advocated for the formation of a group consisting of alumni, faculty, and students to experiment with the core curriculum and find the best route for eliminating stress while maintaining Mudd’s prestige.

This would allow for an “opportunity to ask how learning in the core curriculum is intricately tied to students’ social and emotional development,” according to the report.

Dean of the Faculty Lisa Sullivan wrote in an email to TSL that no new curriculum has been put in place yet, and specific plans for changes to the curriculum have not yet been announced. A review team is still studying the external report.

However, “all constituencies on campus including students felt good about the process leading up to our review. The team that managed it

worked hard to be inclusive and transparent,” Sullivan wrote.

Sullivan added that a multi-constituency implementation committee will be named soon.

Faculty Executive Committee chair Patrick Little also emphasized the transparency of the core review process, and said he hopes for continued transparency on the new committee Sullivan mentioned.

Little said that HMC students expect a rigorous academic experience, but a middle ground is necessary.

“As some of our alumni noted in their extensive comments, if you focus entirely on those high pressure, demanding environments, you may experience diminishing returns, needless exhaustion, and can even corrode students’ intellectual curiosity, love of learning, and ability to reflect on what is being learned,” he said.

Student opinions on the core curriculum and review vary.

“I don’t have any specific changes that I can think of that would im-

prove Core but I definitely very much appreciate the fact that they are making sure that Core is meeting the needs of the students that are coming through, cause I think that’s really important,” said Giselle Sarate HM ’20.

Sarate also said, however, that she believes that the core is valuable.

“I really did enjoy the chance to get a general sense of a lot of different subjects, which I think will help me become a stronger computer scientist, because that’s my major,” she added.

In a September interview with TSL, Little emphasized the importance of pushing the process forward quickly.

“We have to really keep the pressure on ourselves to be able to make it so that we don’t just say, ‘Oh, well, we’ll fix this and it’ll take six years,’” he said at the time. “That means that several classes came through and never saw a thing.”

In Memoriam: Professor Arden Reed Angela Tran Arden Reed, a Pomona College English professor, died at his home from an aggressive form of cancer Dec. 20, 2017. His educational and personal impact on the literary field and his students will be missed by many.

Reed earned his Bachelor of Arts in English from Wesleyan University in 1972, and his master ’s and doctoral degrees in comparative literature from Johns Hopkins University. He began his pedagogy as a lecturer at Johns Hopkins, then became an assistant professor at Wayne State University. He joined Pomona as an assistant professor in 1979, and was named the Arthur M. Dole and Fanny M. Dole Professor of English in 2004.

After receiving a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship in 2006, Reed began pursuing research on tableaux vivants, which provoked deep questions about imitational art and attentive artistic judgment. The results of his research became the focal point of his most acclaimed book, “Slow Art: The Experience of Looking, Sacred Images to James Turrell,” published in summer 2017.

“It always seemed perfect to me that … Reed’s name was ‘Arden,’ because it sounds like ‘ardent’ — and no other single word better captures his spirit, and his gift to those of us who loved him,” wrote Kevin Dettmar, chair of Pomona’s English department, in an email to TSL. Reed was not only an exceptional scholar, but an excellent mentor and teacher, according to his students. As an unusually social and gregarious person, Reed fostered an academic environment where all of his students would be heard and their work appreciated. His intellectual intensity was concentrated on meticulously examining literature and asking innovative questions.

Bike Share Company To Launch 5C Pilot Program Erin Slichter Pomona College has invited bike sharing company ofo to the 5Cs for a two-week pilot program beginning Feb. 21, but staff at Pomona’s existing free bike rental shop, Green Bikes, have concerns about the program and the company’s motivations.

Ofo is a Beijing-based company that lets users rent its dockless bikes through an app and park them anywhere. The bikes include builtin steel locking mechanisms and GPS trackers to prevent theft. Ofo currently has more than 10 million bikes in over 200 cities globally.

Pomona’s assistant director of sustainability, Alexis Reyes, wrote in an email to TSL that during the pilot, ofo bikes will be free to use for 5C students, faculty, and staff. If ofo stays at the 5Cs after the pilot, it will charge $70 for a yearly plan — discounted to $35 a year for lowincome students, as determined by ofo — or $0.50 an hour. These prices are 50 percent less than ofo’s standard rates.

Reyes said the dockless feature of ofo bikes — meaning they can be locked without being placed on a rack — makes them very convenient.

“Someone who would rather have a bike wherever they need it on campus, only ride a bike one way, or doesn’t want responsibility for the bike year round could ben-

efit from ofo,” she wrote, adding that ofo could also benefit faculty and staff who live close by, as an alternative to driving.

Reyes said ofo gave a presentation at a 5C facilities meeting in November, but Pomona is ultimately leading the initiative. Christopher Waugh, Pomona’s associate dean of students and dean of campus life, wrote in an email to TSL that an ofo representative gave a presentation to ASPC Jan. 26. to foster support for the program, though it was already approved by the college.

If ofo stays at the 5Cs beyond the pilot program, it will give 10 percent of revenue generated back to Pomona to develop bike infrastructure on campus, Reyes added.

ASPC President Maria Vides PO ’18 said ofo may hire students as mechanics.

“That way we don’t only have this influx of money in one direction, but we also have jobs created on campus,” she said.

Vides said ofo wants to partner with Green Bikes by training staff to fix their bikes. However, many student employees at Green Bikes aren’t happy about the proposed partnership.

“We wouldn’t be fixing ofo’s bikes,” said Remy Rossi PO ’19, a Green Bikes manager.

Mechanic Dale Macauley PO ’20 said the colleges need more bike racks, not more bikes.

“A lot of our bikes just need

parts and can still be in service for a long time,” said Noah Levine PO ’18, another mechanic. “It just seems odd from a sustainability standpoint to bring all these new bikes.”

Green Bikes staff heard about ofo’s impending arrival at the 5Cs in a Jan. 25 email from Reyes, their supervisor, and met with Reyes about it Feb. 9. Still, Macauley said many staffers felt excluded from the discussion about the partnership with ofo.

“It was not really a question of ‘if,’ but kind of like, ‘when,’” Macauley said. “It’s indicative of the larger issue of the administration making unilateral decisions ... without even consulting students or asking them what their needs are.”

Ofo runs contrary to the bike culture on campus, Macauley said. “[Green Bikes] is really by students, for students,” he said.

Rossi agreed, and said having a bike company on campus would disrupt the 5Cs’ current bike atmosphere.

“I think throwing ofo into the mix would corporatize that and take away a lot of what we think is really, really good about biking here,” he said.

Levine also expressed concern about the overt branding on ofo’s bikes — they are painted bright yellow, with ofo’s logo printed on the side — and skepticism about the company’s motivations.

“There’s something about having a campus overrun with bikes that are advertising a brand that seems sort of antithetical to what the college campus is all about,” he said. “[Ofo] aims to use the 5Cs as a launching pad to spread the service throughout [Claremont and the surrounding area]. We’re concerned about being instrumentalized as part of this.”

Other students said they had concerns about ofo’s business practices in general.

“This isn’t just a campus issue,” said Josefina Modest PO ’19, another Green Bikes mechanic.

“This company is trying to come into the U.S. as a whole. … A large way that they’re trying to do that is through circumventing the local government and going through campuses.”

Some students, however, see some utility in the ofo program.

Efrain Gonzalez PO ’20 said he wouldn’t use a bike share program like ofo regularly but would make use of it for longer trips.

“That would be really convenient,” he said. “[I would use it] for my further classes or just dining halls.”

Ofo is part of larger wave of bike sharing companies launching at college campuses in the U.S., including Zagster at Pennsylvania State University and Spin and Limebike at Duke University.

Sophie Reingold • The Student Life

Courtesy of Pomona College

Arthur M. Doyle and Fanny M. Doyle Professor of English Arden Deen died in his home Dec. 20 from an aggressive form of cancer.

“He was really good at creating a community where quiet people were excited to speak up and us louder people learned how to listen better,” wrote Emma Silverman PO ’19, one of Reed’s students, in a message to TSL. Silverman said she once wrote a literary analysis paper on a book, which Reed sent to the author, who then read and responded to Silverman. Reed’s mentorship positively impacted her academic and personal journeys because he always tried to apply literature to life.

“I’m someone who thinks and talks very quickly, and Arden taught me to slow down. I learned how to close read passages in his class, but I also learned to be more deliberate in general,” Silverman said.

His office would often have three or four students outside in the hallway, waiting to speak to Reed. However, he would never rush through a conversation with

the student he was engaging with.

For Reed, his attentiveness to detail and passion for literature overpowered the time and space he was in.

“When he was in this kind of a conversation — with a student, with a colleague, with a visiting speaker — the rest of the room, the rest of the world, just sort of faded away,” Dettmar said. “For that reason, he was often late to our visiting speakers’ presentations; he had been engaged in conversation with a student in his office, and either lost time or, I think more likely, just didn’t care what time it was.”

Professor Reed will be greatly missed by those who knew him.

“I think what I miss the most is just how much he belonged here,” Silverman said. “Arden being in Crookshanks made sense, and it made the building feel more comforting. You could tell he loved his job and his students, but also that he loved Pomona.”

Pitzer Senate Proposes Constitutional Amendment To Expand Executive Branch Sophia Sun The Pitzer Student Senate voted Feb. 11 to propose a constitutional amendment that would expand the current executive branch from five to 10 members. The amendment will now be put to the Pitzer student body at large, which must ratify it to make it official.

The amendment would reduce the workload of the current members of the executive board and distribute duties more evenly, Senate secretary Kamyab Mashian PZ ’19 said.

Currently, there are five members on the executive board — president, vice president, secretary, community secretary, and treasurer, who are “charged with both executive and bureaucratic responsibilities,” Mashian said.

The amendment would keep the executive board at five members but change the positions that comprise it, and add a new five-member cabinet to fulfill more bureaucratic roles.

Together, the executive board and cabinet would form the executive branch.

“The new executive board would be responsible mostly for oversight, leadership, and long-term planning on Student Senate, while the cabinet would handle many of the day-today bureaucratic concerns,” Mashian said.

Under the new structure, the executive board would include the president, vice president of external affairs, vice president of internal affairs, vice president of finance, and vice president of student engagement. The cabinet would be made up of a treasurer, internal secretary, secretary of student organizations, secretary of events, and secretary of diversity.

The five executive board positions would be elected by students each spring. The current executive board would then nominate the treasurer, internal secretary, and secretary of student organizations, and the nominees would be confirmed by the current senate. The newly-elected executive board would nominate the secretary of events, who would be confirmed by the current events board. The secretary of diversity would be appointed in accordance with the identity board bylaws.

The current lack of oversight positions on the executive board is an issue for Senate, said Sim-

one Bishara PZ ’18, the committee liaison.

“I think the current issue with the current treasurer position is that you don’t have anybody looking at large trends and you don’t have anyone looking at the oversight of the process,” she said. “You have one person typing numbers into Venmo at 2 a.m. and hoping for the best. [If the amendment passes], you have a position dedicated to [examining the division of spending among student organizations and other projects].”

The amendment will also ease the executive board’s intensive workload, according to Christopher Eskilson PZ ’18, a student senator and co-author of the amendment.

“In my four years as a student, I’ve seen executive board members always lack support in their positions and undergo the same burnout, particularly the treasurer,” Eskilson wrote in a message to TSL. “The new division of labor will allow for more effective, more efficient, and more innovative leadership at senate with manageable, defined duties.”

Reducing the workload per student will “finally allow the executive board to innovate and think creatively to serve the student body rather than stressfully just trying to keep senate afloat,” added junior class president Shivani Kavuluru PZ ’19, another one of the bill’s co-authors.

Now that the Senate has approved the amendment, the student body has the option to ratify or deny it in a referendum, which will likely take place during the coming week, according to Mashian.

“I think it’s a good idea to expand the central leadership to include more voices,” Daisy Chaudruc PZ ’21 said. “Additionally, the Student Senate is very involved with on-campus organizations and expanding the executive board will help the efficiency of things like reimbursements because more people can do the work.”

If it is approved by students, the amendment will take effect starting next academic year, and will not change the executive board currently in office.

The Senate initially encount e re d d i ff i c u l t y p a s s i n g t h e amendment, as the requisite number of senators were not present to vote on it at the Feb. 4 meeting.

Voting was delayed to the Feb. 11 meeting, when it passed with near-unanimous approval.

NEWS FEBRUARY 16, 2018

THE STUDENT LIFE

HMC Peer Academic Liaisons Given Housing Pre-Placement Despite Student Criticism Jaimie Ding Some students at Harvey Mudd College were left feeling disgruntled after Associate Dean of Academic Affairs Lori Bassman decided to give housing pre-placement to Peer Academic Liaisons despite widespread student disapproval.

PALs offer “peer-to-peer support regarding academic life and [help] connect students with academic resources at HMC and beyond,” according to the Division of Student Affairs resource guide.

Bassman sent an email to the HMC student body to explain her decision.

“I requested pre-placement for PALs so they can participate in training in parallel with the other student [residential] leaders and so they can have full connection and trust built with the first-year students that they support,” Bassman wrote in her email. “Prior and current experience has made it clear how important it is for PALs to live in the dorms where they do their work.”

ASHMC was asked to help determine how PALs would be pre-placed, after which dorm presidents were instructed to gather feedback from students.

When they reported back, it was clear that a large portion of the student body was against the move, according to Maggie Gilbert HM ’19, an East Dorm president. The pre-placement program was implemented anyway, leaving some students dissatisfied.

“It seems like [the Division of Student Affairs] went to ASHMC and told them what would be happening, and that’s kind of it,” Luis Viornery HM ’18 said. “I feel [the way PAL pre-placement was handled] undermines the idea of real shared governance

or students’ ability to understand their own needs.”

However, Bassman wrote in an email to TSL that this was not a decision for students to make.

“While ASHMC does not set Academic Affairs policies, I certainly wanted to do all I could to minimize the effect on room draw while still gaining the support for students that is really needed and valued, and I appreciated the input,” Bassman wrote.

Some students said they recognized that Bassman was not obligated to abide by the results of student feedback on this issue.

“In my opinion, this is not a decision that they had to come to the students on, and I appreciate that they did,” Gilbert said.

“Of course I think it’s a little bit unfortunate that we thought we were getting a choice in the process as a whole when we weren’t, but I don’t think it was … ‘You get a choice, we said no, and they said well it’s happening anyways.’”

Bassman responded to students’ concerns by decreasing the number of PALs from 19 to 13 in order to take fewer rooms away from room draw, soliciting feedback from proctors in the PAL selection process, and deciding to treat next year as a trial period for PAL pre-placement.

“It was ... recognized that many students were unhappy with the general idea, but the decision was to continue as planned since the overall effect would be positive in expanding academic support avenues,” ASHMC Senate Chair Marissa Lee HM ’18 and ASHMC President Lupe MacIntosh HM ’18 wrote in an email addressed to the student body. “Thus, while the changes based on our comments may not have completely [eliminated] concerns, they were intended to mitigate them.”

CMC Lags Behind Other 5Cs In Faculty Diversity Jaimie Ding Despite commitments to diversity laid out in a 2007 statement, Claremont McKenna College has only one black professor: MarieDenise Shelton, professor of modern languages and literature.

“I find [the presence of only one black professor] to be extremely problematic, especially when the school preaches all of these things about being diverse, talking about inclusivity, wanting to be more [open] and accepting to people from various backgrounds,” Robert Cain CM ’21 told TSL. Cain recently wrote an opinion column for The CMC Forum on the topic, in which Shelton said CMC is doing a disservice to its students by not diversifying its faculty.

“Faculty from diverse backgrounds bring a special perspective to the disciplines that they teach, and it seems like the college is denying students access to these different perspectives by not hiring a diverse faculty,” she said to Cain.

Shelton declined TSL’s requests for additional comment.

CMC has the smallest proportion of faculty members of color of any of the 5Cs, at 19.9 percent.

Pitzer College has the highest percentage, 34.5 percent, followed by Pomona College with 33.8 percent, Harvey Mudd College with 25.2 percent, and Scripps College with 25 percent, according to the Common Data Set information for each school.

Regarding black professors in particular, in 2016 — the most recent year for which data from the Integrated Postsecondary Data System (IPEDS) survey was available — Pitzer had four, or 4.6 percent; Scripps had four, or 4.55 percent; Pomona had nine, or 4.25 percent; HMC had three, or 3.03 percent; and CMC had three, or 1.79 percent. Only one of these three — Shelton — remains at CMC. In fall 2015, 3 percent of all full-time faculty at degree-granting postsecondary institutions nationwide were black, according to IPEDS. Meanwhile, 12.3 percent of the U.S. population is black and 9.3 percent of Los Angeles County residents are black, according to the Census Bureau.

CMC is aware of and working to address the lack of diversity in

its faculty, Dean of the Faculty Peter Uvin said.

“New faculty members are hired by academic departments, with support from the dean of the faculty,” Uvin wrote in a statement emailed to TSL. “The college is committed to the 2007 statement on diversity approved by the faculty and board of trustees. Last year, we took stock and observed that over the past decade our efforts have not produced the results we want.”

Uvin wrote that CMC has been working to improve its marketing and recruiting practices for faculty and has provided education to search committees on implicit bias.

According to ASCMC Diversity and Inclusion Chair Maya Love CM ’20, who was quoted in Cain’s column, diversifying the faculty is a difficult prospect.

“It’s tricky because the process of hiring more teachers requires a lot of resources and organization behind the scenes,” Love told Cain. “I think where we can improve as a community is linking the dialogue between what administration [wants to see] and what students want to see. Having students in the conversation for hiring and the courses offered on campus can only add to the success of a new or evolving program.”

Cain said he believes that factors across CMC contribute to its hiring trends.

“I don’t think any one person is solely responsible for the lack of black professors. I would just say it’s a collective failure on the institution’s part,” he told TSL. CMC’s 2007 diversity statement, posted on its diversity and inclusion web page, says “the College should recruit a faculty of increased balance and diversity of gender, race, ethnicity, and age.”

Uvin urged students to be a part of the process to increase faculty diversity.

“Please attend the job talks of new hire candidates, speak with department chairs, and also consider working in academia,” he wrote. “It is imperative to increase the pool of talented diverse scholars. That said, our work has just begun. A lot more remains to be done. The faculty and I are very interested in hearing everyone’s voices; keep talking to us.”

Historically, there has been pushback whenever a new group received housing preplacement due to the competitive housing draw at HMC, according to Gilbert. Pre-placement makes it more difficult for rising juniors and seniors to get singles in the dorms in which they want to live.

For example, although mentors now play significant roles at HMC, “I know that [when] mentors started getting preplaced, there was pushback against that,” Gilbert said.

The decision to pre-place PALs was especially criticized because many students do not see their PALs as an important part of their support network at HMC. “I only actually spoke with my PALs for PAL purposes twice this past semester, two meetings that we were required to have with them,” Aely Aro HM ’21 said.

Some current PALs believe pre-placement will help them be more effective. Currently, some PALs do not live in the same dorm as the students they are supporting.

Jenny Lee HM ’18, a PAL, said she believes the change would “make the PALs more effective in terms of communication between the [Residential] Life team, which includes the proctors and mentors of the dorm, and coordinating with them to make events for the freshman.”

B a s s m a n w ro t e t h a t s h e plans to expand the PAL role to include helping students foster good academic habits and connect with resources, planning dorm-specific events on academic topics, and supporting students through academic placement tests during New Student Orientation.

PAGE 3

DEAN: Feldblum Oversaw Achievements, Controversies Continued from Page 1 selecting Feldblum as its director, Starr wrote.

“The higher education community is fortunate to have someone of Dean Feldblum’s talent, knowledge, and experience step into the leadership of the Presidents’ Alliance,” she wrote.

Feldblum’s longtime colleague, Associate Dean M. Ricardo Townes, offered high praise for Feldblum. “[Feldblum] brought a tenacity to the job, to her work, that I’ve never seen in another colleague.

This is my 40th year in higher education, and I don’t have a comparison,” Townes said.

In particular, she was available night and day to students by email and was relentless in pushing for projects to advance Pomona and the 5Cs, Townes said.

During her time as Dean of Students, Feldblum instituted and expanded a variety of programs across the 5Cs, including the Draper Center, student cohorts, academic support initiatives, bystander training, access to onand off-campus mental health services, and emergency grant funds for students, according to Starr and Townes.

She also helped bring the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship program to the 5Cs, develop Pomona’s Quest Chapter, expand the Queer Resource Center to become a 7C resource, and establish the Student Disability Resource Center and the EmPOWER center, Starr said.

Feldblum played a significant role in elevating Pomona’s national profile and reputation, Townes said. He praised her for her work supporting undocumented students, which he said was unparalleled by other administrators across the country.

“Her legacy will last a hell of a long time because of some of the outstanding work she put in as a fierce fighter for students, for

Courtesy of Pomona College

Former Dean of Students Miriam Feldblum recently accepted the position of founding executive director of the Presidents’ Alliance on Higher Education and Immigration in Washington D.C., leaving Pomona College after 11 years.

student experience,” Townes said.

The Student Affairs division also faced its share of challenges throughout Feldblum’s tenure, including the controversial hiring and firing of Jonathan Higgins as QRC director last summer and accusations in December 2017 that the Title IX office mishandled sexual assault cases.

Similar accusations of mishandling of sexual assault cases surfaced repeatedly while Feldblum led Student Affairs. Pomona was subject to a complaint to the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights from 11 students in October 2015.

The Student Affairs office has also faced criticism for its handling of mental health issues. Yi Li PO ’16 criticized the Office of Student Affairs’ response to an incident of self-harm, including involuntary

hospitalization, and a ban from on-campus housing.

Townes believes the more controversial incidents during Feldblum’s tenure not detract from her overall positive record, and encouraged people to evaluate her entire legacy, instead of judging it on a few recent issues.

“If you look at the whole body of work, I think it’s a no-brainer that Dean Feldblum’s impact on this community has been profound in a positive way,” he said. “No one can argue with the facts … about the things that she accomplished.”

Starr did not announce Pomona’s plans for the search for Feldblum’s successor. During Feldblum’s sabbatical, Janet Smith Dickerson, a former vice president at Princeton University and Duke University, has been serving as acting dean and vice president.

PZ Students Vote To Buy Geodesic Dome With Senate Fund Amanda Larson Pitzer College students voted to use the Pitzer Senate’s first Student Initiative Fund (SIF) to fund a geodesic dome structure, an ice machine, a swing set, and hammocks, the Senate announced Feb. 2.

The $10,000 initiative fund was created in 2017 to make it easier for Pitzer students, not just student senators, to access the money in Pitzer Senate’s reserve fund, according to Dana Nothnagel PZ ’19, a member of the SIF committee.

Dan Hirsch, the associate dean of students at Pitzer, proposed the SIF after seeing success with a similar idea at Grinnell College, where he previously worked, Nothnagel said. “[The student reserve fund] is for big capital projects — that’s gone towards things like building the talking circle, getting a new fence for the garden,” she said. “In order to access that money you need to write a bill, and you need to know the ins and outs of senate to do that. We thought that this $10,000 pool would make people more interested in spending the money.”

The SIF is funded from the Senate’s reserve fund, made up of leftover funds from previous years’ Student Activities Funds.

The Student Activities Fund is paid for by $135 semesterly student activity fees charged to each student. This year ’s Student Activities Fund totals

$270,000, according to the Senate’s annual budget proposal.

Students ultimately ranked their top choices as a geodesic dome structure for hammocks that would cost $4,950, an ice machine for West Hall that would cost $1,900, an adult swing set that would cost $2,000, and three hammocks costing a total of $180.

Despite the student ballot results, the projects are still tentative pending the submission of more detailed plans by the proposers, wrote Isaiah Kramer PZ ’20, the other member of the SIF committee, in an email to TSL. “The final roster of approved projects should be sent out by the end of this month,” he wrote.

“I can guarantee that the initial results will not come to fruition — results are yet to be finalized.”

If the proposers fail to provide an implementation plan, money from the SIF will be transferred down the ballot to the next ranked projects, Kramer wrote.

Final approvals for the geodesic dome and the ice machine will be determined next week.

The Senate aims to complete all of the initiatives it selects by the end of the semester, if not sooner, Kramer said.

Kramer said the SIF was intended to involve more Pitzer students in spending decisions by allowing them to propose projects.

“Pitzer is a unique institution given the strong hand the student body holds in shaping our campus. I believe that students, through their daily engagement

Domininc Frempong • The Student Life

with our campus, come up with the best ideas to make it better,” he wrote. “Each student pays in $270 to the Student Activities Fund [each year]. ... I believe that Senate has a duty to ensure that students get something in return for every one of the dollars that they put into the SIF.” However, the student body at Pitzer failed to get involved with the SIF to the extent senators had hoped, Nothnagel said.

No members of the Pitzer student body outside of Senate applied to join the SIF committee, of which Nothnagel and Kramer are the only two members.

The committee did, however, receive numerous proposals for projects, which the committee then evaluated for feasibility. “ We w e n t t h r o u g h w i t h

[Hirsch] and just talked through which things are actually feasible and which aren’t,” Nothnagel said. “Some projects had already tried to happen and they failed, other projects were already happening on campus.”

For the projects that were actually determined to be feasible, the SIF committee solicited more detail from the students that had proposed them.

The Senate sent out an SIF ballot with 14 proposed projects, ranging from lights on the volleyball court, to slacklines, to a soundproof music room that the committee determined could be feasible. Nearly 50 percent of Pitzer students voted in the ballot, according to Nothnagel, ranking the projects in terms of desirability.

HMC Surpasses $150 Million Fundraising Goal Jack Carroll Harvey Mudd College announced last month that it had surpassed its fundraising goal of $150 million for its most recent fundraising campaign, which was launched in 2014 and is scheduled to conclude in December.

The campaign is the largest fundraising effort in the school’s 61-year history and the first major effort in 20 years.

Donations came from many sources, including alumni, parents, students, faculty, staff, trustees, foundations, and corporations, according to Vice President for Advancement Dan Macaluso. The contributions of current and past trustees was highest, followed by the alumni

contributions.

“We are incredibly grateful for the overwhelming response from the HMC community to the priorities that we established, as a community, at the onset of this campaign,” Macaluso wrote in an email to TSL. “The generosity and thoughtfulness of so many individuals and organizations has helped us realize many goals that grew out of the college’s strategic vision.”

According to Macaluso, the strategic vision is to improve various aspects of the school for students, including innovation, experiential and interdisciplinary learning, diversity, and community service.

Campaign contributions are slated to go to specific initiatives within the strategic vision, such

as summer research opportunities, scholarships, new faculty positions, and student health and wellness programming.

William Teav HM ’19 said he was glad to see the school campaigned for more funds and hopes to see them used for specific purposes.

“Permanent funding for summer research is something I hope gets accomplished,” he said. “I would also like to see increased support for student services. Last year demonstrated the glaring deficiencies of many student support networks. It is important that we improve these systems in order to ensure all members of our community make it through the rigorous Mudd program.”

In addition to funding programs and services, the new donations so

far have helped support multiple new buildings and renovation projects, including the Shanahan Center for Teaching and Learning, Drinkward Residence Hall, the renovated Engineering Clinic space, and Galileo Auditoria.

While the school is beginning to transition its focus to using the funds, it will still work to gather more contributions before the campaign ends, Macaluso said.

“For Harvey Mudd to continue to remain strong and distinctive, we must continue to build on the success of this campaign,” Macaluso said.

The school hopes additional gifts will enable it to fund a new academic building for computer science, a collaborative makerspace, and a permanent center for entrepreneurship.

LIFE & STYLE PAGE 4

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

THE STUDENT LIFE

The Pitch Perfect Ladies Of 5C A Cappella Group Women’s Blue And White Karen Song The rehearsal began like any hangout between a group of friends. The ladies of Women’s Blue and White, a 5C a cappella group, filed in one by one, hot tea in hand, music sheets in the other. There was a lot of catching up, joking around, and even fruit juggling. The bond between the members was immediately evident.

“The best part about being in a cappella is the community,” said Miranda Mattlin PO ’21, Women’s Blue and White member. “When someone in my group asks me how I’m doing, they really want to know how I’m doing.”

As soon as Kelly Ragsdale PO ’18, president of Women’s Blue and White, called the rehearsal to begin, everyone shifted to their game face — and like clockwork — the warmup began. There was no tuning or note-matching needed.

Their voices complimented each other beautifully, the resulting sound incredibly harmonious.

After warmups, the group began planning for upcoming events, most notably their performance during Family Weekend (Feb. 1618). They decided on a repertoire that combined some of their classics from past years and a few new arrangements of modern songs.

Even in the midst of their discussion, the environment was highly laid back. The singers made jokes and occasionally burst into song.

Naturally forming a circle, Women’s Blue and White began to practice their first song, “The Love Club” by Lorde — a signature for the group, who had already performed the song at multiple

performances. It sounded flawless to me as I sat in the corner of the room. But even then, members were discussing which parts of the singing to fix, determined to perfect their sound.

“Everybody here is so passionate about music,” Ragsdale said.

“It’s awesome because we get to share that passion with so many people.”

When it came time to do a practice performance, the singers gathered around me and two other members who were seated in the audience. Musical Director Lilly Sterenberg PZ ’20 soloed in an upbeat performance of “Be the One” by Dua Lipa.

The arrangement was powerful, full of ups and downs in tempo and energy, and the melodies bounced perfectly off the walls. It was a completely different feeling from when I heard Women’s Blue and White at Southern California A Cappella Music Festival (SCAMFest) last semester. The auditory experience of a capella in a small enclosed space eliminated any concerns about losing any sound in a large auditorium.

The group concluded the rehearsal by breaking off into sections and practicing their individual parts. It was all routine. There was no “horizontal running,” no wrestling, nor any other shenanigans that I had seen in “Pitch Perfect,” the popular comedy about a women’s a cappella group.

Members of Women’s Blue and White also agreed that the general public’s view of a female a cappella group was often exaggerated and extremely different from the reality — at least from knowing their group.

Luke Meares • The Student Life

Megan Chang PO ’21, Marina Romero PZ ’20, and Lindsay Chu PO ’21 of the Women’s Blue and White acapella group rehearse a repertoire that combines some of their classics from past years as well as new arrangements of modern songs.

“Some think that the environment would be catty or people would be hostile about solos, but it’s the opposite,” Megan Chang PO ’21 said. “Everyone is extremely nice, and all decisions are made very democratically.”

Chang also addressed the mis-

conception about needing male vocals in order to have a broad music selection.

“It’s true we don’t have a men’s section, but all the songs we choose don’t require male vocalists, and we also perform songs that exist in much higher regis-

Active Assailant Training Teaches Students How To ‘Not Get Dead’

Jojo Sanders • The Student Life

Henrie Watkins from Specialized Safety Services works with Heriberto Gonzalez, PO ’20 and Tiffany Zhou PO ’21 in a practice activity.

adapt directions and things like that for this.”

Schefers now knows to make note of any wheelchair friendly exits, such as ramps or elevators, whenever she enters a room. She said the role-playing was the most helpful.

“You actually felt how it is to almost interact with a shooter and what to do in the different scenarios because after all, what’s in your head and when you actually do it are completely different,” Schefers said.

This training follows a school shooting at Marshall High School in western Kentucky Jan. 23 and a terror attack with a truck near Stuyvesant High School in lower Manhattan Oct. 31. The day after

the training saw another school shooting, this time at Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

Robert Robinson, assistant vice president of facilities and campus services, organized the event because active assailants have “sadly become more prevalent throughout the country.”

The fact that most attacks are over within 10 minutes is one of the most important things Robinson thinks people should know. He also wants students to understand that Hollywood portrays active assailant situations different from real life.

“If you realize someone has been shot and you have about as much time as it takes to empty a two-liter bottle of coke to save

that person’s life, you’re going to react quicker,” Robinson said. “It’s not like the movies where you’re giving a soliloquy while they’re bleeding out. You don’t have that kind of time.”

As for the name of the training, Robinson said he purposefully chose “active assailant” over “active shooter” because people aren’t just using guns to terrorize schools anymore.

“You’re seeing more and more [violence] with knives,” Robinson said. “You’re seeing more and more with vehicles.

It’s any type of incident where there’s an assailant trying to do bodily harm. There are more and more other types of weapons being used.”

like Lorde.

Although I entered this Thursday rehearsal expecting to feel like a voyeur, I left feeling like I had gotten to know a group of friendly, passionate, and hilarious women, whom I hope to get to know even better.

‘Varied Trio’ Makes Music With Bowls and Plates Yijie Wang

Meghan Bobrowsky As school shootings become increasingly more frequent, Pomona College has decided to organize an active assailant training workshop to teach its students and faculty what to do if their lives are threatened.

In the Rose Hills Theatre Feb. 13, Henrie Watkins from Specialized Safety Services shared lifesaving skills, such as when to run, hide, or fight, and how to help someone who is bleeding out.

Watkins also invited the attendees to participate in roleplaying exercises and encouraged them to download the LiveSafe app to use if they’re ever in danger. Thirteen students attended.

Resident Assistant Heriberto Gonzalez PO ’20 brought his dorm residents to the event because active assailant situations can happen everywhere, he said.

“In Claremont, it’s easy to think we’re in this bubble, like ‘oh, it’s not going to happen here,’” Gonzalez said. “But it happens. The more people we can get to know about this stuff, the better.”

The most important thing Gonzalez said he learned was “don’t get dead,” meaning do whatever you need to do to survive.

“If it’s coming down to you and the shooter, you gotta know that you’re the one that’s getting out of there, and nobody else is going to come for you,” Gonzalez said. “You’ve gotta empower yourself to save your life.”

Alida Schefers PO ’21 attended the event to learn what she should do in an active assailant situation as a wheelchair user.

“Most of the instructions on what to do are aimed at able-bodied people because the majority of the population is able-bodied,” Schefers said. “But since I knew there would be an expert here, he would know exactly how to

ters,” Chang said.

The music selection was definitely catered to the range of strong female vocalists. All of the songs that they had performed thus far were modern pop or indie songs sung by female groups like The Staves or female solo artists

When the sound of several bowls, cookwares, percussions, piano, and violin combined at “Varied Trio,” a musical performance by three premiere chamber musicians on Sunday at Harvey Mudd College’s Drinkward Recital Hall, the result was a surprisingly beautiful sound.

Assorted percussion instruments littered the stage, but it was the bowls and cookware that caught my eye. Yuri Inoo, a percussion performer, explained that each bowl represents a single note. As she plays, she aims to strike a balance between light and heavy tones.

The group’s name, Varied Trio, was inspired by the famous arrangement of instruments.

“We all particularly love this piece [‘Varied Trio’],” Shalini Vijayan, the violin performer in Varied Trio, said.

The concert opened with Paul Dresher’s piece, “Double Ikat, Part Two.” According to Aron Kallay, piano performer and a member of performance faculty at Pomona College, the melody

of this song was faster than the subsequent three pieces because the performers wanted to find the balance of pace of the whole performance.

Kelley added that there is a limited amount of time for performers to learn an entire new program. “‘Varied Trio’ is a great piece we played 18 times — we knew that we [had] to put it on the program,” Kelley said.

Eric Forston, audience member and percussion student from the University of Redlands, was struck by how all the instrument sounds came together.

“I have seen how many different ways all these three instruments can work together and make things as a whole,” Fortson said.

During the reception, Kallay gave advice to the music students. He recommended that music students practice playing in public, since the sound of a piece can change between the practice room and the stage.

“Students just need to put themselves in different uncomfortable situations [and] play as much as possible,” Kallay said. “That is the quickest way to get better.”

Courtesy of Harvey Mudd College

Superheroes And Students Collide At Claremont Comic Book Community Daisy Ni If you’re interested in popular culture icons and stories of superhuman powers, the Claremont Comic Book Community, C3, may be the club for you.

William Ortiz PZ ’19 started the club in fall of 2015. In C3, he created a setting to talk about comic book lore: comics, TV shows, movies, and events that happened because of comics.

To Ortiz, comic books are not only a hobby but can often serve as social commentary on what is happening in the surrounding world.

“Just looking at how characters have changed and the ac-

tions they take can represent the different ideas people have in the country,” Ortiz said.

As an example, Ortiz brought up the classic hero Superman. “[Superman] is very much an example of the power a common person can have because in the time he was created, there was very much a distrust of authority,” Ortiz said. “There was a kind of paranoia about the different people in power, who could control the lives of regular people.”

C3’s activities, Ortiz elaborated, usually include regular meetings, moving screenings on campus, movie outings in the village, as well as off-campus trips, such as conventions.

As for future activities, Ortiz described a new project that C3 is implementing.

“We’re trying to do something called ‘oneshot,’ where we have lunch meetings discussing specific topics,” Ortiz said.

The meetings would serve mainly for closer examination on the social aspects of comics, he explained.

“Those [lunch meetings] are going to be more on representation of people of different colors, artists and their communities, writers and the way they go through a process, and looking at behind-the-scene aspects of different things in comics,” Ortiz said.

For C3 member Anika Arvanitis PO ’20, the club presents an opportunity to keep updated on events in the comic book world.

“I like when we go to movies together because, afterwards, we can debrief together,” Arvanitis wrote in an email to TSL. “It’s a pretty diverse club, so I get to hear opinions that differ from my own.”

C3 member Lilian Rangel CM ’21 agreed.

“I love when we go off-topic in our discussions and explore a new topic not covered,” Rangel wrote in an email to TSL. “This allows people to teach other members of the cub something new in the comic book community and

can lead to more new and fun discussions.”

In fact, Arvanitis wants to have more C3 discussion-based activities in the future.

“It’s hard, though,” Arvanitis said, “because some of us are more into DC or Marvel or an indie publisher, or some of us are more into TV and movies than physical comic books.”

Sarah Varenhorst PO ’20, public relations representative, explained that the club has become a great stress-reliever. One of the goals of C3 in regards to the future, is to make the club more collaborative and reach out to different people and minority populations on campus,

Varenhorst said.

“It’s also a really great space to explore an interest such as comics … and approach that interest from a more intersectional viewpoint than one could traditionally get from just, like, joining forums online or something,” Varenhorst wrote in an email to TSL. Varenhorst also mentioned that the comic community “is heavily dominated by cishet white men.” To her, C3 stands out as a club that “has a lot of conversations around new characters of different identities.”

Ortiz invites anyone interested in comics to come to the weekly meetings in the Digital Tool Shed in Honnold Mudd Library.

LIFE & STYLE FEBRUARY 16, 2018

PAGE 5

THE STUDENT LIFE

BOOK COLUMN

‘Victoria And Abdul’: Emotional Bond Lacks Emotive Experience Tarini Sipahimalani Shrabani Basu’s book “Victoria and Abdul” is meant to be the story of the unexpected friendship between the Queen Victoria of England and Abdul Karim, a witty Indian commoner, who was appointed the esteemed task of presenting to the Queen a ceremonial Indian coin for her jubilee.

However, Basu’s book — a piece of fiction based on factual details that Basu had supposedly meticulously extracted from Karim’s journals — fails to convey Queen Victoria and Karim’s unexpected bond as personal and genuine.

Her prose is riddled with factual contradictions, which is further exacerbated by an excruciatingly dry writing style. Once upon a time, I would have generously blamed a writer’s dullness on the perspective of third person. But after reading works like “The Depressed Person” by David Foster Wallace, who is able to pull us into the speaker’s irrevocably tumultuous world by providing a vivid, emotionally destructive account through the dreaded third person, I know it is possible.

The way in which Basu told their tale reminded me all too much of a Shakespearean show — a rapid, silent performance of a sequence of events with the intention to speed past the insignificant and instead focus on the imperative. Most of the book is void of any dialogue, internal thought, or reflective descriptions that could

have alluded to Queen Victoria or Abdul’s interior states.

Granted, this is difficult since these individuals are not fictional.

However, since Basu strongly proclaims the deep bond that grounds their relationship without any implicit demonstration within the story, her claims falter.

Focusing on a story like “Victoria and Abdul,” which is rooted in facts, is a difficult task when the story depicts a subjective topic: a relationship. A friendship, which is chiefly rooted in a psychological and emotional foundation, requires the author to delve into both the factual and emotional, rather than just one, while directly claiming the other without any supporting evidence.

Basu misses the fundamental literary principle of “Show, don’t tell” by focusing on content and neglecting the importance of a style that, when nurtured, truly shapes a piece. It’s true that every author, even the most dry, maintains a style — their style is the experience they exude from their voice. However, her voice is not fully conveyed. At least, not enough to believe the story she tells.

Basu’s failure to depict even a single emotional experience makes us question Victoria and Abdul’s friendship and its genuineness, given the sociopolitical circumstances in which it was formed. It is possible their friendship could have been honest, despite high tensions during that time.

However, there are also factual

claims that rebuke their authentic bond. If Basu denies us the right to experience the story, we at least need to feel comforted by the supporting evidence. There are details Basu includes that seem to refute their bond. One such case is when Abdul wants to return to India, while Queen Victoria is eager to maintain his presence in her council.

Another notion that makes Basu’s claim dubious is her notion that Queen Victoria enjoyed Abdul’s company because of the services and knowledge he brought to her, such as learning Urdu, rather than his idiosyncratic character. It frequently appears that Basu’s portrayal of Queen Victoria is of someone who is more motivated out of selfinterest in keeping Abdul around, rather than a genuine connection with Abdul.

With “Victoria and Abdul” being a fictional piece based on real life events, it is indubitably difficult to know the essence of their relationship. We, as readers, can merely make assessments according to the extracted anecdotal accounts we have from Karim’s journals and the historical knowledge aligning with the tale.

But the foundation of any story is that: Tone, style and content should work together in a meaningful way, and if there are contradictions, they should be in the form of consequential contrasts that still work toward a common goal. Unfortunately, Basu’s book seems to fail to achieve this outcome.

HOLLYWOOD COLUMN

Sean Ogami • The Student Life

FILM COLUMN

‘The Cloverfield Paradox’: Or, How Netflix Disguised A Bust As A Hollywood Blockbuster

Tremendously Acted Pain In ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’ Victoria Anders

Courtesy of BagoGames

One of Netflix’s newest original movies, “The Cloverfield Paradox,” was announced after Super Bowl Sunday along with plans for 80 other original movies in 2018.

Ben Havetz “The Cloverfield Paradox”: Or, How Netflix Disguised A Bust As A Hollywood Blockbuster There were two major surprises at the end of the 2018 Super Bowl. The first happened when Tom Brady and the Patriots lost to the eternal underdog, the Philadelphia Eagles. The second was when Netflix announced the release of the 2018 American science fiction horror film “The Cloverfield Paradox,” then released the film only a few hours later.

“The Cloverfield Paradox” follows a team of scientists traveling to outer space in order to solve the earth’s energy crisis, until (big surprise) everything goes horribly wrong. By unveiling the film during one of the largest cultural nights of the year, Netflix suggested ambitions that go beyond that of a standard streaming service: It wants to replace movie theaters in the modern age.

Netflix’s ambitions to replace movie theaters is marked not only by “The Cloverfield Paradox,” but also by the announcement of 80 Netflix original films in 2018. This ambition was likely inspired by the fact that traditional movie theaters are struggling, and services like Netflix seem like their natural replacement. “The Cloverfield Paradox,” a film in a successful mainstream franchise, should have been the perfect debut. The first “Cloverfield,” a found footage film that follows an alien attack in New York City, was a bona fide mainstream hit.

Its sequel “10 Cloverfield Lane,” a contained thriller following a woman attempting to escape a bunker during an unknown di-

saster, was a critically acclaimed success. By having a film in one of traditional movie theaters’ most successful franchises, Netflix took the first step into a new territory.

There’s just one problem: “The Cloverfield Paradox” lacks quality, stemming from the film’s complete lack of a consistent tone. It becomes comedic at all the wrong times, thus obliterating the sense of atmosphere necessary in a horror film. To be fair, some horror films do manage to strategically use humor as a means of amplifying the anticipated horror, but these films also have expertly crafted scripts. However, “The Cloverfield Paradox” does not.

The film’s script is at best uninspired and at worse completely incoherent.

The film isn’t even bad in an interesting way. It is a messy, lazy, forgettable sci-fi that belongs in the “straight to DVD release” category rather than that of a Hollywood blockbuster. This conclusion becomes sadly obvious once you look at how “The Cloverfield Paradox” ended up on Netflix in the first place. The film was originally titled “God Particle” and had no connection to the Cloverfield franchise whatsoever. Soon after the announcement, Paramount Pictures dropped the film from its release schedule and Netflix picked up the scraps. Normally when a film is dropped from its distributor, it is a sign that the film is a mess and does not warrant a theatrical release. Thus, by marketing “The Cloverfield Paradox” as a major release during this year’s Super Bowl, Netflix disguised the disaster of a film production as a major cultural landmark.

However, quality is not what necessarily makes or breaks a major blockbuster (case in point: the “Transformers” series). “The Cloverfield Paradox” might have failed creatively, but with a large enough audience, it could still stand as Netflix’s weapon against traditional theaters for financial reasons. The problem is that we will never know how many people saw “The Cloverfield Paradox” because Netflix doesn’t release ratings for its original content. In other words, the only information the public has depends on what Netflix chooses to disclose. This creates a landscape where Netflix can say that it is the number one opponent of traditional Hollywood films regardless of whether the Netflix film was a legitimate financial success.

The lack of traditional financial barometers of success for Netflix original films is representative of Netflix’s unconventional treatment of profitability as a whole. Netflix is not a profitable company, and that does not matter. Instead, Netflix is focused on profiting off of cultural capital as a means of eventually becoming the universal home for media. In this way, “The Cloverfield Paradox” was a success for Netflix, because regardless of financial or critical success the film got people talking about Netflix. Ultimately, that’s all Netflix tends to care about.

Netflix movies like “The Cloverfield Paradox” are not going away. Let us just hope that Netflix’s next major release will still be a good movie — and not just a good conversation.

CW: Mentions of sexual assault and harassment, police brutality One of the most talked-about films this season, “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri,” opens in a fictional town seven months after 17-year-old Angela Hayes is murdered near her rural home by an unknown assailant. Confusion ensued as I tried to figure out whether I loved or hated each character, plot twist, and production decision.

Still grieving and without any answers, the late teenager’s mother Mildred Hayes (Frances McDormand) decides to make use of three abandoned billboards along the old, unused highway leading up to her house.

After an abrupt, unrelenting meeting with the town’s billboard salesman, Red Welby (Caleb Landry Jones), she confirms: “What’s the law on what ya can and can’t say on a billboard.”

Mildred requests the following three messages, printed in large black ink on a red background: “Raped While Dying,” “And Still No Arrests?,” and “How come, Chief Willoughby?”

All of the messages were with the intention of solving her daughter’s murder.

“What a great woman taking matters into her own hands (as so many have to do with police investigations),” I thought.

The resulting two hours depict a small town’s reaction to the continuing criminal investigation, centered on Mildred and the ripple effect of her words.

McDormand shows honesty and truth in her face in an unsettling yet terrifyingly consistent performance.

The town is further plagued by a systematically racist police force led by Chief Willoughby (Woody Harrelson), who is widely admired and defended by the town when Mildred calls him out on her billboards. A continuously disappointed Mildred apathetically fire bombs the police department and almost humorously gets away with it.

The film has received criticism in recent days for the amount of sympathy given to Sam Rockwell’s racist, malevolent Police Sergeant Dixon by nearly every character, including Mildred herself. He’s effectively characterized as a poor, alcoholic man with lack of selfesteem and general intellect — not as a racist cop willing and able to abuse his power every single day on and off the job.

The film somewhat comes to a climax when Dixon wrongfully throws Welby through a second-story window in a fit of rage. Director Martin McDonagh responded to the backlash, saying that while Dixon is consistently a “racist jerk” throughout the film, by the end “he’s seen that he has to change.”

Ah, how refreshing — a racist realizing what they believe is wrong, but not doing anything to change it.

The film also employs the regional stereotypes ripe in many Hollywood films, especially in depicting the present American midwest. Like most other filmrelated conversations recently, it brings to mind the recent revela-

tions about Harvey Weinstein’s rampant sexual assault, harassment, and manipulation of women throughout the film industry, along with the ensuing #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.

The timing of the film’s release could appear as a statement that middle America is sadistic and full of racists and rapists, while in reality, consistent acts of racism, sexism, and sexual assault are occuring within and throughout Hollywood itself.

As I see it, McDonagh, a Brit brought up by Irish parents, probably just picked the state of Missouri as an accurate representation of the American Midwest/South and went with it.

While bringing up a necessary discussion of police brutality and intentionality, grief and family discord after loss, and a mother ’s efforts to bypass the forces of power to receive justice, the film misses the mark on being a cultural critique or even an accurate representation of the many daily strifes and discords of small, lower-income, and majority-white communities.

We’re left with many thoughts, but no answers. People get off the hook for burning down buildings, seeing vigilante justice taking hold, and having no closure.

“Three Billboards” constantly brings about moral outrage in any viewer, barely letting you breathe calmly from start to finish. Watch for the acting (again, Frances McDormand!) — not for any big revelations about the world today.

For a stronger depiction of the immorality and perversion of Hollywood, I’d recommend turning to Showtime’s “Ray Donovan.”

Pat Keen To Perform At The Grove House Julia Foodman Musician Pat Keen will perform at Pitzer College’s Grove House, Feb. 22 starting at 8 p.m. The show, which will be free to all 5C students, is part of Keen’s “Pat Keen Goes West” tour.

His indie electronic music “which mingles pop elements with avant-garde sensibilities … treading the line between intimate singer-songwriter and experimental rock” can be found on Spotify and SoundCloud.

Keen’s music is incredibly lyric focused and showcases his shift from playing in Chicago’s Wei Zhongle, Ryan Powers’ band, and Guerilla Toss, to more relaxed themes, such as his current residence in Minneapolis.

Courtesy of Pitzer College

LIFE & STYLE PAGE 6

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

THE STUDENT LIFE FASHION COLUMN

Q&A: Visiting Professor Discusses Bargains At The Rose Bowl Flea Market Role Of Creative Writing In Society Mabel Lui

Parker Beak Zinzi Clemmons is a visiting creative writing professor at Pitzer College and a writer from Philadelphia with South African and Trinidadian descent. She is a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35 Honoree,” and her debut novel “What We Lose” was named a best book of the year by Vogue, National Public Radio (NPR), Esquire, and Elle. I sat down with Clemmons after her Advanced Fiction Workshop course to discuss her perspective on the current role of creative writing, the direction of the field, and her own work in society.

TSL: When and what interested you in creative writing?

Zinzi Clemmons: I actually started out as a science major. So when I graduated high school and went to college, I entered as a premed, but I’d always done visual art. It was really just complete serendipity and luck. Basically, I got to university and started taking Bio classes and realized that I hated it.

Science sort of fulfilled the more analytic side of my brain, while visual art fulfilled the artistic side.

And then at some point in college, my parents told me: “We’re not paying for you to take visual art classes anymore.” I realized I didn’t want to be a doctor, so I signed up for a creative writing class, and I liked it, so I just kept doing it.

TSL: From where emotionally, do you draw your own work?

ZC: It’s kind of nice to think of it on those terms, but I don’t know if I have. What motivates me is injustice. This can have a few different forms. I try to engage a lot with mortality and thinking about how different types of people are treated differently in death. But ultimately, that comes down to injustice. What inspires me is when I see examples of injustice in the world, especially as they relate to people of different races and different identities and those sorts of things. And when I see that, I feel like I have to write about it.

TSL: What do you think is the role of creative writing and reading in our current times?

ZC: Our ability to do both in a

Courtesy of Nina Subin

Zinzi Clemmons, National Book Foundation “5 Under 35 Honoree,” and visiting Creative Writing Professor at Pitzer College, recently sat down with TSL to talk about the role of creative writing today.

genuine manner and to genuinely engage intellectually is the only hope we have of saving ourselves.

I’d say it’s the most important thing. What we have now is a decaying of reason and logic and standards and the only way to fight is through practice. It’s even more important now that we are more rigorous, that we are more engaged intellectually, that we challenge each other more, that we make good faith arguments in the face of bad faith ones.

TSL: Who have you been reading, and why?

ZC: I read a graphic novel by the writer Kristen Radtke. It’s an illustrated memoir. It’s very quiet and melancholic and also very feminine in a specific way that I think graphic novels don’t tend to be. The sensibility is very different. It actually matches up with my interests in literary fiction, but I haven’t yet seen it in graphic

Orange National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) jumpsuits, 1920s sequin dresses, and red cowboy boots are some of the gems you can find at the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena, California.

Open every second Sunday of the month, the market features over 2,500 vendors that offer everything from vintage phonographs to tarot card readings.

Starting at 9 a.m., admission tickets are $9 each (early admission tickets are sold at higher prices for those who want first bid on all the items).

The vendors that circle around the stadium mainly sell new merchandise, so it’s the large open area next to the stadium that I found myself most drawn to. There, antique and vintage merchandise dominate the racks and setups, which is heaven for dedicated vintage and thrift shoppers.

There’s certainly something for everyone, though patience is key to finding beautiful items to take home. Maybe it’s a pair of white vintage Gucci jeans with beaded flowers running down the legs, a 1960s embroidered camera strap, or a $10 puffy bright yellow jacket that looks

exactly the same as the one you saw grace the Fenty x Puma runway last season.

That’s why it’s important to arrive early and set aside a good amount of time to look through every piece. Don’t be afraid to ask questions, and do adopt a “buy-it-now” mentality to avoid losing out on what could be a style-defining piece.

However, if your style is more muted and casual, the racks of vintage jeans and $5 tees are surely calling your name.

Denim, in particular, is abundant at the Rose Bowl Flea Market. High-rise, low-rise, cropped, flared, straight-leg, ripped, and boyfriend styles are all available in short and long lengths. Overalls and jean jackets also make many appearances, in the form of vintage brands like Levi’s and Wrangler.

These pieces are often sold elsewhere for more than $50. But at the Rose Bowl Flea Market, you can get them for $20 or less if you find the right stall. Whatever your style or choice of clothing, it’s definitely sold cheaper here than the average vintage shop.

Smaller, unobtrusive fashion finds include silk scarves, pins, and funky patches that you can seamlessly add to your wardrobe for that pop of color. Remember

that you can always bargain if the listed price isn’t ideal — vendors are almost always open to discounts if you are polite.

And if you’re not looking to buy clothing?

Music fiends can buy vinyl records from the 1950s and photographers have an array of vintage Polaroids to choose from.

Ceramic tableware, (faux) furcovered stools, and woven hammocks can also be bought as dorm essentials and accessories. Many flea market go-ers even bring carts and suitcases along.

Raji Rajkumar SC ’21 recommends looking at the stalls that sell handmade items.

“The creativity and level of artistry of all the people there is pretty incredible,” Rajkumar said.

One final tip: Bring cash!

Although many vendors accept debit or credit, cash is the failsafe method of payment to ensure that you can buy your one-of-akind item. Sunglasses and a hat are also useful for shielding the California sun.

At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what your shopping goal is. What’s most important in thrifting or flea market shopping is that you have an open mind — you really never know what you’ll find.

novels. It’s beautiful and pensive.

TSL: What do you hope for the future of creative writing and reading?

ZC: Our literature doesn’t look like our life. Especially now, with the internet and things changing so rapidly, it really feels like the progress is lagging behind quite a bit. Within that, I think there is a danger to completely relying on representation, but what I want to see happening is people taking the next step. ... This is a form of injustice that has motivated me.

I have never been able to look around and see myself reflected in anything, and I still have not.

That’s not as a black woman; that’s as a mixed women with a very specific background and very specific interests. The more that we’re able to do this and approach something like what we see in the world, the more effective our art will be.

Mabel Lui • The Student Life

The Rose Bowl Flea Market features over 2,500 vendors, offering treasures ranging from sequined dresses to tarot card readings.

Ye Olde Student Life

Capitalism has been a constant throughout TSL’s history, but marketing has come quite a long way over the years, and consumer tastes have changed more than a little. This semester, we’ll be looking back at TSL ads through the ages.

— Compiled by Samuel Breslow

Don’t get fooled by the copycat streaking stickers—this one is “the first and original!” April 29, 1974.

The world’s most prominent branded sugar water company, hard at work defeating the Nazis. ‘Murica! 1944.

Corporal punishment was a thing. And apparently you could make money off of it. 1937.

LIFE & STYLE LOVE PAGE 7

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

THE STUDENT LIFE

SEX COLUMN

Pucker Up: ArtSmooch Is Just Around The Corner

That Time I Took Sex Advice… From Cosmo Mona Lott It’s safe to say that Cosmopolitan is not my go-to for sex advice (the magazine, not the cocktail, although both result in regret when over-consumed). Ever since the infamous “#DonutGate” of 2003, Cosmo and its ridiculous, sometimes dangerous, sex tips have been the butt of many jokes, my personal favorite being that one time it suggested we treat an erect penis like a joystick.

Moreover, the publication’s content is often heteronormative, sexist, and cissexist, rendering their articles not just comedic but downright problematic.

That being said, I was intrigued. What if I tried out some of Cosmo’s advice — namely, their 10 Most Popular Sex Positions of 2017, according to its readers? With a wistfulness for the year gone by and an eager partner, I thought this would be the perfect addition to my column. All in the name of journalistic research, of course. “Taking one for the team” and so on.

On a nondescript Sunday morning, my partner C and I went through the article together.

I was somewhat surprised to find that there was at least one position for lesbians, although the rest was still disappointingly heteronormative. And of course, I wasn’t surprised to find one position revolving around ice cream, because after all, it’s not Cosmo if there’s no food involved.

C and I started off with a bit of foreplay, or No. 4, King of the World (okay, Cosmo…). Apparently, this position allows for deeper penetration in the throat, and you can use your free hand to reach yourself and masturbate at the same time. With C sitting on the edge of the bed, I positioned myself in between his legs and proceeded to go down on him.

Easy, except for the fact that C is not only generously endowed down there, he’s also curved downward, so a position like this one means that my gag reflex is constantly being attacked. Being the committed journalist that I

Stephanie Du

am, I managed to push through.

However, this position is definitely not one I would default to.

We then both hopped on the bed and tried No. 8, the In-andOut Double Double (and no, it’s not a certain beloved California burger). At this point, C and I were already wet enough that we didn’t need to use lube like the article advised. He went back and forth from sliding his shaft across my clitoris and doing slow, deep thrusts, getting that 8-to-2 stroke ratio.

We both enjoyed this a lot, as it was the perfect tease and transition between foreplay and intercourse. If you’re impatient, prefer penetration, or are just bad at math, expect there to be more of a 4-6 ratio instead.

Moving on: we tried to get ourselves in position for No. 2, The Grinder, which is basically a glorified Reverse Cowgirl. Hilarity ensued as I tried to figure out which leg went where, and whether it was even sexy to be grinding up on C’s leg like I was some hump-friendly dog. While C said he enjoyed the view, we both agreed we weren’t feeling a lot of pleasure. Another pass for us, Cosmo.

Next we attempted No. 9, the Bend and Press, a long-time favorite of ours because of the G-spot stimulation it provides.

I also like having my feet up against his chest as he thrusts, because he’s able to tell how I’m feeling just by how my toes curl or how I press into him. It’s like in “Avatar,” when the protagonists fuse their neural tendrils together. Well, not really, but you get the idea.

C and I ultimately finished up with some of our personal favorites, forgetting about the article and my journalistic pursuit altogether.

While I still find Cosmo ridiculous and cringy at times, it’s always fun to experiment and try new things with yourself, or with a partner. Just be careful when you do because I somehow ended up with a bruised knee (don’t ask).

Cassie Wang• The Student Life

♥♥

♥

#TSLove For Valentine’s Day, The Student Life gathered love stories from students and faculty at the Claremont Colleges and tweeted them throughout the day. Below are a few of them.

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“Art is like the pulse and breath of life,” poet Madeline Sy SC ’18 said. “It’s not like it embodies life, but it’s also a reflection of how [the artists] live life.”

ArtSmooch, a multidisciplinary art showcase at the Claremont Colleges, will bring together the artwork of students such as Sy, faculty, and visiting artists (including two Pitzer College alumni) to Scripps College’s Garrison Theatre on Feb. 17 at 3 p.m. The event will display different art forms, from poetry and the visual arts to music and dancing.

Scripps Adjunct Professor in Music Rachel Vetter Huang was inspired by her son, Micah Huang PZ ’13, a composer, to coordinate the event.

A while back, Micah Huang expressed interest in collaborating with Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award Winner Angie Estes. Later on, he thought it would be a good idea to put together an event at Scripps that was as multidisciplinary as possible and involved students at the 5Cs. When asked about the name “ArtSmooch,” Rachel said: “We wanted something that was catchy and something that pulled on the idea of coming together.”

Rachel also wanted to emphasize her love for art, and since ArtSmooch was going to be held close to Valentine’s Day, the name stuck.

The collaborative nature of the showcase celebrates art by creating a unique “coming together” of all art forms.

“It’s something that should have been done before,” said student composer Zayn Singh SC ’20 who will be performing at ArtSmooch.

Singh is collaborating with Sy to create a poem, about falling in love and washing dishes, paired to jazzy music and dancing.

“Small collaborations of music and dance can be seen around,” Singh said. “But there’s never been anything like a visual artist, a poet, a dancer, and a musician coming all together as one to create a full experience of something unique.”

Local artists are also involved.

Sumi Foley is a fabric artist who

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uses tiny pieces of kimono silk in her work.

At ArtSmooch, Foley will be showing three of her fabric art pieces as backdrops on the stage of Garrison Theatre. She believes that combining different art forms “opens up another level of creativity.”

Scripps’ Associate Professor of English Warren Liu will be participating as a poet as part of the event’s faculty composition. Liu has previously collaborated with Harvey Mudd College Professor of Music Bill Alves in a similar event. The two are working together again for ArtSmooch.

“It was fascinating to see how Bill was able to produce this amazing musical composition built around one of my poems,” Liu said in an email to TSL. “I found the entire experience very rewarding. So when offered the opportunity to work with Bill (and others) again, I was happy to give it a shot.”

For poet Elena Dypiangco SC ’19, the event has helped her realize that she can always keep improving as an artist. She feels like she “can appreciate the work of others in a whole new light.”

Dypiangco said she had never envisioned that her work would be displayed in such a manner and can’t wait for the upcoming event.

Students and faculty members have been preparing the event since fall semester and are all incredibly excited.

Composer Kathryn Chan HM ’21 said, “It was exciting composing for [ArtSmooch]. By combining two art pieces you get a more full art experience, with emotions that we hope to convey as artists.”

Visiting poet Angie Estes agreed with Chan.

“This event is such a rare opportunity for the Claremont community to share,” Estes said. “The ArtSmooch performances should be incredibly dynamic and exciting.”

Singh believes that this event will inspire others to collaborate in the same way and hopes that events, such as ArtSmooch, will continue in the future. Sy encourages other student artists to participate in future events.

“It’s totally worth it, and it’s so doable,” Sy said.

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OPINIONS PAGE 8

THE STUDENT LIFE

THE STUDENT LIFE MEGHAN JOYCE Editor-in-Chief KELLEN BROWNING Managing Editor ARIEL SO Managing Editor

SAMUEL BRESLOW, News Editor MARC ROD, News Editor SAMANTHA RESNICK, Life & Style Editor MEGHAN BOBROSKY, Life & Style Editor DONNIE DENOME, Opinions Editor ANIKKA VILLEGAS, Opinions Editor HANK SNOWDON, Sports Editor DAPHNE YANG, Senior Design Editor MADELINE MCCLUSKEY, Production Editor MIN HYUNG LEE, News Designer CHRISTINE LIN, Life & Style Designer KELLY HO, Opinions Designer CASSIE WANG, Sports Designer JILLIAN BATIUK, Design Associate

OLIVIA TRUESDALE, Copy Chief EMILY JIANG, Copy Editor LORELEI BIVINS, Copy Editor JAMIE REID, Copy Editor SARAH TRAN, Graphics Editor LUKE MEARES, Photo Manager LAURYN CRAVEN, Photo Editor CHRISTOPHER HU, Distribution Manager PETER YAN, Business Manager FAITH MCDERMOTT, Business Manager

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

Letters must be under 400 words (although when an issue is particularly salient, we reserve the right to allow letters to run at a longer length) and submitted by 4 p.m. Wednesday of the The Editorial Board consists of the Editor-in-Chief and two week of publication. We reserve the right to decline publication Managing Editors. Aside from the editorial, the views exof submitted letters and will not accept anonymous letters, letpressed in the opinions section do not necessarily reflect the views of The Student Life. ters containing profanity, factually inaccurate letters or letters making personal attacks. TSL also reserves the right to edit for E-mail Letters, Questions and Concerns to editor@tsl.pomona. spelling, punctuation and grammar. Letters may be signed by edu. email tips to liaison@tsl.pomona.edu; email advertising a maximum of three persons. All letters become the property of inquiries to ads@tsl.pomona.edu.

TSL and may not be reprinted without prior permission from the Editorial Board.

TSL SAYS

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

F(ree food)amily Weekend Those Pomona food trucks though

Dude who said f*ck on TV and won gold ‘MURICA

F(ollowing me around)amily Weekend Feels like high school again...

Wall Street Journal We out here in Pyeongyang, North Korea, apparently

Chloe Kim Asian dominiation sweeping the nation

Millenials & Social Media Don’t tweet and snowboard

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

The Perks And Pitfalls Of Self-Funded Politics Jo Nordhoff-Beard Columnist A few young, diverse, candidates who represent the more progressive component of the Democratic Party are choosing not to self-fund their campaigns or rely on political action committee (PAC) donations. Their strategy poses a threat to aging white Republican political donors who have invested enormous amounts of money into politics out of fear of losing power. Candidates relying on small donations from individual donors to seem more relatable take a huge risk, but that risk should get more recognition than it currently does.

Two 2010 Supreme Court cases, Citizens United vs. FEC and then SpeechNow.org vs. FEC, allowed individuals to give an unlimited amount of money to political campaigns through c o r p o r a t i o n s c a l l e d PA C s .

Political donors like Sheldon Adelson, Robert Mercer, and Charles and David Koch seized the momentum and stocked up their PAC warchests, raising $176.5 million for Republican candidates in the 2010 midterm elections, which ushered in a new era of pronounced “dark money” in American politics.

These billionaire, hedge fund, and climate change deniers hold an unfathomable and unjust amount of political influence because of their wealth and dominion when it comes to maintaining power. None of these men have any interest in working to benefit any other group of people but themselves.

Money is too much of a key determinant in a politician’s success. The Koch brothers have

so far invested $400 million into the 2018 midterm elections alone, of which $20 million went to ad buys promoting Paul Ryan’s draconian tax bill.

Tom Steyer, the more ethical Democratic Koch equivalent, has invested $30 million into a lobbying organization to increase millennial voter turnout. While millennial voter turnout is key to Democratic victory in the midterm elections, Steyer has not invested in a Democratic media blitz upholding progressive economic values on a scale even remotely similar to the Koch brothers, which could be necessary to combat their polarizing television and digital ads.

Beto O’Rourke, a Democratic Congressman from Texas challenging incumbent senator Ted Cruz, is one of two politicians currently elected to the House of Representatives that have pledged not to take money from a leadership PAC, which is unheard of in the current political climate. His choice to rely on individual donations and smaller gifts makes him seem more accessible than Ted Cruz, which is admirable, but risky because it may not pay off his fundraising deficit, similar to other candidates this cycle.

O’Rourke’s campaign social media pages are full of photos and videos of him going on early morning runs with voters, eating late night food with college kids, and speaking openly on protecting “Dreamers,” marijuana legalization, and Medicare for all. He has pledged to visit all of Texas’s counties and make stops in towns where no Senate candidate has gone in decades. His family photos posted on his Twitter page are clearly authentic because his

children look surprised that he is taking a photo; he seems normal, like he could be your neighbor running early in the morning with his dog.

Sam Jammal, a Democratic House of Representatives candidate for in California’s 39th Congressional District, a 15-minute drive from Claremont and currently represented by retiring Republican Ed Royce, has the most experience in government working as a Congressional chief of staff and as a part of the Obama administration’s Department of Commerce. However, because he has chosen not to invest any of his own money into his campaign, he is at a deficit of visibility and risks not becoming a nominee in the general election. One of his challengers in the primary has raised $2 million and has never worked in politics before, whereas Sam has not even raised $200,000.

O’Rourke’s and Jammal’s campaigns are two examples that illustrate the Democratic Party’s crisis of relatability: Candidates all over the country want to talk with underrepresented communities to increase voter turnout and not follow conventional fundraising methods but, at the same time, run the risk of not appealing to moderates or potential swing voters, key in a state like Texas or a mixed Congressional district.

The two sides of this crisis should not be irreconcilable differences. Politicians should not have to make a conscious choice to follow the Bernie Sanders fundraising model, only go to rural towns, and subsequently forget people who live in urban areas.

Both politicians and the liberal media should treat the electorate as a more inclusive, diverse, and equally valuable group.

Pitzer Playground Even MORE hammocks for everyone

Grove House Grease Fire Food only tastes a little burnt

Weekly Comic: College News vs. Daily News

Cassie Wang • The Student Life

Facebook’s Fake News Problem Maddy Neff Columnist

Jordan Wong • The Student Life

Last fall, U.S. Congressional investigators found that Russia played a role in the spread of deliberate misinformation over social media during the 2016 election. Facebook “identified more than $100,000 worth of divisive ads” bought by a Russian company tied to the Kremlin, according to Scott Shane of The New York Times. American intelligence agencies concluded that the company’s activity was designed to shift public opinion in order to benefit the odds of Donald Trump’s victory and harm Hillary Clinton’s electability. The efforts to understand the impact of Facebook advertisements on the election itself are only in their beginning phases of evaluation.

Facebook’s fake news problem poses far more complicated ethical questions for the future than it did immediately after the election. Outside interference in an election that may have undermined American democracy, swayed public opinion, and given way to a Trump presidency is sickening. Furthermore, the lack of foresight involved in a social media platform failing to recognize the possibility that foreign actors could use its product to proliferate falsehoods and influence the results of an election is inexcusable and frankly, should have been prevented.

The investigation involving the fake news that flooded Facebook feeds in 2016 is going to directly affect whether the company will continue to have

open and relaxed policies regarding their advertisement space, or whether it will implement regulations that prevent outside actors from disseminating lies.

This decision puts Facebook in a difficult position. The company will have to decide between advocating for free speech and enforcing restrictions to prevent the spread of fake news.

PEN American Center, an annual literary journal in New York City, defines “fake news” as “demonstrably false information that is being presented as a factual news report with the intention to deceive the public.” During the election, Russia spread false events and suggested pages intended to stir controversy, which targeted individuals based on their gender, age, political ideology, pages they like, etc.

Since then, Facebook has taken baby-steps toward some policy and platform reform, such as creating a system that allows users to flag “objectionable” content for removal, hiring a new team of employees to police shared content, and even going as far as to outsource questionable content to third-party fact-checkers. However, these alterations have been deemed ineffective in preventing the spread of fake news over Facebook’s millions of feeds for several reasons.

For one, these actions do not catch fake news before they are seen by millions of people. Secondly, once sources have been reported or flagged by users, Facebook employees, or third-party fact-checkers, Facebook does not always remove those posts.

While I recognize their at-

tempts to regulate fake news, I don’t believe Facebook’s efforts thus far have addressed the problem head-on. A crucial part of Facebook’s fake news problem has occurred within the advertisement space that it sells to different groups, including foreign actors who can use that space to manipulate the public.

This complicates the debate because social media outlets have historically prioritized money over the quality of information disseminated and been making billions of dollars in profit while operating without social conscience or accountability. I often question whether Facebook is truly committed to participating in the system of American values, which supposedly allows social media sites to grow with protections that other places in the world would regulate with governmental censorship.

It is best that the people take this into their own hands. Facebook is currently in the process of adopting different methods that will attempt to control misinformation, and that process is not guaranteed to be completed anytime soon, or even at all. This means that ordinary people need to judge the truth of news for themselves, whether that means relying on multiple sources of news, fact-checking, or instilling the importance of news literacy education.

Maddy Neff SC ’21 is a politics major and a big critic of “big tech” from Palo Alto, CA. Maddy is probably listening to Lorde’s album, “Melodrama,” while scrolling through President Donald Trump’s twitter feed.

OPINIONS FEBRUARY 16, 2018

PAGE 9

THE STUDENT LIFE

It’s More Complex Than ‘Just Stop Using Your Phone’ Aalia Thomas Columnist “Reminder to kill all humans,” said Alexa, my Amazon Echo Dot, at 2 a.m. on a Monday morning. I almost fell out of my bed. Was I still dreaming? Nope: A second later, the dot coolly repeated herself. “Reminder to kill all humans.”

In my hazy, half-asleep state, I was shaken to my core, wondering if this was the beginning of the end. Fortunately, in the light of day, I realized it was just a prank by my roommate and sponsor.

But the whole incident forced me to think about how I could trust Alexa enough to keep her in my room. I began to question my relationship with several major tech companies, thinking about how each has carved itself a space in my life.

Such concerns are not new: As technology has crept further into our personal lives over the past years, they have been shared by many. Millennials and Generation Z-ers are constantly warned of technology’s dangers, whether it’s by our parents, opinion columnists, or shows like “Black Mirror.” And despite what older generations may believe, we are aware of its effects on our lives: I often hear friends and peers talking about deleting social media to try and “cleanse” themselves, or putting their phones away at meals and social occasions.

Such anecdotal evidence is supported by recent studies that display correlations between mental health issues, such as anxiety, and phone usage among young people. I don’t believe that connecting and sharing posts with people online always detracts from our lives offline. All too often, though, it forces us to compare ourselves with others, cultivates a depen-

dency on online affirmation, and wastes precious time.

Alexa may live in our homes, but apps like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube, which profit from selling advertisements, are built to worm their way into our minds. Companies specifically create their platforms with the intention of entrapping us in their capitalist “Hell.” They curate feeds that cater to your interests and biases, provide hits of dopamine through likes and comments, and create incentives to keep people online, such as colorful alerts and notifications.

Facebook’s founding president, Sean Parker, recently told Axios News: “[T]he thought process that went into building these applications … was all about: ‘How do we consume as much of your time and conscious attention as possible?’”

The answer to that has manifested itself in design elements we inter-

act with every day.

For example, when Snapchat’s version 10.25 was announced last November, CEO Evan Spiegel said that Snap was willing to risk users being initially uncomfortable with the update because it would bring “substantial long-term benefits to [their] business.” The widely disliked separation of the pages “Friends” and “Discover” is meant to make it easier for users to see more advertisements.

On a larger scale, the influence of social media has brought attention to activism and helped marginalized people elevate their voices. However, by showing us more of what we respond positively to, social media has also further polarized American society. Facebook, for instance, has been heavily criticized for allowing falsehoods to be circulated based on its algorithms and thus impacting national politics.

At this point, it’s not enough to simply blame consumers for their engagement with technology. Assigning the responsibility to consumers to deal with what tech companies have created is similar to the problematic strategy used by tobacco and fast food industries. But similar to Big Macs, technology appeals to some of our basest instincts in order to profit from money. The pressure to succumb is high, especially when we are being targeted by cradleto-grave advertising, as shown

by Facebook’s recent launch of a messaging platform made for kids. The responsibility thus lies with tech companies to transform our interactions with what they produce.

Snap, Facebook, and YouTube have little incentive to stop monopolizing our attention. However, companies like Apple, Samsung, and Microsoft don’t rely on

our time and can afford to redesign their products to give us a better experience. For instance, Tristan Harris, former design ethicist for Google, suggests that Apple could have apps assign priority levels to their notifications so that not every update to social media draws users back to their phones. Harris is one of the founders and leaders of the Center for Humane Technology, which consists of people who have left the tech industry to work toward a future in which tech is more ethical.

Other possibilities could include offering a “Settings” option for people to set limits on their time on each app. Personally, I would love to restrain myself after a certain amount of Instagramming per day, giving me a good middle ground between deleting the app and getting lost on the Explore page at midnight.

Long-term, the Center for Hu-

mane Technology advocates that governments “pressure technology companies toward humane business models by including the negative externalities of attention extraction on their balance sheets, and creating better protections for consumers.”

Institutions of higher education such as the Claremont Colleges can also push for accountability within the tech industry. Students studying computer science or engineering should be required to take courses on ethics and philosophy in order to complete their majors. Harvard University, Stanford University, and MIT, among others, are already tailoring ethics courses to applying technology and considering integrating them into majors.

Let’s cultivate an awareness around technology that helps us find solutions beyond just telling people to get off their phones.

Molly Antell • The Student Life

#JusticeforColtenBoushie And The Disposability of Indigenous Bodies Carolann Duro Columnist Last week (Feb. 9), an all-white jury in Saskatchewan, Canada found a white farmer named Gerald Stanley not guilty for the murder of Colten Boushie, a Cree man. The case has spurred massive responses across Canada and indigenous communities throughout Turtle Island, the territory of what is now known as North America.

The verdict and aftermath of the trial has reminded us once again how colonial justice systems are designed to protect settlers from consequences of their violence and genocide. Instead of being held legally and morally accountable for the death of Boushie, Stanley walks free and is potentially being paid upwards of $160,000 by a GoFundMe campaign for slaying an indigenous man in front of his friends and family.

Details of the case conflict in Stanley and other witness’ accounts range from accusations of intent to steal Stanley’s vehicles to Boushie seeking help after his vehicle broke down nearby. One constant remains in the many arguments of defense for Stanley: He was protecting his property.

The concept of private property was introduced to Turtle Island upon the arrival of settlers. The foundation of settler colonialism lies in both the mythology that North America was uninhabited and the relentless operation of European settlers to turn land into profit. Settler colonialism has thus enacted a five hundred year genocide of the original people of this continent.

People rehash this tired narrative of Indigenous people “trespassing” on the land that our ancestors have maintained a relationship with for over 10,000 years whenever a justification for indigenous execution is needed. Land has become a weapon of settlers’ robust arsenal to enact violence on indigenous bodies, communities, and existence.

Indigenous epistemology and knowledge have informed us for generations that we inhabit the territories given to us through migration and creation stories.

As Duane Champagne, a native sociologist from Indian Country Today Media Network, asserted: “People belong to the land; land doesn’t belong to the people.”

The death of Colten Boushie is the culmination of settlers’

attempts to erase Indigenous peoples from our territories. The justice system has not failed; it has succeeded in asserting settler dominance. The selection of an all-white jury and a white judge presiding over the case of a white farmer murdering an Indigenous man is the exact formula that the system was designed with, in order to place power in the hands of settlers.

Borders and land divisions are the only thing separating the Cree Red Pheasant First Nation and the indigenous peoples of the United States of America. As I navigate the Claremont Colleges in the wake of Colten Boushie’s death, I am prompted to confront the parallels of my people’s history and the history of First Nations in Canada.

Our prestigious colleges are nestled in the confines of a settler state that functions every day to erase Indigenous peoples. Yet, our Indigenous students and allies lead resistance by carving out spaces for us on campus; this week is no exception. Thursday, Feb. 22, the Queer Resource Center of the Claremont Colleges in collaboration with the Red Circle Project will hold a screening of “Two Spir-

its,” a film that coincides with the reoccuring tragedy of losing our Indigenous youth.

“Two Spirits” follows the beautiful and devastating journey of a Navajo teenager named Fred Martinez, who identified as nádleehí, a male-bodied person with a feminine spirit and nature.

The screening comes at a painful time for us Indigenous students that are being bombarded with racist, colonial media from coverage of Colten Boushie’s murder to random social media users inflicting violent stereotypes and language on our pages and accounts.

The QRC event will consist of a panel with myself and other Two-Spirit Indigenous peoples, hopefully spurring a conversation about recent events in Indian country on the international media stage.

I hold my hands up to Colten Boushie and the countless Indigenous peoples around the world that remain resilient.

Carolann Duro SC ’20 is a sociology major interested in decolonization and digital art. You can find them trying to beat Zelda on the Switch.

Courtesy of Two Spirits • The Student Life

“Two Spirits” follows the beautiful and devastating journey of a Navajo teenager named Fred Martinez who identified as nadleehi, a male-bodied person with a feminine spirit and nature.

British Solutions to L.A. Homelessness Daniel Abelow Columnist While the issues of extreme poverty are complex, with no easy solutions, heavy-handed responses on the part of the state and law enforcement only serve to perpetuate this brutal cycle of despair. A recent United Nations report, authored by Philip Alston, New York University professor of law and the UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, focused on extreme poverty in the United States. The report was damning, and while much of it focused on areas traditionally associated with poverty, Alston also highlighted the notorious “Skid Row” neighborhood in downtown Los Angeles.

Skid Row has one of the largest populations of homeless people of any neighborhood in the United States. The 17,400 residents of Skid Row, especially the 2,521 homeless residents, are subject to near constant state repression and violence.

As Alston summarizes, “Homelessness on this scale is far from inevitable and again reflects political choices to see law enforcement rather than low cost housing, medical treatment, psychological counseling, and job training as the solutions.”

Alston observes in his report that “In Skid Row, [L.A.], 6,696 arrests of homeless persons were reported to have been made between 2011 and 2016.” This figure only scratches the surface of the history of state crackdowns there.

In both 1987 and 2002, the city of L.A. attempted to clear Skid Row by enforcing petty crime laws such as anti-camping regulations that systematically displace and criminalize homeless populations.

In 2007, the practice of “patient dumping” in which homeless people who had entered the system through the hospitals or police department are simply dropped off and left in Skid Row, emerged.

Despite this seemingly hopeless state of affairs, with poverty and homelessness being criminalized rather than addressed as societal ills, there is an alternative model that has started to take shape.

Across the Atlantic, British Labour Party leaders, including Sadiq Khan and Jeremy Corbyn are proposing bold and transformative policies, such as their emergency shelters that protect vulnerable homeless populations from dangerous weather climates. This is only an example of the measures being taken to address homelessness with compassion rather than criminalization.

I believe that these ideas could potentially provide the United States, and L.A in particular, with

a model for dealing with issues of extreme homelessness and poverty.

Taking office as mayor of London in May 2016, Khan inherited an unprecedented housing crisis in the capitol. Rather than deal with the problem as a policing issue, Khan, by all accounts considered a moderate, has laid out a number of innovative solutions to tackle homelessness as a human rights issue. Khan launched an aggressive inquiry into foreign ownership of primarily unoccupied buildings.

This practice of foreign investors, buying property as an investment and leaving the place vacant, has expanded widely in recent years, especially in the United States and United Kingdom. Feb. 1, Khan doubled down on his commitment, promising to give Londoners first dibs on new homes, rather than those left vacant in the hands of foreign investors, while thousands sleep on the street.

While not completely tackling the issue of homelessness, it is certainly a start that could easily be applied in L.A., one of the U.S. cities with the most property owned by foreign investors. Khan also promised to invest €15 million to purchase hundreds of homes in London for the homeless.

This plan mirrors broader schemes from the leftist wing of the Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn.

Corbyn recently made headlines by promising that if elected, his government would not only purchase 8,000 homes for the homeless, but also give local authorities the power to seize vacant houses and give them to the homeless.

As outlandish as the idea sounds, it could easily work. L.A. could readily link the vacancy of investment homes with a solution for homelessness. After all, unoccupied properties hurt the cities’ small business owners and its income revenues.

A tax on vacant properties, beyond real estate taxes, could be used to fund new construction or home purchases for the homeless. In addition, when considering how miniscule a portion of our bloated military budget that it would take to help cities purchase or build homes, the task looks infinitely more possible.

While I cannot predict which ideas are most likely to work, these ideas change the conversation from policing to Alston’s view that extreme poverty and homelessness are human rights issues.

While extreme poverty is largely absent from present American political debate, the focus of British politicians on the issue of homelessness should inspire our city leaders.

While we are students residing in L.A. county, we should challenge the city to consider bolder and more compassionate solutions to the issue of homelessness — especially for Skid Row.

OPINIONS PAGE 10

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

THE STUDENT LIFE

On Being Pro-Conversation And Pro-Technology Rui-Jie Yew Columnist As a digital native, I feel that my attitude toward text interactions has moved from excitement to discomfort. Hearing the “ding!” of a Google Chat message was enough for middle-school me to start running over to the family desktop. With the animated emoticons and different text styling options, chatting online felt as though I was truly conversing.

The online chats I participated in as a middle school student supplemented and continued the conversations that occurred at the lunch table and during recess.

Now, my friends from home and I no longer have interactions in the analog world to be supplemented. We are venturing into a new form of social relationship: Our interactions when we do see each other in real life supplement our interactions online.

This is what it looks like when I go home to see my friends.

On one of the days when our school breaks overlap, we meet at the coffee shop closest to the midpoint of the distance between our homes. I ask about the time they had at the beach, which I knew about from a photo they sent through Facebook Messenger, about the opinions they have of the songs I shared with them through Spotify and a blog post they shared on Tumblr.

There isn’t as much space for spontaneity, or for my friends and I to fill in lost time with stories the way we want each other to hear them. I am prompted by our interactions online to ask questions and provide answers before we take the time to reconnect. I wonder if we’d have more to say to each other if we had texted less.

While I understand that letter writing functions similarly to texting, letters are written in some form of solitude and with intent. Letters are perceived to be a personal and vulnerable communication — maybe even an art form. However, texting is low-stakes and convenient to the point that it can encourage mindlessness and take away from the conversations we are having with the people actually around us.

According to Sherry Turkle, a sociology professor at Massachusetts Institute Technology, taking out phones during social interactions “decreases the quality of what you talk about, because you talk about things where you

wouldn’t mind being interrupted, and, secondly, [decreases] the empathic connection that people feel toward each other.”

It is interesting to note that when we text, we risk being interrupted as well. I’ve left conversations, and others have left me during our conversations.

Admittedly, I feel a bit complacent when leaving another in a conversation mid-way when anything remotely more interesting comes up. Whereas each time I’ve been left mid-way, I’ve questioned my digital existence, of being on a platform where the words I throw, the only expressible aspects of myself, aren’t always caught.

Although I don’t quite view texting as the primary platform on which friendships should be actively sustained, I acknowledge the value that texting has as a communication form that requires introspection and a medium through which friendships can be formed.

Thoughts are typically too tangled in a mishmash of flashing words and feelings to be decipherable in the moment of their occurrences. There is a special clarity in the way we unpack our thoughts to fit inside the words we send to our friends.

Since each party is interacting with the other as text bubbles, rather than as substantial beings, each party can be acknowledged for the ideas they contribute and the feelings they feel comfortable communicating.

Texting also has archival value.

While it can be uncomfortable that my chat history is a dossier on everything I’ve ever said, looking back on certain debates or discussions I’ve had with friends has proven to be extremely insightful.

To be able to access the concrete ways in which both my friends’ and my opinions as well as texting vernaculars have (or haven’t) evolved has, in a sense, reified my sense of time — specifically, the time I’ve spent with my friends.

Furthermore, sending a quick message can be a great way to reach out to people whom you want to build friendships with.

Texting provides the option of progressing through the liminal state of investment and of committing to the friendship in-person.

In his book “Intimacy and Friendship on Facebook,” digital ethnographer Alex Lambert writes about the connections

people build through Facebook.

“It is common that ties are reclaimed but interacted with only on occasion,” Lambert writes.

“These connections are meaningful, just not as meaningful as those which are actively sustained. They are not looked to for regular confidence, perspective, support, conviviality and the

link. Instead, they are just meaningful enough for people to value Facebook’s affordance of ‘keeping a foot in the door.’”

I want my friendships to be more than “keeping a foot in the door,” and I believe it is possible to use technology in a way that “actively sustains” the friendships with both the people

around us and the people we want to keep around. However, it will require more than occasional, dispersive text messages, even when they can be long passages of text describing how each of our days went.

It will take the recognition of people on the other side of the conversation as substantial, emot-

ing beings, the conscious effort to utilize text and other technological platforms, such as voice and video calls, for interactions in real life. Technology serves as a bridge that brings us closer to each other, but I’m not sure we should stay on that bridge forever.

Rui-Jie Yew SC ’21 is a computer science major from Fremont, CA.

Sean Ogami • The Student Life

Word Search: Current Events Edition!

Reclaiming And Changing Coming Out Narratives Jolo Labio Columnist

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TRUMPSCANDAL Anam Mehta • The Student Life

I came out of the closet to my mom at Pomona College’s Coop Fountain.

We were telling stories about our now-separate lives over sickeningly sweet Thai teas. At that moment, I didn’t feel like I was in Claremont, but rather, in Manila, sitting on a couch with my mom, complaining about work (her) and school (me), drinking beer (hers) and lemonade (mine).

When I found out that my mom was visiting me, I decided I would come out to her. To me, my mom was home—a warm embrace, a calming voice, a knowing smile. Of all people, I thought she would understand.

When I said the words “I’m gay,” I was no longer sitting on that living room couch. I was in California, and she was in the Philippines, a gulf as wide as an ocean between us.

“It would be easier if you were straight,” she replied, wiping tears from her eyes.

I was, and still am, devastated. Ever since I came out, my relationship with my mom has changed for the worse. For months, my mom and I have barely said a word to each other.

When I visited the Philippines over summer break, my mom repeatedly conflated my sexuality with promiscuity, immaturity, and sexually transmitted infections.

Consequently, I questioned whether or not coming out was worth it. YouTube videos and Buzzfeed articles hyped up coming out as a proud declaration of my identity. A sea of rainbow confetti. A “fuck you” to my middle school bullies. A glorious entrance into an accepting community.

I was sorely mistaken.

While coming out demands a great deal of strength and courage, it also requires a “certain

safety in visibility, in our families, in our jobs, in our cultures, and in our homes,” according to Archer columnist Asiel Adan Sanchez. In particular, I believe “coming out” is rooted in Western-centric narratives, often at the expense of queer folx of color, especially those from non-American backgrounds.

In the Philippines, coming out often means opposing cultural and religious values. As the “panganay” (eldest child) and only male of three siblings, I am expected to assume the role of a “second father”—a strong, masculine figure who represents the family name and supports his younger sisters. Furthermore, as a Catholic, I am expected to marry and raise my own family.

I was nine years old when my parents first suspected that I was gay. It spurred an entire family intervention: My dad “corrected” my effeminate manner of walking and speaking, my uncle encouraged me to play contact sports like basketball, and my grandmother incessantly bugged me about potential crushes on female classmates.

For many queer Filipino/as, “coming out” is not synonymous with liberation, but rather, with repression and alienation from our cultures. Instead, many choose to conceal their sexuality—some even marrying people of the opposite sex. Opting to remain in the closet is not an act of shame, as the mainstream “coming out” narrative suggests, but rather, a valid attempt at negotiating a conservative environment.

In order to minimize trauma, I decided to remain in the closet until I began my first year at Pomona. In my mind, California’s LGBTQIA+-friendly spaces would grant me the glorious coming out experience I had envisioned.

Unfortunately, I quickly realized that as much as I was too “gay” to be Filipino, I was also too Filipino to be gay.

When America celebrates

queerness, it still has a white face— Harvey Milk over Marsha P. Johnson, Gus Kenworthy over Caster Semenya. A recent TSL opinions’ column chronicled the frequency of LGBTQIA+ hate crimes, yet failed to mention that communities of color—especially Black and Latino communities— bore the burden of this violence.

Where coming out is supposed to grant visibility, I have felt excluded from Claremont’s gay community. One common criticism is its whiteness: White cis gay men only seem to date, hook up, or even have intimate friendships with other white cis gay men. While I believe that this judgment holds some merit, it requires further nuance.

In particular, participation in Claremont’s gay community requires a familiarity with sexual cues, knowledge of mainstream American culture, and absolute confidence in one’s sexuality— qualities that some queer folx of color, especially those of nonAmerican upbringing, may not possess.

Ironically, I feel my coming out was rendered invisible. I am stuck in a cultural no-man’s land where I am simultaneously alienated from my Filipino roots and America’s gay community.

If I could give my teenage closeted self a piece of advice, it would be this: You don’t need to come out to feel valid. You—along with the everyone else “in the closet”—are just as important, strong, and worthy as those who aren’t.

After all, there is no universal “coming out” narrative; our sexualities are differentiated by our race, class, religion, or cultural upbringing. Instead of ascribing a monolithic, Western-centric “coming out” narrative to all queer folx, we must let them come out on their own terms—to take ownership over their sexual identities.

Jolo Labio PO ’20 is a history major from Manila, Philippines. If you find his ID, please return it to Oldenborg 108.

SPORTS FBERUARY 16, 2018

PAGE 11

THE STUDENT LIFE

Sports Calendar

February 16 - February 22

Pomona-Pitzer Friday, Feb. 16

Baseball Castleton At P-P 2:30 p.m.

Saturday, Feb.17

Track and Field Collegiate All Comers At P-P E 10:30 a.m. PDITOR’S

ICK

Softball Cal Lutheran At P-P 12 p.m. and 2 p.m.

Baseball Castleton At P-P 2 p.m.

Sagehen Men’s Tennis Bounces Back From Loss To Arizona Christian, Defeats CalTech And Cypress College

Baseball Bates At P-P 10:30 a.m.

Softball Puget Sound At P-P 12:30 p.m. and 2:30 p.m.

Men’s Golf SCIAC 1 At Olivas Links CC 8 a.m.

P-P TENNIS

Tuesday, Feb. 20 Men’s Basketball At Whittier 7 p.m.

Wendesday, Feb. 21 Men’s and Women’s Swim and Dive SCIAC Championships At Commerce 9 a.m.

Women’s Lacrosse At Whittier 7 p.m.

Men’s Basketball Occidental At P-P 5 p.m.

Thursday, Feb. 22

Women’s Basketball Occidental At P-P 7 p.m.

Men’s and Women’s Swim and Dive SCIAC Championships At Commerce 9 a.m.

Men’s Tennis Bates At P-P 4 p.m.

Sunday, Feb. 18 Men’s Golf SCIAC 1 At Olivas Links CC 8 a.m.

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Friday, Feb. 16

Sunday, Feb. 18

Men’s and Women’s Tennis San Diego Christian At CMS 1 p.m.

Men’s Golf SCIAC 1 At Olivas Links CC 8 a.m.

Softball Linfield At CMS 2 p.m.

Women’s Lacrosse At UC Davis 1 p.m.

Monday, Feb. 19

Baseball Caltech At CMS 2:30 p.m.

Men’s and Women’s Tennis Colorado College At CMS 6 p.m.

Saturday, Feb. 17 Women’s Track and Field Collegiate All Comers At P-P 10:30 a.m.

Men’s Golf SCIAC 1 At Olivas Links CC 8 a.m.

Baseball At Caltech 11 a.m. and 2 p.m.

Softball Whittier At CMS 12 p.m. and 2 p.m.

Men’s Basketball Chapman At CMS 5 p.m.

Women’s Basketball Chapman E DIT At CMS PICOKR’S 7 p.m.

Baseball Castleton At CMS 2:30 p.m.

Tuesday, Feb. 20 Men’s Basketball At Caltech 7 p.m.

Wednesday, Feb. 21 Men’s and Women’s Swim and Dive SCIAC Championships At Commerce 9 a.m.

Women’s Lacrosse At Occidental 5:30 p.m.

Thursday, Feb. 22 Men’s and Women’s Swim and Dive SCIAC Championships At Commerce 9 a.m.

Women’s Basketball TBA SCIAC Semi-Finals

Scores

Chloe Ortiz • The Student Life

Marko Mandic PO ’18 hits a backhand to clinch a doubles match victory against Cypress College Feb.10.

Jacinta Chen The Pomona-Pitzer men’s tennis team (4-1, 2-0 SCIAC) battled through three hard-fought matches last weekend, ending with one 5-4 loss against Arizona Christian University (1-3) Friday and two 5-4 wins against California Institute of Technology (0-1, 0-1 SCIAC) and Cypress College (1-2) Saturday.

The Sagehens’ match got off to a rocky start against Arizona Christian with losses at all three doubles.

However, Jed Kronenberg PO ’21, Jacob Schoenherr PZ ’19, Sam Gearou PO ’19, and Joey Schwartz PZ ’21 ultimately captured wins at No. 1, 4, 5, and 6 singles even after splitting sets with their opponents.

After losing in No. 1 doubles, Kalyan Chadalavada PO ’18 was proud of the way the team bounced back in the singles “to give everything we have.” Although the Sagehens could not rack up enough match victories to edge their out their opponents, Chadalavada said “it showed us that we are better than we believe we are and have so much room to grow.”

Kronenberg agreed, appreciating “the heart” that he saw across the courts. “We really did a great job of fighting for every point no matter what was going on,” he said.

With their tough defeat at the

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps

Hank Snowdon

Men’s Tennis Arizona Christian 5 P-P 4 P-P 5 Caltech 4 P-P 5 Cypress 4

Baseball Redlands 14 CMS 9 CMS 18 Sul Ross State 6 CMS 9 Texas-Dallas 8

Track and Field P-P 160 Occidental 111

Softball CMS 2 Lewis & Clark 0 La Verne 5 CMS 3 CMS 3 La Verne 0

The Claremont-MuddScripps men’s tennis team opened its season strong last Saturday with two 8-1 victories at home over NAIA opponents Arizona Christian University and Westmont College.

The day began with the matchup against Arizona Christian. The Stags opened up with a loss at No. 1 singles, but No. 2 doubles team Jake Berber CM ’20 and Daniel Park CM ’20 and No. 3 doubles team Casey Morris CM ’21 and Jay Yeam CM ’20 both took home victories, putting the Stags up 2-1 heading into the deciding singles matchups.

Women’s Basketball Cal Lutheran 57 P-P 55 P-P 77 La Verne 74

game, I was going to lose the match because my opponent had been holding his serve easily the entire set,” he said.

With Schoenherr playing on the court next door, Gearou kept fighting on his own court.

“We were both fairly worn out the day before, but I think seeing each other still give it our all helped motivate us, because we were in it together,” Gearou said.

Serving some solid points, Gearou managed to string together enough points to take the second set 7-5.

Going into the third set, Gearou recognized how much his team was counting on him to win. “This gave me extra motivation and a bit of good pressure,” he said.

Up 5-2 in the third set, Gearou fell during a point, bruising his hand. However, with his teammates cheering him on the sidelines, he prevailed, ensuring victory for the Sagehens’ with a 6-3 third set win.

“He was really clutch and showed we can count on him the rest of the season,” Kronenberg said.

After the whirlwind match against CalTech came to an end, the Sagehens returned to the Pauley Tennis Courts for their third match of the weekend against the Cypress Chargers, debuting two new doubles teams and three new singles players for the season.

The Chargers took a 2-1 lead as the No.1 doubles team of Mandic and Josh Gearou won P-P’s sole

doubles point 8-6.

Yet the Sagehens rallied with set wins at No. 1, 2, 3, and 5 singles from Josh Gearou, Octave Bellet PZ ’20, Mandic, and Quinn Hirsohn PZ ’20.

Kronenberg, Schoenherr, and Gearou, who had played earlier in the day against CalTech were proud of how their teammates handled the grueling double-header.

“Against Cypress we did an awesome job of being fired up even when we were exhausted,” Kronenberg said. “[Hirsohn] played great and [Bellet] did a great job playing clutch when it mattered to clinch the win.”

Schoenherr agreed.

“Octave’s win at [No.2] singles was some of the best tennis that I have seen in Division III ever,” he said.

Meanwhile, Sam Gearou loved watching Mandic handle his “tricky opponent” with equally smart play.

“This had been [Mandic]’s fourth match of the day, so he had to be tired although it didn’t look like it,” he said. “But he played really well, and it is inspiring to see how mentally and physically tough [he] is.”

Moving forward in the season, the team learned how vital it is to play with energy throughout the match.

“From the Friday match, we realized how [being] defeated feels and how much our team depends on being focused and energetic from the first point,” Chadalavada said.

Stags Make Easy Work Of Arizona Christian, Westmont

Pomona-Pitzer

Men’s Basketball P-P 93 Cal Lutheran 62 P-P 90 La Verne 46

hands of Arizona Christian in mind, the Sagehens triumphed Saturday at CalTech and on home turf against Cypress College.

The Sagehens topped the Beavers with an 8-6 win by Chadalavada and Kronenberg at No. 1 doubles and an 8-1 win by Josh Gearou PO ’19 and Marko Mandic PO ’18 at No. 2 doubles, while Jack Bernstein PO ’21 and Sam Malech PZ ’18 narrowly lost 9-8 (7-4) at No. 3 doubles.

Holding a 2-1 lead going into the singles, the Sagehens won three more matches to seal the victory.

Kronenberg and Josh Gearou captured wins at No. 1 and 2 singles, but the Beavers proved to be on top of their games, tallying victories at No. 3, 4, and 5 singles.

With the deciding point on the line, all eyes were on Sam Gearou’s match at No. 6 singles.

Gearou said he came into the match with low expectations about his opponent’s skill level.

“It wasn’t until 2-2 in the first set that I realized that this player was pretty good, and had a lot of talent,” he said.

Taken by surprise, Gearou quickly lost the set 6-2. However, after some words with coach Steve Bickham during the changeover between sets, Gearou was reminded to return to his own game style by looking for as many opportunities at the net as possible.

“At 5-5 in the second set, I got really nervous, and got down 30-40 in the game, and I knew if I lost this

Men’s Tennis

CMS 8 Arizona Christian 1

CMS 8 Westmont 1

Men’s Basketball CMS 68 Occidental 62 CMS 85 Whittier 65 Women’s Basketball CMS 69 Whittier 42

From there, CMS dominated the rest of the matches. Led by No. 1 singles player Nikolai Parodi CM ’20, the Stags’ singles players made quick work of the Firestorm, winning all six matches in straight sets.

Later in the afternoon, CMS took on Westmont. Similarly, the Stags went 2-1 in doubles matchups, and held a slim advantage heading into the singles matches. Just as they did earlier in the day, CMS pulled further ahead in singles, and didn’t drop even one set.

The matches showed just how hot the Stags can get, and just how talented they are, especially in singles play.

They will next face off against Colorado College Feb. 16 at home.

Thummim Mekuria • The Student Life

Oscar Burney CM ’21 returns a serve during the CMS vs. Westmont tennis match Feb. 9.

SPORTS PAGE 12

FEBRUARY 16, 2018

THE STUDENT LIFE

COMMENTARY

Trade Deadline Moves Signal Return To Norm For Los Angeles’ Basketball Teams Noah Shapiro

NBA fans in Los Angeles were glued to their phones last Thursday as they tried to keep up with the flurry of moves that were made before the 12 p.m. PST trade deadline. While 22 of the league’s 30 teams made a deal, the two moves with the biggest implications both revolved around L.A. Jan. 29, the Los Angeles Clippers sent franchise cornerstone Blake Griffin to the Detroit Pistons in exchange for Avery Bradley, Tobias Harris, Boban Marjanovic, and two draft picks. Then, the day of the deadline, the Los Angeles Lakers pulled off a shocking swap with the Cavaliers, shipping out Jordan Clarkson and Larry Nance Jr. for Isaiah Thomas, Channing Frye, and a first-round pick.

Dealing away Griffin, a dominant power forward, may seem confusing and cold-hearted, but it’s ultimately best for the future of the franchise.

Griffin was selected by the Clippers with the No.1 pick in the 2009 draft, and, while playing alongside star point guard Chris Paul, oversaw the most successful period in franchise history.

However, after losing Paul to the Houston Rockets last summer, the Clippers’ future was uncertain.

Nevertheless, Griffin doubled down on his commitment to L.A., signing a new five-year contract worth $173 million.

Three months later, with the team sitting a couple games out of the final playoff spot in the competitive Western Conference, the Clippers’ front office was having second thoughts. Dumping Griffin indicates that the Clippers are headed for a rebuild, but the assets they received in the trade have them off to a good start.

While losing their five-time AllStar, they gained two promising young players and will now have two first-round picks this June in one of the most talented drafts in recent history. Frankly, it was a surprise that dominant center

P-P Athlete of the Week Men’s Track and Field Cal Neikirk PO ‘19 Roanoke, Virginia Cal Neikirk PO ’19 got his 2018 track season off to a fast start Feb. 10 at the Occidental Dual Meet, winning three events before the day was done. He took home first place in both the 110- and 300-meter hurdle races, running 15.33 and 39.87 seconds, respectively. Neikirk finished the meet with a win in the high jump, leaping 1.88 meters. The Sagehen will attempt to maintain his string of victories this weekend at Pomona-Pitzer’s All Comers meet Feb. 17.

CMS Athlete of the Week Men’s Baseball Trey Smith CM ‘18 Colleyville, Texas

Courtesy of Keith Allison via Creative Commons

This NBA trade season saw many big deals, including the Los Angeles Clippers dealing franchise cornerstone Blake Griffin to the Detroit Pistons.

DeAndre Jordan and likely 2018 Sixth Man of the Year Lou Williams weren’t also traded for younger assets. The team decided to hold onto Jordan, who can opt out after this season, and signed Williams to a three-year contract extension right before the deadline.

Though the Clippers should have also moved Jordan and/or Williams, it was still the correct move for the Clippers to ship off Griffin. Ultimately the team needs to look to the long-term, and this was the first major step.

As the Clippers moved towards a rebuild, the Lakers let the league know that they plan to return to relevancy sooner than thought —

their trade was all about clearing up enough salary space to sign two players to maximum deals this summer.

Sure, it will be interesting to see how the mercurial but talented Thomas fits into the rotation with Lonzo Ball already starting at point guard, but it won’t concern the team much because Thomas will be a free agent after this season.

Cleveland’s draft pick is also a big pick-up for the Lakers, who do not own their own first-round pick this year.

However, with superstars LeBron James, Paul George, and DeMarcus Cousins all potentially hitting the open market this summer,

CMS SOFTBALL

the Lakers’ main goal was freeing up enough money to lure two big names to Hollywood.

This was a move that will ultimately allow the Lakers to become a powerhouse once again, and now the door is open for superstars to come to Staples Center.

The two trades appear to signal a changing of the guard in Los Angeles; since the retirement of Kobe Bryant, the Clippers have been the best basketball team in L.A. But with the Clippers staring at a rebuild and the Lakers clearing space to pursue superstars, it looks like things are headed back towards tradition.

The Claremont-MuddScripps baseball team traveled to Texas last weekend for a slate of games, and during the trip, Trey Smith CM ’18 exploded offensively for the Stags. Between the team’s loss to University of California, Redlands Feb. 9, and wins over Sul Ross State University and the University of Texas at Dallas Feb. 9 and 10, Smith went 5-13 at the plate with four runs batted in, and added a home run against Texas-Dallas. The senior will look to keep his offensive production going as the Stags’ SCIAC slate gets underway this weekend, with a series against CalTech Feb. 16-17.

COMMENTARY

New-Look Athena Softball Wins Winter Olympics’ Variety Leads Two Of Three On Opening Weekend To Unexpected Entertainment Delaney Hartmann

The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps softball team kicked off its season with an action-packed weekend, winning two of three games Feb. 9 and 10. The Athenas defeated Lewis and Clark College 2-0 Friday, then split a double-header against 2017 SCIAC champion La Verne University.

Star pitcher and NCAA AllAmerican Anna Gurr CM ’18 collected three strikeouts in three innings against Lewis and Clark, while Molly Spaniac CM ’21, Chloe Amarilla CM ’19, and Carly Rodeler CM ‘18 all collected hits to propel CMS to victory over the Pioneers.

“The game against Lewis and Clark was a win that we wanted and needed, and it was a good way to get some of the initial nerves out of the way before facing La Verne,” Amarilla said.

On Saturday, the Athenas took on their biggest rival.

“Facing La Verne was a good way to start off the season and to experience the competitive energy of rivalry again,” Amarilla said.

While the Athenas were looking for a two-win sweep, the team was disappointed by a 5-3 loss in the first game against the Leopards.

“Everyone was a little bummed after the first loss, and it kind of fired us up to attack in the second game,” Rodeler said.

CMS turned it around with a 3-0 win as Amarilla pitched a shutout, only giving up two hits in her seven innings on the mound. Being able to come back to beat the reigning SCIAC champions while using their game two pitcher showed the Athenas’ strength and depth, Amarilla said.

“Winning the second game showed that La Verne is a beatable team, and that we have strength in our reserves and depth,” Amarilla said.

This season, the Athenas are fielding a deep team even while heading into a rebuilding period.

Gina Oaks Garcia is in her first year as head coach, and a group of

first-years make up four out of nine starting players.

“We were all a little nervous to see how we would play with such a different group, and to be able to play as well as we did in the second game was really big,” Amarilla said.

Rodeler agreed: “The team has become a clean slate, and everyone is working hard and trying to prove themselves.”

Amarilla also noted a change in the team dynamic this season.

“Our freshman class is really strong, and they came in with a different energy that we haven’t seen in a while,” she said. “They are really hard-working, and excited about softball. Our new coach has really worked on changing team

culture, and it is a lot more fun with a lot better energy in the dugout, while we are still working hard and getting along well.”

Moving forward, the Athenas hope to win the regular season conference title, which would allow them to host the championship tournament. This would put them on course to their biggest goal: winning the SCIAC championship game.

“We have some really important seniors on the team, and I think this year would be a really good year to come away with the SCIAC win,” Amarilla said.

The Athenas now look ahead to their next home game Feb. 16 versus non-conference opponent Linfield.

Courtesy of Republic of Korea

Pyeongchang, South Korea is host to the 2018 Winter Olympics, where events such as bobsledding, luge, and the biathlon may be overshadowed by the geopolitical implications of the international sporting event.

Danny Klain

Courtesy of CMS Athletics

Star pitcher and NCAA All-American Anna Girr CM ’18 helped clinch two wins for the Athenas over the course of the weekend.

Last Saturday evening, as I sat down to eat dinner at a restaurant in the Village, I looked up at the television and was confused.

I asked my friend why NBC would show what I believed to be competitive speed skating on a random Saturday night past their prime time window. My friend was quick to point out that it was not just some random international speed skating competition — it was the Winter Olympics.

I was shocked. I had completely forgotten about a global sporting event. News alerts had come across my screen to warn me, articles had passed through my different social media news feeds, I had watched NBC Sports Network earlier that day, and yet I still erased it from my memory.

To be completely honest, I had always thought of the Winter Olympics as slightly irrelevant. I considered it to be the little brother to the highly anticipated Summer Olympics, with events like curling and ski jumping (both of which I had to Google to make sure they were still part of the Winter Olympics) it was hard for me to take the wintertime event seriously. Sure,

these sports can be entertaining, but it’s difficult to find the amazing athleticism that is so consistently on display in the Summer Olympics.

It was also hard to get excited about these current Olympics given current events. Being that the Olympics are hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea, there are huge geopolitical implications that linger around the competition. With North Korean athletes competing, certain Russian athletes competing as Olympic Athletes from Russia (the Russian team is banned as a result of their widespread doping scandal), and the United States’ current reputation on a global scale, questions about current international relations and political regimes clouded for me what is meant to be an occasion to celebrate our wide range of spectacular athletes at their pinnacle.

However, this week, I found that there is actually so much to enjoy about the Winter Olympics. The thrills of the Olympics are not the events you anticipate and take up the primetime blocks, but rather the daytime fillers. Turning on the broadcast in the middle of the day you can find events you have no knowledge about and become completely consumed. You become attached to athletes you have never

heard of before from either home or abroad, and you cheer them to success as you try to understand the rules and methods of the event.

Events like bobsled, luge, or the biathlon are competitions you only see once every four years, and you will probably never see the same competitors, so you dive into the moment, taking it in for all it is. You watch as athletes you have never heard of become familiar names by their second run, and you hope they can shave off a second here or catch their opponents there. By the end of the competition you become such an expert on the sport you believe you can spot a mistake made by an athlete right away.

Monday, before I watched 17-year-old phenom Chloe Kim crush the halfpipe, I watched the 1,500-meter speed skating competition, then later a freestyle skiing competition. In all of these I knew none of the people competing at the start, but by the end there were athletes I was rooting for. As the competition heads into the weekend, I personally cannot wait to watch events like the bobsled and skeleton just to see the pure speed athletes fly in these races. Hopefully everyone can find something to cheer on as well.