Volume CXXXI, No. 22

THE

STUDENT

LIFE

The student newspaper of the Claremont Colleges since 1889

CLAREMONT, CA

FRIDAY, MAY 3, 2019

VOL. CXXI NO. 22

8 high-level admins leave Pomona under Starr

CMC trustees delay Keckxit, wait for more funding

Community questions transparency, continuity of leadership BECKY HOVING & JULIA FRANKEL At least eight high-level Pomona College administrators have departed or announced their departures from the school since President G. Gabrielle Starr took office in July 2017, a significantly higher rate of turnover than in the first years of President Emeritus David Oxtoby’s administration.

The high rate of turnover has students worried about a lack of institutional memory, which they say has resulted in unin-

formed administrative decisions. “[Administrative turnover] sets back any kind of student activism or any kind of administrative relationship,” said Emily Coffin PO ’19, a former ASPC senator and member of Pomona’s suspended advocates program for survivors of sexual assault program. “I question the productivity of constantly having to go back, reinvent the wheel and redefine what relationships [with administrators] look like.”

Over the last two years, Dean of Students Miriam Feldblum,

Career Development Office director Mary Raymond, vice president and chief communications officer Marylou Ferry, vice president of advancement Pamela Besnard have all left the school.

During the 2018-19 academic year, Dean of Campus Life Christopher Waugh, Dean of the College Audrey Bilger and associate dean of wellness Jan Collins-Eaglin followed in their colleagues’ footsteps, announcing they would be departing this summer. Treasurer Karen Sisson announced she would be leaving at the end of the calendar year.

TSL looked into Pomona’s recent spate of administrative departures; while some moved on to more prestigious positions or other careers, others left mid-semester — and some left without an official announcement to students about their departure, or claim they were fired.

Raymond expressed extreme discontent about the circumstances of her departure, scathingly critiquing the Pomona administration for dismissing her with little warning. Raymond worked at Pomona for nearly eight years, according to her

LinkedIn page.

Raymond went on sick leave prior to Dean of Students Avis Hinkson’s first day, and returned to the Career Development Office Oct. 1. Months later, she said she was called into a meeting where she was told she would no longer have a future at Pomona.

Raymond linked her dismissal to what she said was the Starr administration’s goal to shuffle in a new cohort of administrators.

MEGHAN BOBROWSKY Claremont McKenna College hasn’t yet met the fundraising threshold needed to start its formalized three-year withdrawal process from the Keck Science Department, creating uncertainty about the plan’s timeline, Keck dean Ulysses Sofia told TSL Tuesday.

The CMC Board of Trustees last week decided to wait to officially leave the joint science program, which CMC currently shares with Scripps College and Pitzer College, CMC Dean of the Faculty Peter Uvin said via email Tuesday. In October, CMC told the 5C community it was planning to leave Keck.

The board of trustees has “high standards” for the departure process, including covering all construction costs before they’re willing to authorize the formal withdrawal, Uvin said in an email to students and staff Thursday.

“This is a really expensive endeavor — to start a brand new, large department. They have a lot of money to raise in order to make this work,” Sofia said. “And in a way, it’s not surprising that they haven’t raised as much money as they feel like they need to by this point just because of the total cost of something of this magnitude.”

CMC also needs to do more planning and evaluation to ensure they’re “fully prepared to complete a transition to a new organizational model,” Uvin said in the Tuesday email.

However, the board did vote to begin creation of a CMC-only science department, which is “a strong statement that they are [eventual-

See POMONA on Page 2

Sabrine Griffith HM ’20 (left) took fourth and Vicky-Marie Addo-Ashong PO ‘20 (right) was third in the 100-meter hurdles at the SCIAC Championships April 28.

ADAM KUBOTA • THE STUDENT LIFE

See KECK on Page 3

CMS wins both track titles, Page 9

Campus Safety to implement body cameras PATRICK LIU Campus Safety officers will start wearing body cameras this fall to help investigations and serve as a measure of accountability for the officers, according to consortium spokesperson Kim Lane.

“These cameras are a useful tool in helping us to record key information during responses to reported crime,” Lane said via email. “They also allow us to proactively review and assess officers’ actions and interactions so that we can provide appropriate training.”

Prior to deciding to implement the program, Campus Safety spoke to several officials at the colleges, Lane said, but didn’t say who.

The policies for the cameras are still being developed, but Campus Safety is striving “to balance individual privacy rights with community safety and transparency,” Lane said.

The department is reviewing recommendations from various legal, professional, social and justice organizations.

Pitzer Student Senate President Shivani Kavuluru PZ ’19

and ASPC President Alejandro Guerrero PO ’19 both said they were unaware of the new body camera policy. Other 5C student body presidents didn’t respond to requests for comment.

5C Prison Abolition Collective, an organization that “seeks to deconstruct the conventional idea that imprisonment is the solution to social, economic and political problems,” expressed disappointment that the student community hasn’t had more input so far, “as it will directly affect so many students’ well-being and privacy.”

Campus Safety staff will meet with student and campus leaders to provide more information about body cameras as they grow closer to rolling the system out, Lane said.

PAC head officers Emma Li SC ’21 and Mackenzie Rutherford SC ’21 and members Jo Choe PO ’21 and Elle Biesemeyer SC ’21 condemned the decision.

“Rather than creating systems of accountability, body camera footage has been historically used/ignored to reduce consequences for officers who have committed harm against the very people they are sup-

posed to protect,” they said in a joint statement via email.

PAC said the body cameras “[increase] the scope of [Campus Safety’s] policing power and control over students” and are unlikely to help increase accountability because the footage will likely remain private.

“In order to maintain student privacy, video footage is unlikely to ever be released to the greater community which leaves the task of holding [Campus Safety] accountable in the hands of [Campus Safety],” the PAC members said.

Campus Safety staff and others with “legitimate investigative needs,” including the Claremont Police Department, would have access to the body camera footage, which would be automatically destroyed after 180 days unless Campus Safety is legally required to preserve it, Lane said.

The possibility of body cameras has further stoked concerns about biased policing of students of color on campus.

“Implementing body cameras jeopardizes the privacy and safety of those who are most surveilled: brown and black

LIFE AND STYLE

students on campus,” the PAC members said.

Kavuluru agreed that there is a “legitimate concern of biased reporting.

“Students and faculty have expressed to me that an increase in cameras around campus would only cause black and brown people to feel like they are being constantly policed,” she said.

The body cameras are the latest in a line of recent additions to Campus Safety’s tools.

The department began using drones 16 months ago to assist in emergency and crisis situations, Lane said, as well as to provide additional protection for high-profile visitors.

Campus Safety has also started to use tire lock clamps, more commonly known as boots, on vehicles associated with three or more overdue parking citations.

“Booting is less expensive and more convenient for registered owners than were we to tow the vehicle,” she said.

Boots are removed after outstanding tickets are paid, along with a $40 administrative fee to Campus Safety.

MEGHAN BOBROWSKY • THE STUDENT LIFE

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tx., visited Claremont McKenna College for his wife Heidi’s 25-year college reunion last weekend.

OPINIONS

More than 100 student dancers will perform at the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company’s spring performance “Break-Up to Make-Up.

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SPORTS

Scripps’ inaction on sustainability efforts contradicts its mission as a liberal arts college, some students argue in an opinions piece.

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CMC VIP: Cruz cruises through on alumni weekend

Tennis players Catherine Allen SC ’20 and Caroline Cox CM ’21 are the defending national champions doubles team.

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NEWS.............................1 LIFE & STYLE..................4 OPINIONS.....................6 SPORTS..........................9

NEWS THE STUDENT LIFE

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MAY 3, 2019

CMC, Scripps students push for higher commitments to carbon neutrality, sustainability JASPER DAVIDOFF On the heels of Earth Week, Scripps College and Claremont McKenna College are considering student proposals to further their carbon emissions reduction efforts.

Scripps is moving to join the Presidents’ Climate Leadership Commitment, a network of schools working to address climate change, Scripps Associated Students sustainability chair Sondra Abruzzo SC ’19 said. The rest of the 5Cs have already committed.

The commitment obligates colleges to develop a framework for achieving carbon neutrality “as soon as possible.”

Scripps’ Sustainability Committee is beginning a yearlong process to join the commitment by drafting a budget proposal for the Presidential Budget Advisory Committee, which would then have to be approved by President Lara Tiedens and the board of trustees, Abruzzo said.

However, a representative from Second Nature said no one from Scripps has reached out to the organization about taking the pledge.

“I’m happy that they’re strongly considering it, but we should have a conversation prior to them signing so they fully understand what the requirements are,” said Steve Muzzy, Second Nature’s senior manager of climate programs.

Despite the committee’s efforts, students are skeptical of the college’s overall efforts toward sustainability compared to the rest of the consortium, Abruzzo said.

“Scripps is so green … it looks like we’re so sustainable. Why are we the only the school that’s not signed on to a carbon commitment?

Students want to see that,” Abruzzo said. “As a liberal arts institution that promotes social justice and action by students, this is a really great way to show you care.”

Both the 2018-19 and 201920 SAS bodies backed joining the commitment.

Scripps spokesperson Rachael Warecki declined to comment on Scripps’ carbon neutrality and sustainability plans, its decision not to sign on to the commitment, data on its greenhouse gas emissions and its collaboration or lack thereof with the other 5Cs on sustainability.

When asked about sustainability and carbon neutrality for a TSL opinion article, Warecki said via email administrators has met with students about the topic “on multiple occasions.”

“Scripps has encouraged these students to work with the sustainability committee on proposals regarding carbon reduction,” she said.

ASCMC is also pushing CMC toward more ambitious sustainability goals. The student government unanimously passed a resolution last week supporting moving

up CMC’s carbon neutrality target date from 2050, its current goal, to 2030.

This resolution is the first one ASCMC has passed in four years.

ASCMC President Dina Rosin CM ’20 said via email that the resolution “was an entirely student-driven effort to push for a more sustainable campus. “[I] am ready to work with college administrators to ensure that student voices are being valued at the highest level,” she said.

ASCMC Environmental Affairs Committee members Sam Becker CM ’19 and Andrew Bradjan CM ’22 presented the proposal to the Campus Planning and Facilities Committee of the board of trustees a few days later, with the ultimate goal of having it included in the school’s Campus Master Plan.

“The [board of trustees] committee seemed very interested in what we had to say,” Becker said after the presentation. “We’re excited to continue to engage with this idea moving forward in the Master Plan update process.”

CMC spokesperson Peter Hong said CMC is analyzing its progress toward carbon neutrality and looking into the viability of moving its carbon neutrality target date to 2030.

Becker and Bradjan cited carbon emissions progress from peer institutions, including Pomona College, which has a 2030 target, as

evidence that a more aggressive carbon neutrality target is needed.

“We feel that in order for CMC to continue its stated goal of leadership, it needs to adopt a more ambitious carbon neutrality goal,” Bradjan said.

Pomona committed to the 2030 target in 2017, making it the only 5C to do so. According to data the college reported last year, Pomona has made the greatest reductions

“The circumstances in which I left were not my choice,” Raymond said. “I would have never left my department high and dry when we’re so short on staff, but it seems as if there was a goal to clean up and get rid of people.”

Hinkson denied Raymond was fired.

“I don’t know why she would say that,” Hinkson said.

“As far as I’m concerned, that was a resignation.”

Hinkson cited an announcement sent to students Jan. 10, which described Raymond’s departure as a resignation to “give more attention to family matters.”

Raymond attributed the series of recent departures to Starr’s administration.

“Whenever new leadership comes to a college, it’s always with an understanding that this is a fresh start,” she said.

During her tenure, the college “became an untenable place to work and anyone who could was seeking a job elsewhere, unless they’re the type of people who just don’t get hired anywhere,” Raymond said.

Raymond said she plans on pursuing legal action against the college for firing her. Hinkson and assistant vice president of human resources Brenda Rushforth declined to comment on potential legal action because it involves a confidential personnel matter.

Ferry, like Raymond, departed suddenly from the college.

Pomona issued no official announcement to students when she left in March. Ferry could not be reached by press time, though her LinkedIn page says she has begun working as a senior public relations consultant in the Los Angeles area.

Hinkson declined to comment on Ferry’s departure. Pomona doesn’t plan to replace Ferry, Starr said in a faculty meeting April 3.

Besnard’s departure also wasn’t announced to students.

In a March 19 email to faculty, Starr said Besnard is beginning a job as chief advancement officer at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City in May. Collins-Eaglin’s departure was announced Dec. 6, a day after a TSL interview with Collins-Eaglin and Hinkson, in which the two deans responded to student complaints about the then dean of wellness.

In the December email, Hinkson said Collins-Eaglin would begin a phased retirement, and will officially leave Pomona when a new associate dean of

wellness is hired.

Collins-Eaglin has not yet officially left Pomona, though she’s been on frequent leave this past semester. When TSL reached out to Collins-Eaglin March 26, an email from her office said she had been on leave from Feb. 23 to March 4.

When TSL reached out to Collins-Eaglin April 28, an email from her office said she is on leave until the end of May, though no replacement has been announced yet.

Feldblum’s departure was announced midway through the spring 2018 semester, while she was on sabbatical. In an email to TSL, Feldblum said Oxtoby invited her to co-found the Presidents’ Alliance, an organization of educational leaders convened to speak out in support of immigrant rights, and she “jumped at the chance.

“It was during the sabbatical that I let the college know I was staying with the new organization and not returning,” Feldblum said.

Sisson is shifting careers after 11 years at Pomona. She said now seemed like an opportune moment for her to depart.

“My 40th reunion is coming up,” said Sisson, who graduated from Pomona in 1979. “I was reflecting that Oxtoby had the privilege of being president for about 14 years. Our hope is that President Starr will have that long a tenure, and it would be great [for her to] have someone in this job that would be there for her and that wasn’t going to be me.”

Pomona history professor Gary Kates, who also served as dean of the college from 2001 to 2009 under Oxtoby and his predecessor Peter Stanley, said administrative turnover can happen frequently because administrators don’t have tenure.

“When you are a senior staff administrator, you work at the pleasure of the president,” Kates said. “And so a shift in the presidency is hard and insecure.”

Raymond agreed with that assessment.

“Staff, especially in the student affairs line, are hired at will and serve at the will of the president, and so there are really no protections for us,” she said.

Under Oxtoby, who served from 2003 to 2017, administrative departures occurred over a larger time frame, according to Kates.

Though most vice presidents who worked at Pomona when Oxtoby began his presidency had departed by 2012, Kates found that turnover felt “much more normal.

“When there was disruption,

it was always over singular departures,” Kates said.

Other administrators, such as Bilger and Waugh, are departing Pomona with prestigious career opportunities in higher education in sight. Pomona politics professor Susan McWilliams, who has been at Pomona for 13 years, attributes those departures to Pomona’s reputation as a premier liberal arts college.

“These are people who are getting really good promotions, and it is a reflection of the excellence of the individuals and of Pomona that [recruiters] from other institutions are trying to poach our people,” McWilliams said.

Bilger will become president of Reed College this summer, Starr said in an email to students April 27. Waugh will become dean of students at St. Ambrose College, Hinkson announced via email the day before.

“I am excited for the opportunities people are receiving. For example, while I am sad to see her leave, I consider it a point of pride for Pomona that [Bilger] is going to become president of Reed College,” Starr said via email. “We have a very capable team in place to carry out our educational mission, and we are diligently moving forward with key searches.”

However, the departures to other schools has left some students wondering how committed administrators are to their roles at Pomona.

“We look at ourselves as this incredibly prestigious college, but are administrators just coming here to have a deanship as a stepping stone?” Coffin said.

This academic year has brought with it heightened tensions between administrators and students as a result of a series of decisions, such as the suspension of Pomona’s advocates program, the restriction of the use of electronic lists that ban guests from parties and a decision to move Pomona’s Orientation Adventure program to students’ second year, which was later reversed.

In light of these tensions and the high levels of turnover, students have expressed concerns about a loss of institutional memory and degradation of traditions and customs they hold dear.

Sam Rubin PO ’19, who advocated for the preservation of Pomona’s OA program in the wake of Hinkson’s initial decision to suspend it, mentioned the controversy as an example of the negative effects of administrative turnover.

“One administrator could make a decision that has a dras-

finalizing a 10-year emissions audit, according to Tanja Srebotnjak, director of the Hixon Center for Sustainable Environmental Design at HMC. The school hasn’t adopted a comprehensive Climate Action Plan, even though the Presidents’ Climate Leadership Commitment calls for signatories to develop one.

Haidee Clauer contributed reporting.

COURTESY OF PITZER COLLEGE

Pitzer’s solar installation on the roof of West Hall.

POMONA: Hinkson says turnover is ‘common’ Continued from Page 1

of the consortium, cutting net emissions by 43% since 2008.

Pitzer College, which has a 2050 carbon neutrality target, has also made significant progress on carbon reduction, reporting a 41% decrease in emissions since 2008.

Scripps and Harvey Mudd College have not adopted a fixed carbon neutrality target date.

HMC has not reported emissions data to Second Nature, but is in the process of

tic effect, and then when they leave and another administrator comes in, they don’t know what happened or what the history is,” Rubin said. “OA is an example of that — someone new came in and made a decision without really knowing the context.”

Incoming ASPC President Miguel Delgado-Garcia PO ’20 agreed with Rubin.

“When OA and advocates and traditional things that we are used to as being a part of our Pomona experience get disrupted, that’s when students realize, ‘Oh something is amiss or something is up here,’” Delgado-Garcia said.

Administrators contend that turnover is natural and healthy in the early years of a new administration.

“In my experience, it is common that [when] there is a new president, there is turnover,” Hinkson said. “It’s a moment when lots of people reflect on their own careers, what opportunities they may have taken advantage of and what opportunities they may not have.”

While students blame administrative turnover for what they perceive as rash decisions, faculty members claim responsibility for protecting and preserving institutional memory.

“We’re the people here on indefinite contracts,” McWilliams said. “We’re the people here for 40 years, and we don’t need to count on administration to remember institutional history for us.”

Kates said much of Pomona’s bureaucratic expansion as a premier liberal arts institution has contributed to a loss of traditions and values.

“Many faculty feel that the administration has gotten so large that a bureaucracy has been created, and that endangers what Pomona has meant to so many generations,” Kates said.

He warned that Pomona may be becoming too large to preserve its traditions.

“In the 1950s, we were an intimate faculty-governed institution, and we’re losing it because of our fortune and resources,” he said. “The greatest danger is us becoming too big.”

Waugh, who’s been with Pomona for eight years, said administrative turnover can be a positive thing.

“Institutional memory is taking on more momentum than it should,” Waugh said.

“One of the dark sides of clinging to institutional memory is a resistance to change. Every organization needs to evolve with the changing times.”

Scripps to remodel Motley, purchase bus JAIMIE DING Scripps College is embarking on a number of projects with its 2019-20 budget, including remodeling the Motley Coffeehouse, purchasing a bus, renovating several buildings and installing more solar panels.

In summer 2020, the Motley is scheduled to be remodeled to “modernize their food service platform,” Scripps treasurer Dean Calvo and Dean of Faculty Amy Marcus-Newhall said in a joint statement.

The renovations will include rearranging the coffee house’s layout to address queuing and storage issues, as well as replacing furnishings and equipment.

The business affairs office, facilities and student affairs office are working with the Motley student team to discuss these renovations and plan a new design during the 201920 academic year.

Additionally, Scripps will purchase a bus, similar to Pomona College’s Sagecoach, which students, student groups and academic departments can rent for activities and trips.

The bus purchase is “closely aligned with the innovative learning, inclusive student success and mission-driven outreach themes of the college’s new strategic plan,” Calvo and Marcus-Newhall said via email.

Former Scripps Associated Students vice president of student affairs Casey Harris SC ’19 said via message that she thinks getting a bus will make it easier for professors to take classes on field trips and for clubs or organizations to plan off-campus excursions.

“I know Scripps students are often frustrated by being so close to LA but not being able to take advantage of all the city has to offer,” Harris

said. “Hopefully, a bus will help remedy that issue.”

Scripps will also install solar panels on the roofs of Steele Hall and Lang Studios this summer. The project is anticipated to generate 229.6 kilowatt hours of new power, according to Calvo and Marcus-Newhall — enough to power more than 2,000 laptops per hour.

Solar panels were installed on Routt Hall in 2016 and Garrison Theater in 2017, they said.

Former SAS sustainability chair Sondra Abruzzo SC ’19, who attended a budget presentation April 23, said she was disappointed to see so few sustainability measures implemented with the money.

“The entire theme of the talk was investing in the future generations of Scripps and making sure they get returns on those investments. I’m glad they are getting solar on Lang/[S]teele, but that’s actually not that much in the grand scheme of things,” Abruzzo said via message.

Tiernan Field House and Mary Kimberly and Wilbur Halls will also be renovated this summer to increase accessibility, based on issues identified by Scripps staff.

In addition to these projects, Scripps President Lara Tieden’s highest priority this year was funding for financial aid and scholarships, Calvo and Marcus-Newhall said. Financial aid funding was increased, according to the presentation.

Scripps’ budget process starts with the Presidential Budget Advisory Committee meeting with the president to establish priorities for the year, according to Calvo and Marcus-Newhall, who are both on PBAC. After reviewing budget requests from the community and allocating resources, the PBAC recommends a budget model to the Board of Trustees Financial Stewardship Committee, which is eventually approved by the board.

CAMILA MEJIA • THE STUDENT LIFE

Scripps College will remodel the Motley Coffeehouse in summer 2020.

NEWS THE STUDENT LIFE

MAY 3, 2019

PAGE 3

Colleges issue hand-foot-and- KECK: ‘We’re in limbo,’ prof says mouth, measles warnings ELINOR ASPEGREN After several cases of the viral hand-foot-and-mouth disease on campus and a measles outbreak at nearby colleges, the 5Cs are warning students about virus-prevention measures to avoid the spread of these diseases.

Three Claremont McKenna College students have been diagnosed with HFMD in the past three weeks, CMC Dean of Students Diana Graves wrote in an email to students last week.

HFMD is a contagious virus common in infants and children, but it “can also be contracted and spread among adults living in close environments such as residence halls,” Graves said.

Symptoms include a rash or sores in the mouth, palms of hands and soles of the feet, as well as flu-like symptoms.

The disease is communicable through mucus, saliva and fluids from open rashes or sores.

While there’s no specific treatment for HFMD, symptoms are treated with overthe-counter pain relievers and mouthwashes/spray.

Nearly all patients recover in seven to 10 days.

To avoid contracting HFMD, students shouldn’t attend classes or visit dining halls if they have open rashes or sores, a fever of 100.4 degrees Fahrenheit or higher, are coughing or sneezing or otherwise feeling ill, Student Health Services said in a press release.

Students should also wash their hands frequently, disinfect surfaces and electronic devices and avoid close contact with students who are ill, Eric Clark, staff physician and interim clinical lead at SHS, said via email.

“If [students] have a roommate, teammate, or friend who has a sore throat, cough, runny nose, or fever, then assume that they have a viral illness and limit close contact with them,” Clark said.

“Compared to a lot of viral illnesses, hand-foot-and-mouth disease is [more] benign and people fully recover in a short period.”

SHS also emailed students about about measles, which has recently spread on the campuses of UCLA and California State University, Fuller-

ton, leading to the quarantine of nearly 800 students, according to KTLA. While the 5Cs haven’t experienced any cases of measles yet, Clark is a “bit more worried” about the disease because it is a “much more serious illness.”

The U.S. is currently experiencing its biggest measles outbreak since 2000, when it was considered eradicated from the country, Clark said.

Initial symptoms of measles include high fever, cough, runny nose and red, watery eyes, Clark said.

Two or three days after symptoms begin, tiny white spots may appear inside the mouth.

If students have these symptoms, Clark asked students to call SHS or another medical provider as soon as possible before visiting, to “avoid infecting others.

“I encourage students who are not vaccinated against measles to get the vaccination as soon as possible. This protects them and others as well,” he wrote.

“We do offer immunizations at the [SHS] for $85.”

Pitzer’s dean of faculty to take year off, study liberal arts colleges abroad

ELINOR ASPEGREN • THE STUDENT LIFE

Giselle Hernandez SC ’22 (left) and Synaida Maiche CM ’22 work on a chemistry lab at Keck Science Department Oct. 18, 2018.

Continued from Page 1 ly] going forward” with their departure, Sofia said.

They also approved “continuous development of architectural and site plans, refinements to our financial model, accelerated fundraising and the search for a founding chair,” Uvin said.

In February, Pitzer Dean of Faculty Nigel Boyle said via email that he anticipated CMC “making its formal declaration” to withdraw in April. However, the original email Uvin sent out following the announcement in October did not include a timeline of CMC’s anticipated withdrawal.

The initial announcement that CMC would be leaving Keck, which has been shared by the three schools since 1964, shocked students and faculty members, who weren’t involved in discussions prior to the decision being made public.

Despite this, ongoing plans for the expansion of current Keck facilities, which have been in the works since 2006, haven’t slowed. Scripps

and Pitzer have forged ahead, raising millions of dollars for their new building, which is scheduled to open in 2022.

In April, CMC faculty overwhelmingly voted to approve the school’s decision to leave Keck and create its own science department. One week later, the board of trustees gave CMC a greenlight to kickstart the new program, Uvin said in the Tuesday email.

However, they also decided CMC isn’t ready for a “binding timeline” or “transition plan” that would start the three-year formalized withdrawal process, Uvin said.

It’s unclear when CMC will formally announce its withdrawal, which Sofia said “does put a little bit of uncertainty into this whole plan.”

But plans for a new $65 million Pitzer-Scripps building will not be impacted, he said.

“We had already been planning for just a Pitzer-Scripps financed building, and really we’re just going to continue to move forward,” he said. “This shouldn’t delay us in any way.”

Mike Segawa, Pitzer’s vice president of student affairs, agreed with Sofia that the delay

wouldn’t slow progress on the new Pitzer-Scripps building yet. But, he said, “certainly, if uncertainty comes later in this kind of transition process, that becomes more of a challenge.”

Some had hoped CMC would initiate its departure sooner.

Asked about the board of trustees’ decision, Boyle responded with the “ ” emoji.

He later added that the move was “very disappointing.”

Keck chemistry professor Mary Hatcher-Skeers said the uncertainty surrounding Keckxit makes it difficult to plan for the future.

“What it means is we’re in limbo still,” she said.

Sofia acknowledged that Scripps and Pitzer would prefer a defined timeline, but said each college has their own interests, which don’t always overlap.

“I think everybody would have preferred if there was a formal withdrawal just to get that sort of uncertainty a little bit out the way,” he said. “But we are going to move forward and that’s what’s important for Keck Science.”

ADAM KUBOTA • THE STUDENT LIFE

Pitzer College Dean of Faculty Nigel Boyle will be leaving for the 2019-20 academic year to study liberal arts colleges abroad.

KIRA MATTHEWS Nigel Boyle, Pitzer College’s dean of faculty and vice president for academic affairs, will be leaving the school for the 2019-20 academic year to study liberal arts colleges as a Fulbright Global Scholar in Pakistan, Vietnam and Germany.

He’ll return to Pitzer for the 2021-22 academic year to his previous position as director of the Institute for Global-Local Action and Study, which he left four years ago to become the dean of faculty.

While abroad, Boyle will conduct research and teach at Habib University in Karachi, Pakistan, Fulbright University Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City and Leuphana University in Lüneburg, Germany, for eight weeks each.

“I’m interested in thinking again about what it means to be an experimental liberal arts college,” Boyle said.

This is the outgoing dean’s second Fulbright. He previously spent a year in Germany doing research and began his career at Pitzer in 1992 as a professor of political studies.

Since then, he’s come a long way, but still found time to teach two courses and help out with fellowship nominees last semester in addition to his responsibilities as dean.

Brooke Bordonaro PZ ’22, who took Boyle’s “History and Politics of World Soccer” course last semester, is excited for his Fulbright opportunity.

“He is such a great teacher and cares about his students so much,” she said. “No one is more deserving of [the research opportunity] than him.”

Boyle’s interest in this specific project came from negotiating study abroad agreements with global institutions and seeing their similarities

to Pitzer. The school has exchange programs with both Habib University and Leuphana University.

Boyle will teach a short class at each institution and conduct research. He said he wanted the hands-on experience of teaching, as well as the ability to work with administration and faculty and interact with people at all levels of the schools.

“I’ve actually really loved being dean … but I do miss being a professor,” Boyle said.

The outgoing dean praised Habib as “the boldest experiment” among the schools he will visit.

“If you can make a liberal arts college committed to community engagement, affirmative action and a positive engagement with society, if you can make that work in … a country that has big development challenges, cultural challenges — if it can work there, it can work anywhere,” he said.

Boyle won’t be the first 5C administrator to visit Habib — Harvey Mudd College president Maria Klawe gave a speech at the school last year.

Habib’s curriculum was inspired in part by HMC. Reflecting on his four years as dean of faculty, Boyle said one of his most important accomplishments was hiring new professors.

“We’ve hired some incredibly good faculty,” he said, “and that’s a legacy. … These folks are going to be here for the next 30 years.”

He also said he’s “very proud” of the Pitzer Inside Out program that he spearheaded.

The project sends students to attend classes inside prisons with inmates, and the school will soon offer bachelor’s degrees to inmates.

Boyle added that Pitzer’s and Scripps College’s plans

to expand the joint Keck Science Department are “in a great place now,” despite Claremont McKenna College’s planned exit from the program.

He admitted that not everything during his tenure has gone smoothly, though.

Divisive issues such as the school’s study abroad program at the University of Haifa in Israel and campus climate issues have been some of the greatest challenges he’s faced.

“As someone who believes in Pitzer, it’s distressing sometimes when we turn on one another,” he said. “But … that’s inevitable, there’s a long history of this ever since I’ve been here. … Often there’s no solution [to difficult issues], you just need to survive and carry on.”

Allen Omoto, currently Claremont Graduate University’s associate provost and a psychology professor, will be replacing Boyle as dean.

Mita Banerjee, a psychology professor at Pitzer who’s worked closely with Boyle, said via email that she looks forward to him bringing ideas from the foreign schools back to Pitzer.

“After his year away exploring the global context for liberal arts colleges, it will be good to have him return … [to] these projects that help to revitalize teaching, learning and social justice praxis at Pitzer,” she said.

Linus Yamane, an economics professor at Pitzer who’s worked with Boyle since he arrived at Pitzer in 1992, said via email that Boyle “has done an amazing job bringing stability to the college over the last four years,” and that his “most important quality has been bringing people together.”

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LIFE & STYLE PAGE 4 TELE TALK

THE STUDENT LIFE

MAY 3, 2019

While examining ethical dilemmas, ‘The Good Place’ reminds us to extend empathy

AMBER CHONG This article contains spoilers.

Imagine if the action of eating a banana every morning was steadily earning you a place in hell. On the surface, the fruit is cost-effective and nutritious, but it also represents the exploitation of farmworkers and environmental degradation via pesticides and transportation fumes.

This type of moral dilemma drives the premise of NBC’s sitcom “The Good Place.” During your lifetime, actions that benefit society earn you points, while detrimental actions will result in a loss of points.

When you die, your points are summed to determine whether or not you gain entry to a pseudo-heaven — the “Good Place” — a land where puppies can be conjured in an instant.

If you miss the mark, you are doomed to a life of eternal damnation.

It’s the butterfly effect, but on steroids. In this fictional world, life is so black-and-white that the most seemingly inconsequential actions carry monumental weight.

It is also the same ideology that comes under fire in the show’s third season, when shallow and conceited Eleanor (Kristen Bell), choice-averse ethics professor Chidi (William Jackson Harper), philanthropic ego-socialite Tahani (Jameela Jamil) and criminally ignorant aspiring DJ Jason (Manny Jacinto) prove themselves to be

truly decent, loving individuals worthy of redemption.

In the first season, the characters delve into a flurry of ethical dilemmas as they navigate feeling like they don’t belong in the Good Place, only to have their suspicions confirmed — they were set for the Bad Place all along.

However, after the characters prove they can become better people, they are given a second chance in the next season as they are dropped back on Earth to see if they can improve their scores enough to gain entry into the real Good Place.

Throughout the seasons, they confront moral, ethical questions through the study of philosophers such as Kant, Aristotle, Plato and Socrates.

But what’s most humbling about the show is how it subverts the gravity of these schools of thought and emphasizes how inapplicable they can be to everyday life.

The all-knowing and all-seeing judge who determines who gets into the Good Place chows down on burritos while binge-watching NCIS in her free time. The key that unlocks Earth’s dimension is attached to a bubblegum machine frog keychain. The conduit at which all planes of existence merge in time and space is called the Interdimensional Hole of Pancakes, or IHOP. Not only do these visuals infuse a funny, almost phantasmal quality to the afterlife, they also bring into question

the seriousness with which we consider death’s judgment. The point system that makes value judgments on actions removes points for ridiculous “offenses” such as rooting for the New York Yankees or using Facebook as a verb.

Much like our economy and our political sphere, the after-death system of “The Good Place” universe is deeply flawed.

It hasn’t admitted anyone to the Good Place in more than 500 years, emphasizing how hard, and more accurately, impossible, it is to achieve ethical purity. The writers harness the superficiality in condemning these social sins to demonstrate that morality is subjective.

Furthermore, “The Good Place” hones in on the fact that sometimes it’s just damn hard to be moral and mortal. The judge, played by Maya Rudolph, takes a brief trip to Earth to understand what human life is like. She disappears for two seconds only to return exasperated, frantically concluding that “Earth is a mess, y’all … it’s hot and it’s crowded, but somehow also cold and lonely.”

The show also tackles how socioeconomic status can hinder one’s ability to prosper and act with moral intent. Rudolph says, “Also, I guess I’m black?

And they do not like black ladies down there.”

Whereas before she briskly asserts that people should simply stop being lazy and research their bananas, she eventually comes to understand that life is

THE DOWNBEAT

COURTESY OF AITCHISONS VIA FLICKR

Kristen Bell, William Jackson Harper, D’Arcy Carden and Manny Jacinto discuss their roles in NBC’s “The Good Place” at Comic-Con in July 2018.

complicated and messy, sometimes too chaotic for one to even fathom the moral repercussions of their groceries.

It’s a familiar story that viewers of “The Good Place” can empathize with. It begs the question of whether or not we should even be focusing on “good” and “bad.” If anything, the strict delineation between good and bad is futile and dated, because what it means to be a good person — or rather the privilege it takes to be a good person — is so nuanced.

By forcing people into fixed categories, we as a culture sub-

NINA POTISCHMAN • THE STUDENT LIFE

03 Greedo releases ‘Summer In The Projects’ from jail, reminisces about past “Still Summer In The Projects” is the latest release from rapper 03 Greedo, in collaboration with record producer Mustard, and it may be Greedo’s last release for a while.

The rapper was sentenced to 20 years in jail last June for gun and drug possession, remarking in a tweet that he “never thought [he’d] have to retire the year [he] blew up.” According to Rolling Stone, “after Greedo went to prison, Mustard continued to tinker with their songs until they were finished.” The album was released in April.

Though this album is new, there are plenty of references to Greedo’s past. Even the album art — a photo of Greedo in a bright purple coat in front of the projects — feels bittersweet and personal.

The purple is not random; Greedo lived in the Grape Street section of Watts, California, and was a member of the gang Grape Street Crips. He even released a mixtape titled “The Wolf of Grape Street” under the name Greedy Giddy before changing his artist name to 03 Greedo.

The sounds of “Still Summer In The Projects” range from hard and brutal to vulnerable and raw. 03 Greedo is as authentic as he can get: he sings, raps and even produces his own beats for many of his songs.

His voice spans from melodic to nasal, lush to flat, but it is always heavy with emotion.

Greedo talks about love, drugs

Jason’s are time and time again, represents a willingness in humans to adapt and evolve to unforeseen circumstances and hardship. Instead of condemning the main characters for their often greedy or foolish acts, “The Good Place” extends empathy that we should give to our own peers. It espouses that we should treat each day like a reboot: as time to reinvent ourselves.

Amber Chong SC ’22 is TSL’s TV columnist. She probably spends too much time daydreaming, but will come back to Earth to fight you for the last slice of cake.

Scripps Sustainability Fair showcases Earth Week efforts YASMIN ELQUTAMI

ELLA BOYD

scribe to moral righteousness, ignoring our innate tendency to act with both virtue and selfishness. Perhaps then, “The Good Place” implies that staking one’s ego in goodness is the same as laying faith in an arbitrary points system.

One could argue that the constantly changing setting and cliff hangers are meant to incite praise or infuse shock factor to a tedious subject like philosophy.

But the true value is in recognizing how fluid goodness is.

The idea that one’s reality could be “rebooted,” as Eleanor’s, Chidi’s, Tahani’s and

and money, but also about loss, grief and street politics.

The songs are woozy, autotuned, surreal. Mustard’s beats are glossy, slow and hazy, waning from soft guitar strums to light percussion and smooth bass. The album feels more like memory than present, like a nostalgic wistfulness for a past that can never be restored to the true state of memory.

In “Bet I Walk” Greedo gets real about his life, bragging about knowing people in the rap game while talking about how he used to be homeless. At the end of the song Greedo raps, “I’m the king of this fuckin’ rap game, you weird ass bitch / 30 albums, n----- who did it?”

This kind of braggadocio is not Greedo’s default, nor does it prohibit Greedo from showing emotion. In “Gettin’ Ready,” Greedo reminisces about a woman in his life and their separation, rapping, “She say she miss me when I’m not around / Sometimes I feel like I’m worthless, I’m out.”

Greedo sounds invincible again in “Grapevine” in spite of his prison sentence. He raps, “I ain’t worried about no frivolous movement,” but then taps into his more vulnerable emotions one more time for the last song of the album, “Visions.”

In the song, Greedo admits his fears, gently singing the chorus: “Lately I been having these visions / Locked inside a cell with no windows / Hope I make it out of this prison,” followed by the promise that

“I’ll be right back when I’m ready / When I get back, I’ll be richer.” Greedo sounds like he is trying to convince everyone that he will be OK. More than anything else though, he may be trying to convince himself.

03 Greedo is so many things; he is more than just a rapper, a beatmaker or an artist. Greedo is a changemaker, an inspiration, a complicated story, a legend.

Greedo himself said he doesn’t “identify [him]self with anything.” He makes “emo music for gangbangers,” trap music with emotion, sad songs you can vibe to. These juxtapositions represent how a large part of Greedo’s success can be attributed to this reluctance to be labeled any one thing.

In the outro of the last song, a recorded message over a crackly phone plays. Greedo talks from prison, saying, “No selling dope in my music / I’m talkin’ ‘bout the past life, you feel me? / When I get out I’ma be a millionaire, I came in here with me, feel me?”

“Still Summer In The Projects” may be the conclusion of his old life, the closure for a complicated and painful past, but it is more than that.

It is the start of a new life, the start of something different, something bigger.

Ella Boyd SC ’22 is TSL’s music columnist. Besides writing, she enjoys listening to music, discussing pop culture and making art.

Earth Week concluded April 26 with Scripps College’s annual Sustainability Fair, an event that gave students a platform to advertise sustainable initiatives and organizations, while fostering a larger conversation surrounding sustainability.

Several student initiatives and organizations that hosted Earth Week events tabled at the fair, finalizing their week-long efforts to environmentally enlighten 5C students.

“Sustainability means everyone investing in programs and initiatives that are going to make the Earth more livable for everyone on it, and that’s what [the Sustainability Fair] is trying to do,” said Sondra Abruzzo SC ’19, an event organizer and Scripps Associated Students sustainability chair.

Among the groups at the fair was the Pomona EcoReps, Pomona College’s student-run sustainability organization. The EcoReps s p o t l i g h t e d “ We i g h t h e Waste,” an Earth Week initiative meant to combat food waste and overconsumption. Food meant for compost was compiled and weighed at the end of each day at Frary Dining Hall to show students how much food waste they were cre-

ating.

“Our goal is to educate [students] … so they then default to sustainable options,” Eco R e p K a t e McWi l l i a ms PO ’19 said, adding that the initiative’s aim is to make “students aware of the impact of their own daily routines.”

Another group, Pitzer College’s EcoCenter, hosted an event for Earth Week called “Fashion Revolution: Clothes Swap or Sell.” Students could sell and donate clothes, deterring them from fast fashion and promoting reuse. Student artists also sold handmade products at the event. “[A clothing swap] is an easy way to be involved in sustainability on campus, and so many people have so many clothes that they’re not wearing,” event organizer Shanie Kalikow PZ ’22 said. “A way a lot of students relieve stress is by shopping, and even thrifting isn’t totally sustainable.

We’re still shopping more than we need to be.”

The swap was connected with Fashion Revolution, a nonprofit global movement campaigning for fashion industry reform in the name of sustainability and labor rights. Swap attendees received guides from the movement’s website meant to give consumers steps to hold clothing retailers accountable.

“We wanted to create an event that enabled people to do something they needed

to do — sell or buy clothes — and had a message of sustainability and a purpose of teaching people about sustainability in terms of clothing,” Kalikow said.

Several booths at the Scripps fair were purely educational, run by students wanting to raise awareness on a specific sustainability issue.

There was a how-to-recycle booth, a booth on living a no-waste or low-waste lifestyle and a booth advertising an educational carbon tax role-playing game.

McWilliams said there has been a shift in sustainability movements since she entered college.

“A few years ago … the big topic was water waste and the drought,” McWilliams said, referring to the severe drought that rocked California from 2011 to 2018. “Now there’s this perception that we’re out of the drought … so [water] hasn’t been talked about as much. We can focus on more specific but equally as important topics like food, clothes and plastic waste.”

Attendee Selena Lopez PO ’22 noted that sustainability isn’t something that can be accomplished by one person — it has to be a group effort. “[The fair] centralizes our efforts, but it’s up to us to show up, learn and take action on behalf of our planet and our own futures,” she said.

COURTESY OF JULIA MCCARTAN

Students enjoy smoothies made by a bike-powered blender at the Scripps Sustainability Fair May 26.

LIFE & STYLE MAY 3, 2019

THE STUDENT LIFE

UNPACK THE FACTS

Five things you didn’t know about spring cleaning

A dive into Pitzer’s 2019 summer session

MADY COLANTES

KYLA WALKER

With the arrival of spring comes blooming flowers, longer days and birdsong. But for many, spring also brings the Clorox wipes and lemon-scented cleaning sprays necessary to scrub the grime left over from our winter hibernations.

Though spring cleaning may not be everyone’s favorite pastime, it has been a tradition in many cultures throughout history.

Take a break, drop the dustpan and learn about the origins and reasons behind this cleansing custom.

Are you looking to catch up, get ahead on credits or explore more subjects?

5C students have the opportunity to take more undergraduate courses with Claremont faculty, as well as adjunct professors, by registering for equivalent, full-credit 2019 summer session courses at Pitzer College.

Two sessions are available: a two-week accelerated session from May 20 to 31 and a six-week session from May 20 to June 28. A variety of classes will be offered to students including “Knowledge, Mind, Existence & Science Fiction,” “Big Data Analytics” and “Documentary Media.”

The 2019 summer session tuition will be 40% cheaper than taking courses throughout the school year. Students are eligible to register for a maximum number of two courses. The priority regis-

1

There are religious roots and cultural connections…

As is customary, leavened food (called chametz) is strictly forbidden during Passover, a Jewish springtime holiday. Traditionally, in the days leading up to Passover, people observing the holiday would clean their homes in order to get rid of any traces of chametz.

Ancient Persians also practiced spring cleaning. The Persian festival of Nowruz, celebrating the Persian New Year on the vernal equinox, was traditionally preceded by ritual house-cleaning to prepare for the new year. The tradition, called “khooneh takouni” or “shaking of the house,” is more than 3,000 years old.

Finally, Chinese tradition also includes spring cleaning.

Leading up to Lunar New Year — which typically occurs between late January and mid-February — people sweep floors, scrub windows and dust off furniture to symbolically remove the bad luck from the previous year. Once Lunar New Year begins, however, all spring cleaning ceases, as sweeping the house during the holiday is thought to sweep away good fortune.

2

...but also a practical premise.

In the days before vacuums and heaters, soot from fireplaces would accumulate in homes over the winter. It was thus common to dust and clean during March, once temperatures were warm enough to open the windows and let

the breeze blow away winter grime.

Biology also plays a role: The increased sunlight in spring decreases levels of melatonin (a sleep-inducing hormone), thus giving us a natural energy boost. And what better way is there to use this extra energy than by breaking out the broom?

3

Exemplary cleanliness

If you need some cleaning inspiration, just turn to Switzerland, which was ranked as the cleanest country in the world in a 2018 report by the Environmental Performance Index. In its rankings, the EPI accounts for factors such as air pollution and water sanitation; in 2018, the U.S. ranked 27th.

While Switzerland may be the cleanest country, the cleanest city belongs to our northern neighbor. Calgary, Canada, is considered to be the world’s cleanest city, despite its hefty population of around 1.3 million. The title for the cleanest U.S. city, meanwhile, goes to Portland, Oregon.

4

Where to dig up some dirt

At some point during your cleaning routine, you should turn to the trusty sponge, a universal image of cleanliness — right? Wrong. Actually, sponges are among the dirtiest household items, containing up to 10 million bacteria per square inch. For reference, that’s about 200,000 times more than what’s on the average toilet seat.

Dishcloths are also frightfully filthy. In one study analyzing dishcloths in U.S. and Canadian cities, researchers found E. coli on 25.6% of towels and salmonella on nearly 14% of dishcloths.

Tempted to purge your home of all sponges and dishcloths now? That’s not necessary. To keep your cleaning items clean, soak your sponges

T ES • AMY LOWND

IFE TL EN D TU HE S

PAGE 5

tration deadline is May 1 and the late registration deadline is May 20.

Pitzer sociology professor Phil Zuckerman will be teaching the course “Sociology Through Film” this summer. He has been a Pitzer faculty member since 1998 and said he encourages students to take advantage of the summer program.

“The purpose [of the summer session] is to provide an outstanding opportunity for students to continue and enrich their education in a rigorous academic atmosphere distinct from the traditional school year,” Zuckerman said.

Claremont Graduate University doctoral candidate Chase Way will be teaching “The AltRight and Occult Religion,” a course not traditionally taught during the academic school year. She is a Wabash Teaching Fellow and a religious studies professor at Mira Costa College.

During the spring semester, Way worked as a teaching

in boiling, soapy water after use, replace them every few weeks and wash your towels and cloths regularly.

5

Clean creatively

As college students, we’re often too broke (or lazy) to get all the fancy, brand-name cleaning supplies. Luckily, there are plenty of ways to hack the system. Vinegar, for instance, can be extremely versatile. Many stained clothes can be treated by spraying them with vinegar before washing, particularly wine and deodorant stains.

You can also easily clean your microwave by heating up a vinegar and water solution until steam forms on the window, and then wiping it down with a (clean) dishcloth.

Baking soda can also be useful: Deodorize your mini fridge by sticking a box of baking soda in the back, or sprinkle and scrub some on grease stains. Happy cleaning!

Mady Colantes PO ’22 creates lists for TSL. She is from Seattle, and when not in shock over the lack of rain in Claremont, she enjoys reading and getting too excited over small things.

ELINOR ASPEGREN • THE STUDENT LIFE

Emma Barker PZ ’21 and Sandra Sublette PZ ’21 work on a lab assignment in Pitzer College’s Scott Courtyard.

assistant at Pitzer and noticed that 5C students have shared her interest and curiosity in religious extremism and violence.

“I hope that [the students] take away a greater depth of knowledge about a group that has very rapidly become influential in our culture,” Way said.

Way said that in her summer class, students will examine the ideology of extreme and under-represented religions not only through reading articles but also by utilizing interactive games.

She described potentially incorporating a game similar to Dungeons and Dragons into her syllabus.

“This game has some aspects of neopaganism integrated into it, very consciously,” Way said.

Way’s sociology and religious studies class will also analyze how alt-right, western movements have reappropriated pagan and occult practices to support a conservative agenda.

“It is very poorly understood. Some people just write [the alt-right] off as fascist and feel like they know what it is,” Way said.“You always need to understand the granularity and the detail of the experience [in ideology].”

According to Way, the intensive six-week summer program allows students to spend a greater amount of time immersed in one topic than during the semester.

“The intensity of [my] class is mirroring the intensity of the movement we’ll be studying,” Way said.

Ultimately, the summer school classes have to equal the number of hours students would typically spend in the classroom and the same amount of work assigned as a full-term course. According to Way, as long as the student is dedicated, they can make the best of the shorter sessions and work hard to fully immerse themselves in the summer courses.

Zuckerman agreed.

“The students that take it seem to love it. Classes are smaller and more intimate. We usually get over 100 enrollments each summer,” he said.

For more information on courses and registration, visit https:// www.pitzer.edu/summer/.

More than 100 students shine at spring ballroom performance ‘Break-Up to Make-Up’ HANK SNOWDON This weekend, more than 100 students will come together for the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company’s spring performance “BreakUp to Make-Up.” The dances relate to the show’s theme, and include Latin and standard dances.

The Latin dances include samba, rumba and jive, while the standard ones include waltz, Viennese waltz, foxtrot and tango.

The show is about 90 minutes and contains 29 numbers.

The ballroom company will also present several senior solos at the event — dances where the seniors perform in small groups for their last

concert in Claremont.

The numbers vary from slow love songs to pop hits.

Songs featured in the show include “Single Ladies” by Beyoncé, “Tainted Love” by Soft Cell, “Shape of You” by Ed Sheeran and “Bye Bye Bye” by *NSYNC. Vanessa Lincoln SC ’21, one of the performers, said all students who can make it should attend the show because “you’ll get to see incredible dancing to some of the greatest songs. Also, fringe, glitter and rhinestones.”

The performance, hosted in Pomona College’s Bridges Auditorium, held its dress rehearsal Thursday night, and will show again Saturday at 6 p.m. and Sunday at 12 p.m.

Tickets can be purchased at https://www.pomona.edu/administration/bridges-auditorium and cost $5 for students, $10 for faculty and staff, $15 for alumni and $20 for general admission.

AMY BEST • THE STUDENT LIFE

Bottom left: Rachel Hall PO ’22 (second from right) smiles while dancing with Lucie Wharton-Moeur SC ’21 (right) at the Claremont Colleges Ballroom Dance Company’s “Break-Up to Make-Up” concert.

Top left: Nicole Pang SC ’20 and Hans Zhou PO ’20 do the cha-cha to the song “Come On Over Baby.”

Right: Jinyi Jiang CM ’19 shines while performing a senior solo with other members of the CCBDC.

OPINIONS THE STUDENT LIFE

PAGE 6

Scripps puts the ‘sus’ in sustainability

THE STUDENT LIFE Editorial Board KELLEN BROWNING, Editor-in-Chief MEGHAN BOBROWSKY, Managing Editor HANK SNOWDON, Managing Editor

Senior Staff MARC ROD, News Editor LANEY POPE, News Editor JULIA FRANKEL, News Associate NATALIE GOULD, Life & Style Editor MABEL LUI, Life & Style Editor SCHUYLER MITCHELL, Life & Style Associate DONNIE DENOME, Opinions Editor ANIKKA VILLEGAS, Opinions Editor TORREY HART, Sports Editor NOAH SHAPIRO, Sports Editor DELANEY HARTMANN, Sports Associate

CASSIE WANG, Production Editor JAMES KARSTEN, Senior Design Editor ANNE JANG, News Designer HELENA ONG, Life & Style Designer DAPHNE YANG, Opinions Designer JILLIAN BATIUK, Sports Designer OLIVIA TRUESDALE, Copy Chief NINA POTISCHMAN, Graphics Editor TALIA BERNSTEIN, Photo Editor AMY BEST, Photo Editor

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

The Editorial Board consists of the editor-in-chief and two managing editors. Aside from the editorial, the views expressed in the opinions section do not necessarily reflect the views of The Student Life.

Email letters, questions and concerns to editor@tsl.news. Email advertising and print subscription inquiries to business@tsl.news.

TSL welcomes letters to the editor, which can be submitted by mail, email or in person at Walker Hall 101 of Pomona College. Letters must be under 400 words (although when an issue is particularly salient, we reserve the right to allow letters to run at a longer length) and submitted by 4 p.m. Wednesday of the week of publication. We reserve the right to decline publication of submitted letters and will not accept anonymous letters, letters containing profanity, factually inaccurate letters, or letters making personal attacks. TSL also reserves the right to edit for spelling, punctuation and grammar. Letters may be signed by a maximum of three people. All letters become the property of TSL and may not be reprinted without prior permission from the Editorial Board.

Singles copies of TSL are free and may be obtained at news stands around campus. Multiple copies may be purchased for $0.47 per copy with prior approval by contacting editor@tsl.news. Newspaper theft is a crime; perpetrators may be subject to disciplinary action as well as civil and/or criminal prosecution.

EDITORIAL BOARD

Spring semester: Who we covered, and who we didn’t Every semester at TSL, we aim to cover the 5C community in the most fair and equitable way possible.

We have a unique challenge (and opportunity) in that our newspaper is responsible for writing stories about five different schools — seven, if you count our two graduate institutions — two sports teams, five administrations and five student governments.

In an effort to be more transparent, we’ve analyzed our news coverage for the spring semester to breakdown who we’re really covering, by school.

In a perfect world, we would cover each college directly proportional to the size of each student body — equitably as opposed to equally.

To quantify the spread and depth of our coverage, we reviewed our articles to see which schools they focused on. In the fall, we completed a similar exercise, analyzing our coverage by measuring the breakdown of students mentioned in our stories by school.

This semester, we calculated the total proportion of our coverage that mentions each school, which we believe to be a much more valuable way to measure how well we are reaching our goal of equitable reporting.

In our 107 news articles to date this spring, there are 195 mentions of at least one of the five colleges. By dividing the number of times each school is covered by 195, we can see what percentage of our news coverage is devoted to each

HANK SNOWDON • THE STUDENT LIFE

school.

We’re proud to say that our news coverage this semester almost completely reflected the breakdown of students in our college community. [infogram id=”b5d427a1-f6b04af3-826d-1a1532e616e0” prefix=”T2n” format=”interactive” title=”Untitled infographic”] The proportion of our news coverage that focuses on Pomona College, Scripps College and Harvey Mudd College is within one percentage point of the percentage of students at the 5Cs who go to those schools.

The only significant differences arose in our coverage of news at Pitzer College and Claremont McKenna College.

The over-coverage of Pitzer is largely explainable — we featured numerous articles on Pitzer’s controversial situation regarding its study abroad program at the University of Haifa in Israel.

While we were careful to avoid over-covering the student deaths at CMC in February as

MAY 3, 2019

our community grieved, we still missed our mark with our coverage of the school overall. Going forward, we’ll attempt to make a more concerted effort to better equalize our coverage.

Overall though, it was a largely successful semester by this metric. One reason for our equitable coverage is that we hired five editorial assistants at the beginning of the semester, who were each assigned to a different college. They went to student government meetings and faculty meetings, when allowed, to ensure we weren’t missing anything important.

We are extremely proud of the news we’ve produced this semester, and, as we head into the next school year, we are excited to continue our vital role on these campuses.

SONDRA ABRUZZO, JULIA MCCARTAN & AMANDA RILEY Guest Columnists While Scripps College’s school color is green, its identity is less so.

On the grassy surface, environmental sustainability is present at Scripps. Sustainability is a tenet of our beloved Motley Coffeehouse, our students are aware of of environmental justice issues and our newest residence hall is Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design certified.

However, there are several less obvious aspects of sustainability on campus that the school neglects. More often than not, students are burdened with taking the initiative to bring attention to such sustainability shortcomings.

In some cases, students do succeed in establishing solutions.

For example, Resident Life and the dining commons supported us in establishing composting programs in our dorms and at Malott Dining Hall.

However, other sustainability programs fail to take root, despite student concern and efforts.

We can attribute this neglect in part to gaps in the college’s institutional structure. Scripps has never had a sustainability office nor a permanent sustainability coordinator. Over the past four years, we cycled through three sustainability coordinators. We haven’t had a coordinator all year, raising the question as to whether the administration values this type of position.

The absence of staff and structures supporting sustainability creates a gap in institutional knowledge and memory.

For example, after establishing the dorm resale program Scripps Scrapps last year, the administration misplaced the sale’s revenue, Scripps’ former sustainability coordinator Tiffany Ortamond told us. The money was intended to fund next year’s program and effectively discontinued it.

Scripps Dean of Students Charlotte Johnson disputed that the funds were misplaced and said via email that they’re “located in the designated account for the program.”

But since no one could track down the funds, students had to reboot Scripps Scrapps by writing a new proposal for the sustainability committee and re-applying for funding, as we had the year before.

In another example, ResLife effectively discontinued next year’s Green Living Learning Community, one of the few spaces for organizing environmental projects on campus, all while introducing several new LLC options in an email to Scripps students. ResLife

did not consult the LLC or the Scripps community before making this decision. Current Green LLC members strongly expressed their disapproval.

But nothing happened.

Johnson told TSL the school didn’t have a faculty or staff sponsor for that specific learning community. But with continued student interest, she said the option “can be” available in fall 2020.

This shortage in institutional support and planning inspired us to ask Scripps to sign a Carbon Commitment this school year.

Beginning in spring 2018, through research and conversations with various sustainability professionals, we decided to advocate for Second Nature’s Carbon Commitment, a program that offers frameworks for planning for carbon neutrality and tracking annual emissions.

Three hundred and thirty-three other schools, including all the other 5Cs, are already signatories of the commitment, monitoring their emissions within the context of a carbon neutrality plan.

Pomona College already plans to reach carbon neutrality by 2030, and Claremont McKenna College is in the process of petitioning for their neutrality goal date to be moved from 2050 to 2030.

The fact that Scripps is the only 5C not signed on to the commitment embarrasses us and makes us question the priorities of our college.

As students who are constantly advocating for environmental action and accountability from the administration, we believe a Carbon Commitment would encourage Scripps to set and attain carbon reduction goals and help institutionalize a greater sustainability culture on campus.

Through various meetings, presentations and emails this semester with the sustainability committee, facilities, dean of students, dean of faculty and the college president, we proposed that Scripps sign the Carbon Commitment.

We sought out tangible next steps to accomplish this goal and really tried to make it happen.

However, after much roundabout communication, the administration ultimately directed us to work with the sustainability committee and write a budget proposal for the initiative before they consider signing the commitment, the final review of which would not occur until March 2020.

Reducing the Carbon Commitment to an issue of the school’s budget points to one core problem — there is no efficient mechanism through which to expand the priorities of the college. Ultimately, it distracts from the principles of climate action.

Overall, resting these initiatives on unpaid student labor is unfair and undermines their success. With student turnover every four years, the administration can avoid consistent pressure to keep sustainability at the forefront of conversations.

The absence of institutional memory regarding sustainability enables any failings or neglect to go unnoticed, and impedes efforts toward progress, as we can’t learn from past efforts. Additionally, leaving the integration of sustainability at Scripps largely up to students leaves student activists burnt out and disheartened.

Scripps’ inaction on sustainability efforts contradicts its mission as a liberal arts college, discrediting its self-prescribed identity as a leader in building a just society for its students.

We want Scripps to prioritize sustainability in its institutional model, ensuring that sustainability will always be a part of the conversation.

We hope the community shares our values and likewise advocates to elevate the role of sustainability at Scripps.

Sondra Abruzzo SC ’19 is an environmental analysis/public policy major from Orinda, California.

Amanda Riley SC ’19 is an environmental science major from Amherst, Massachusetts.

Julia McCartan SC ’21 is an environmental analysis/human behavior major from Bellevue, Washington.

COURTESY OF SCRIPPS COLLEGE

Students enjoy smoothies made by a bike-powered blender at the Scripps Sustainability Fair May 26.

Unlike the movies, evil isn’t always ugly EAMON MORRIS When people lie awake at night thinking of the monsters under their beds, when they scream in movie theaters and when they wake up in a cold sweat at 3 a.m., they are afraid.

Everyone’s been there.

Everyone’s been afraid, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. But the reason for our fear and our associations with it should be questioned and examined.

We aren’t afraid of beauty.

While we might be worried about people breaking into our homes, our hypothetical robber doesn’t look like Rihanna or Chris Hemsworth. These hypotheticals look “ugly,” or in other words, different from the norm. We’re afraid of difference, and it’s the fault of television and cinema that we are.

Ugliness has been consistently associated with difference, which has been consistently associated with evil since the film industry became a money-making enterprise.

In 1939, the Wicked Witch of the West from “The Wizard of Oz” shocked audiences with her green skin, hooked nose and warts. Leatherface

from “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” has proven his hideousness since the first film in the franchise. Perhaps most recently, Thanos’ right hand gifted viewers with his papery skin, flat nose and elongated face.

This flux of ugly nemeses and villains in television and movies is problematic for a few reasons. Ugliness and attractiveness are subjective, but the fact that fictional evil people are recognizably ugly (and exaggeratedly so) contributes to the othering of people that don’t conform to the norm.

The statuses of these villains as astoundingly hideous and unrealistically ugly (take Red Skull from “Captain America”) is also dangerous.

It perpetuates a false belief that, in the real world, attractive people cannot be evil.

The frightening truth is that evil people don’t look that different from us.

While it’s rare that horrible things will happen to most people, it’s important not to let down one’s guard.

Ugly fictional villains have conditioned us not to be afraid, wary or cautious of people who are beautiful. Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy

weren’t noticeably ugly in the same way that Voldemort and Freddy Krueger are.

Perhaps the most problematic characteristic of media villains is how their villainy correlates to ability. The twins from “The Matrix” series are henchmen of evil, and their defining characteristic is their albinism — the same is true of the Christian extremist Silas from “The Da Vinci Code.”

The defining appearance traits of villains like Captain Hook from “Peter Pan,” Darth Vader from “Star Wars” and Ulysses Klaue from “Black Panther” are their disabilities, which their prostheses, scars and burns are used to signify.

Without us realizing it, movies are teaching us to fear people who are disabled, diseased or scarred. It’s disturbing how normalized this is.

People are so quick to leave theaters to mock the appearances of the bad guys, and they’re unaware of the perpetuation of negative stereotypes they contribute to.

It’s interesting, too, that people of color are often cast as villains. Not only does this reinforce racist tropes and dehumanize people of color, but it also reinforces the European

standards of beauty dominant in the media.

Some might argue that film producers should have the freedom to do whatever they can to provoke visceral reactions in theaters by exploiting natural responses to facial asymmetry and disfigurement. However, this is

an invalid reason to exploit disability and Eurocentric standards of beauty. There are better ways to scare people or reduce the level of empathy they have for the villain.

In the real world, evil people don’t have defining physical characteristics connected to their cruelty, and to avoid

the perpetuation of negative stereotypes and unrealistic standards of beauty, the media needs to follow.

Eamon Morris PZ ’22 is from Orange. California. One of his editors, Anikka Villegas PO ’19, is graduating this year, and he’s very grateful for her.

COURTESY OF WOSCHAEBEDIP VIA DEVIANT ART

OPINIONS THE STUDENT LIFE

MAY 3, 2019

PAGE 7

Four years post-Obergefell, trans people have a day in court DONNIE DENOME On June 26, 2015, a Friday in the summer before my senior year of high school, I padded out to the kitchen.

My mother had NPR on the radio as she sat at the table, eating her oatmeal, which was strange — she almost never listened to the radio in the house.

“What’s going on?” I asked.

She gave me a dirty look.

“Sit down! Just listen!”

I did. I heard the NPR news team narrate, over the course of the morning, the end of a long-coming reckoning and the beginning of a new era: one where same-sex marriage was legal in all 50 states.

I cried tears of joy and relief that day.

Now, almost four years after the Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision, we are coming to another Great Queer Reckoning, but one where I fear my tears will not be joyful. The Supreme Court has agreed to hear the case of Aimee Stephens, who was fired from her job for being transgender.

During the Obama administration, both the Department of Justice and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission held that it was illegal under the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to fire someone because they’re trans. (The CRA bans employment discrimination based on sex.)

But times have changed and the Trump administration has made it clear they will not protect trans people in the same way. In January, the Supreme Court, which now has a 5-4 conservative majority, upheld the administration’s ban on trans people serving in the military.

I’m a pacifist and no fan of the military, but what policy the government implements there is a harbinger of what

they will or won’t do to civilians, given the chance. If President Donald Trump wants to expel trans people from the armed forces, a group that he has near-complete control over, I have little faith his government will ever stand for the rights of trans people elsewhere.

Four of the five justices who ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in Obergefell v.

Hodges are thankfully still on the court. Some I trust: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan and Sonia Sotomayor will almost certainly rule in favor of Stephens. I am also mostly sure of Stephen Breyer.

But Anthony Kennedy has retired, replaced by overgrown frat boy Brett Kavanaugh, whose confirmation to the court was defined by the sexual assault allegations against him. He also ruled in favor of an anti-abortion group on a case involving the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which is often cited by anti-LGBTQIA+ groups, while serving as a judge in the District of Columbia.

So cometh the reckoning, and I am terrified.

I’m white, financially stable and transmasculine. I live in California, where I’m about as safe as a trans person can be in the U.S., and I don’t plan on leaving soon. But institutional bigotry trickles down. One need only look at the rise in hate crimes after Trump was elected to realize that bigots are only emboldened by one of their own exercising power.

All the legislation in the world won’t protect me or anyone else more marginalized than me from a bigot who, spurred on by a potential ruling against Stephens, decides to commit a violent act.

This is a problem with no easy solution at the local level. I can tell my readers to write their representatives, to

check up more on their trans friends, to give money to groups like the National Center for Transgender Equality, but no action is good enough now.

My fate, and the fates of so many others, are in the hands of nine people, five of whom are conservative. It is a waiting game. Nothing I do can change things.

I have tried to build up an identity as unapologetically queer and trans and make myself into someone who fights back against a world that really doesn’t like people like me. I have tried to be strong for myself and all my trans and non-binary siblings who look to me for guidance.

I cannot be strong on this topic.

Our very right to employment is on the line and will be decided by nine justices, five of whom are conservatives, and all of whom are cisgender.

If they rule against us on employment, I shudder to think of what goes next.

Yes, it’s a slippery slope argument and no, I don’t the administration is going to legalize physical violence against trans people. It’s still an extremely precarious position, especially in a capitalist country where employment is virtually necessary for survival and state-level employment protections for trans people are a spotty patchwork.

So I say godspeed and good luck to Stephens, who’s going to need all the help she can get. I offer to hug all my trans and non-binary friends tightly if they want it or sit with them and just offer a listening ear and a shoulder to cry on. I hope and pray that this will all go well.

I hear from other people that “we survived [X person or group], we’ll survive this.”

I want to yell about how many

Jasper’s Crossword: Rains Center Closes…

ANIKKA SOPHIA VILLEGAS • THE STUDENT LIFE

people who died of AIDS didn’t survive President Ronald Reagan; how many people forced out of the military under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell didn’t survive President George W. Bush; and how people aren’t going to survive Trump if this decision

breaks against us.

This is a reckoning, once again, and one where I am for the first time both truly aware of the ramifications and powerless to stop it. I am terrified.

I am exhausted.

I hold onto hope because at this point, it feels like the only

thing I have left.

Donnie TC Denome PZ ’20, CG ’21 is a 4+1 BA/MPH public health major from Sunnyvale, California. They’ll be on campus this summer, taking classes and screaming in mortal terror at the squirrels every so often.

Weekly Comic

JASPER DAVIDOFF • THE STUDENT LIFE

ACROSS 1. Integral subj.

5. Leaning Tower city 9. KFC’s Sanders and John Glenn (abbr.)

13. Descriptor for a rug or lamp 14. Ball callers, for short 15. Each, to a Dunder Mifflin employee 17. Bellow 18. Ken’s pad ____ bar 19. ____ child (parent) 20. Causes of some blackouts (abbr.)

21. Rains result, on grass 23. Spreadsheet contents 25. Many a Venezuelan, recently 26. Prevalent necklace at commencement 27. Sana’a resident 29. No longer ______ (finally 13!)

32. ____ I call her...

33. Indignant 36. Scale with diamond at the top 37. Alias introducer 38. Dynamic preceder 39. “___ believer, I couldn’t leave her” 40. Subsist 42. Frequent side effect 44. Garden digger 46. Avengers: ___game 47. “_____ luck!”

49. “You’ve rescued me!”

53. Rains __________ (dampens the mood) 56. San Fran state

57. In _____ (out for a while) 58. “You are,” in Madrid 59. Martinique et Guadeloupe 60. Tortoise competitors, in fable 61. Trendy fruit bowl base 62. Fold into place 63. Loch ____ monster 64. D.C. officials 65. Time qualifiers?

DOWN 1. Was invested 2. Nice scent 3. _____ off the page 4. Memorial Day events 5. Request often preceded by “Come on, coach!”

6. “Turn up the A/C!” 7. Exchange blows 8. B ____ butterfly 9. Carousel characters 10. Portlandia state 11. Intervals between orders and deliveries 12. Indian garment 16. Bryn ____ College 22. 2017 Caribbean devastator 24. Envision 27. Bumpkin 28. Obama ___ 29. French friend 30. Cruise or Holland 31. “Oh, and get this...”

34. Sum to, or 28-down backwards 35. “___ barrel roll!”

37. E.g. King Kong 38. The ________ of Hope (Obama book)

40. One that has zero degrees?

41. ____ debt of gratitude 42. Voldemort, to Harry 43. ACT bubble-in (abbr.)

45. Rappers’ bars 47. Sound of astonishment 48. Early Peruvian 49. Exemplary 50. Utility 51. Send to Washington 52. Floppy _____ 54. Gather 55. West Coast gas station brand LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS

THIS WEEK’S ANSWERS

NINA POTISCHMAN • THE STUDENT LIFE

OPINIONS PAGE 8

‘Fake news’: The new favorite words of worldwide dictators CHRISTOPHER MURDY A few weeks ago, news broke that the Press Freedom Index now considers the U.S. to be a “problematic” place for journalists because of an “intense climate of fear.”

The U.S. now occupies 48th place in their rankings. Only 15 countries are considered to provide a “good situation” for journalists.

Just in the last year, Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, who frequently criticized the Saudi Arabian government, was assassinated in a Saudi consulate, two Pulitzer-prize winning journalists were unjustly imprisoned in Myanmar and authoritarian leaders around the world have touted laws suppressing socalled “fake news.”

It’s not hard to determine where much of this rhetoric originates. Open Twitter and go to our president’s account.

As of this January, Presi d e n t D o n a l d Tr u m p h a s tweeted insults at individual journalists 48 times, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. These journalists often then receive threatening messages.

More broadly, Trump has cited the words “fake news” or “fake media” in his tweets 431 times since his inauguration as of May 1, and he’s been further ramping up the rhetoric ever since the release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report last month.

Words have ramifications, especially if they’re the words of a public figure.

Even though the U.S. (thankfully) has the First Amendment and a judicial branch to prevent outright censorship of the press, other countries aren’t so lucky.

Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte has faced international condemnation for the thousands of extra-judicial killings that have taken place in his crackdown on drug use.

Filipinos, though, have little chance of hearing these condemnations. An ally of Duterte has labeled the situation as a set of “alternative facts,” echoing the exact words of White House aide Kellyanne Conway.

Those who try to report the truth in the Philippines often face threats of violence.

The situation isn’t much different elsewhere. Just last week, the Supreme Court of Myanmar upheld the seven-year sentences of two Reuters journalists for reporting on the killings of 10 Rohingya Muslims.

The Myanmar government had also launched misinformation campaigns on social media to spread hatred towards the Rohingya population, leading to their genocide and forced migration.

The government labeled reports on the situation “fake news.”

OFF THE RECORD

MAY 3, 2019

THE STUDENT LIFE

DAPHNE YANG • THE STUDENT LIFE

But perhaps even more alarming than what’s happening around the world is what will transpire in the coming years.

“Fake news” laws have been popping up recently from Egypt to Singapore to Belarus to Russia. The lasting effects of these laws will be felt by journalists for years to come.

Rather than repudiate these developments around the world, Trump has welcomed them. In fact, Trump announced at a press conference that he was “very proud to hear the president [of Brazil] use the term ‘fake news.’”

In the wake of the Polish president’s attempts to tighten his control of the press in 2017, Trump retweeted one of his tweets, adding that “We will fight the #FakeNews with you!”

After news broke of the vicious execution of Khashoggi, American intelligence sources concluded that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the operation.

Trump ignored it. He sided with bin Salman. World leaders took note.

Not only has Trump’s rhetoric repeatedly attacked the integrity of acclaimed journalists here in the U.S., it’s given

Endgame Premieres!

TSL loves its readers 3000

Pirate Party An excuse to start drinking at 9 a.m.

Bring your tissues 3 hours of tears :’(

Getting hungover before sunset Argh maties

authoritarian governments around the world a perfect framework to curtail a free and independent press.

We must resist this new normal that’s taken hold over the last few years. Rather than laugh every time Trump makes an absurd accusation about a reporter, we must remember what those words mean.

Christopher Murdy PO ’22 is an intended international relations major from Lido Beach, New York. Agree? Disagree?

Email him at christopher.murdy@pomona.edu.

Popping the intellectually liberal bubble CHRISTOPHER SALAZAR Diversity is deceptively complicated. As a concept, it seems obvious.

However, I find myself questioning the evangelist doctrine of diversity, because there’s a peculiar form of passive aggression, intellectual arrogance or bullying that animates a fair number of my colleagues.

Sadly, for nothing more than genuine interest and inquiry, I find myself on the receiving end of moral judgement. There are, however, friends and contemporaries who share my concern for atrophied tolerance, which refers to the ability to entertain an idea without agreeing with it.

To be sure, budding scholars benefit from the geographic, racial, ethnic and gendered varieties of their campuses.

And I don’t think there’s much to dispute by way of external diversity.

Sure, young white men and women predominate the 5Cs. But, for what it’s worth, minority members of the racial, ethnic or gendered kind are on an academic ascent.

This is an admirable, reassuring trend that will, if hope and progress permit, continue.

That said, the pernicious lack of diversity that bothers me is internal, ideological.

The Claremont consortium is a liberal bubble, like many colleges across America.

Right-of-center, or outright Republican, students and faculty are a near extinct cohort on college campuses across the U.S. Consider Cass R. Sunstein, a Bloomberg opinion columnist, who wrote about the schism between the Democratic and Republican professoriate in “The Problem With All Those Liberal Professors.”

Sunstein referenced a study

by Mitchell Langbert, an associate professor of business at Brooklyn College, which found that at 51 of the 66 highest ranked liberal arts colleges, according to the 2017 U.S. News ranking, Republicans are outnumbered by a large margin.

Of course, the discrepancy widens or narrows depending on the subject. The largest ratio between Democrat and Republican professors is found in religious studies at 70 to 1, while the smallest is found in engineering departments, at a meager 1.6 to 1.

Political affiliations between Democrats and Republicans vary by college as well.

“The faculties of Wellesley, Williams and Swarthmore are overwhelmingly Democratic, with ratios at or above 120 to 1. At Harvey Mudd and Lafayette, the ratios are 6 to 1.

At the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, it is 2.3 to 1; it is just 1.3 to 1 at West Point,” Sunstein wrote.

As I alluded to before, nothing is immune to examination. In this spirit, Eric Levitz

penned an enlightening rebuttal to Sunstein in the New York Magazine: “Colleges Don’t Need More Republican Professors.”

But the professoriate discrepancy raises an interesting question, a question about whether higher education liberalizes.

This may be the case — it certainly seems to be true now.

But Republicans were once more educated.

That said, there is a educational gap between Democrats and Republicans, where the blue cohort outpaces their red counterparts in terms of degrees earned.

And while the propensity to give advice is matched only by the propensity to ignore it, I must admonish: education and intelligence are not synonymous.

On this front, I can safely say that, despite the education I have received — and there is no doubt I am more informed than I would be otherwise — I am not particularly intelligent.

There is a smug tendency for those on the left, to assume they’re more intelligent and beyond critique.

But, as intelligent as leftists may be, everyone has their faults, their own assumptive and intellectual blind spots.

To this end, the exchanges between Levitz and Sunstein are edifying and requisite banter for burgeoning pupils. But, because of ideological conformity, I fear too many exchanges on campus are of the choir-preaching sort.

Just as disconcerting is self-censorship. In the spring of 2018, as my tenure as a Chaffey College student neared its end, I visited Claremont McKenna College’s Athenaeum to attend social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s presentation.

Haidt, a professor of ethical leadership at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and co-author of “The Coddling of the American Mind,” lectured about his research on the moral differences between liberals and conservatives.

While I was already familiar with his work, I was less prepared for the question he posed to the audience. In an attempt to prove a tangential point, that colleges are less intellectually diverse than we may wish to admit, he asked for a show of hands about how many students self-censor with respect to politics or other sensitive subjects.

Unfortunately, I was not visiting as a journalist, so I did not count the exact number of hands raised. Still, too many students jutted their arms upward for my liking.

We are here to cultivate the capacity for independent thought. In this way, education is a subversive endeavor. Fear of reprisal should hardly factor in the genuine, good-faith queries of soon-to-be Claremont alumni.

Christopher Salazar PZ ’20 is a philosophy major from La Verne, California. He’s not one to proselytize, but he considers whiskey on the rocks sacrilege.

KenKen In a 4x4 KenKen, the numbers 1-4 will appear in each row and column exactly once. To solve, fill in according to the operation in the upper left-hand corner of each bolded area. For example, the bolded area with 5+ will include two numbers that add to 5.

LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS

GOAT Status Arya Stark 1 Night King 0

Still Dame time Bye bye Russell

THIS WEEK’S ANSWERS

T-God for fire The only time I could see what was going on

I hate the Warriors I ABSOLUTELY hate the Wariors

THEA BAROVICK • THE STUDENT LIFE

SPORTS THE STUDENT LIFE

MAY 3, 2019

PAGE 9

CMS GOLF

Athenas eye NCAA repeat after winning conference title, Stags hope for at-large bid

UMA NAGARAJANSWENSON For both the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men’s and women’s golf teams, the pressure is high as they begin training for potential runs at the upcoming NCAA Division III national championships.

The Athenas are the defending national champions, but it hasn’t been a cakewalk to a second-straight NCAA title, according to Kelly Ransom CM ’19.

“I think after coming back off a national championship, there’s been a lot of pressure to always perform well,” she said.

On paper, the team has lived up to expectations so far. The Athenas won all of the SCIAC invitationals this year, as well as their third-straight SCIAC title.

Amy Xue CM ’22 was the individual SCIAC champion as the Athenas came back from a 12-shot deficit after the first round to win by 19 shots, securing an automatic bid to return to defend their NCAA title.

“We came back with a fire and played really well,” Ransom said.

The Stags last won the NCAA championship in 2016, and finished ninth a year ago.

Armed with some promising young players, as well as veter-

ans from the 2016 squad, coach Bim Jollymour says the team is capable of another national title.

“There’s no reason why this team can’t do it again if we play up to our potential,” he said.

Jollymour said that individual talent has carried the Stags at times this year, and mentioned some stellar performances by players during the SCIAC Championship.

“The 63 that Mason Chiu [CM ’21] shot just blew us all away; that was a fantastic round,” Jollymour said.

Chiu ended up winning the individual conference title, giving the team hope for an at-large national bid despite coming up third at the SCIAC tournament, Jollymour said.

CMS will find out early next week if they qualified for the national competition, sports information director Jeremy Kniffin said.

The Stags were barely edged out of the first- and second-place spots in the SCIAC, with only a six-stroke difference between themselves (2063) and champion La Verne (2057), and just two strokes behind Redlands.

For the Athenas, Ransom said team chemistry has gone a long way, even in a predominantly individual sport.

“We dance around and have

COURTESY OF CMS ATHLETICS

Above: Mason Chiu CM ’21 won the individual conference title at the SCIAC men’s golf championship April 18-20.

Left: The CMS women’s golf team won its third-straight SCIAC Championship this year and is now looking to defend its national title.

fun on the range before we go into our tournaments, so that keeps us really loose,” Ransom said. “I think that’s a big factor in helping us play so well.”

Jollymour was more hesitant to say that the team’s success is determined by camaraderie.

“I’m not sure there’s a rela-

tionship between that and how they play, [golf] is such an individual sport. They’re all pulling for each other, but they are all separate,” Jollymour said.

There is one glaring obstacle that the Athenas — and possibly the Stags — will face going forward: finals week.

CMS & P-P TRACK AND FIELD

Both NCAA championships are scheduled for the last week of school.

“I know [I would have] to proctor one exam at the championship — the challenge is to get these weights off our shoulders before we compete,” Jollymour said.

Regardless, the Athenas and Stags — if they qualify — are both looking forward to the event, and both have high hopes.

“We’re really motivated right now to just try to win again,” Ransom said, “and to play some good golf.”

MEN’S RUGBY

Stags upset Sagehens, Athenas squeak Claremont Lions win 2nd national past Redlands for SCIAC sweep rugby title in 3 years EMILY PIETTE

The 2019 SCIAC Track and Field Championship meet was a tale of extremes for Sixth Street rivals Pomona-Pitzer and Claremont-Mudd-Scripps.

The Sagehen men were favored heading into the weekend, but the Stags came out on top. On the women’s side, CMS held on by just three points over Redlands for its fourth-straight title.

The P-P men’s squad entered the meet ranked No. 2 in the country, and the Sagehens seemed poised to defend their SCIAC title from 2018 — the closest teams behind them in the conference were Redlands and CMS, ranked No. 12 and No. 28, respectively.

But CMS had a plan to take down P-P, and avenge the Sagehens’ win in the meet last season.

“We wanted to step up

because losing to P-P last year broke a long streak of victories for the Stags,” said Will Kimball CM ’21, a steeplechase and mid-distance runner.

“This win was important in proving that loss was a fluke.”

Prior to the meet, some of the Stags made projections in an effort to pinpoint where the team might finish overall if each member placed higher in their event than expected.

Ultimately, the Stags realized they’d need numerous standout performances across the board if they wanted to upset the Sagehens.

This knowledge gave CMS the motivation it needed to pull off the victory, Kimball said.

“We were going to need some really special, exceptional performances in order to beat P-P, because they were pretty favored, as they were ranked No. 2 in the country,”

ADAM KUBOTA • THE STUDENT LIFE

Riley Harmon SC ’22 (left), Sophie Gitlin CM ’22 and Matilda Msall SC ’19 run neck-and-neck in the 3,000-meter steeplechase April 27.

he said.

A huge win came in the 5,000-meter race at the end of the meet, where Miles Christensen HM ’22 won in 14:42, six seconds ahead of defending champion Andy Reischling PO ’19, who holds one of the top 5K times in the country this year.

At the SCIAC championship meet last year, the Sagehens scored 40 points in the 5K, swinging the meet in P-P’s favor. Despite a two-threefour-five finish by P-P in the event this year, the Stags came out on top by 36 points, 211.5 to 175.5, after Christensen’s win.

The Stags closed out the meet with a win in the 4x400-meter relay. Alex McDonald CM ’21, Daniel Addison CM ’21, Keizo Morgan HM ’22 and Jamie Cockburn CM ’22 won the event with a time of 3:19.43. The win was especially significant for the Stags because dropping the baton during the same relay cost them a meet victory during an earlier dual meet against Redlands.

Other notable sprint finishes by the Stags included McDonald’s 400-meter hurdles win at 53.10, the second-fastest time in CMS history, and Corbin Bethurem’s CM ’19 third-place finish in the 200 at 21.80.

The Stags dominated the pole vault, throwing and jumping events, achieving one-two finishes in discus and hammer throw, where Reese Peterson HM ’20 followed Matthew Sill CM ’21 in both events. Peterson completed the CMS throwing sweep by winning shot put in a personal record 48 feet, and Walker Quinn CM ’20 won pole vault, clearing 15 feet-7.25-inches.

Though the Sagehen men were disappointed by the loss, some members of the team have qualified for the NCAA championship meet and are focused on future competitions. Daniel Tamkin PO ’21, a sprinter, considers the ability to move forward from losses and maintain the motivation to win a crucial part of the Sagehens’ culture.

“I would say the mentality of the team was strong. Our coaches emphasize what happened at the meets already happened and we need to get past that and to not let it get to us, because each race, anything can happen,” Tamkin said. “If you go into a race with the mindset of not knowing if you’ll perform well, then

you won’t perform well. You have to go into every race thinking you will set a new personal record.”

Fellow sprinter Dylan Madden PZ ’21 agreed that the team is well-equipped to move on from the loss.

“We go into every season wanting to get as many people to nationals as we can, and we consistently send many athletes to nationals,” he said. “It not only looks good for the program, but competing at the national level promotes future success, because it motivates athletes joining the team and athletes who are already part of the team.”

On the women’s side, CMS extended its SCIAC championship win streak to five, but the Athenas’ victory didn’t come without drama — they won the championship by just three points over Redlands, 150-147.

Heading into the meet, CMS knew it would be close.

“It was important that going into the meet, everyone realized we had to run for each other if we wanted it to work out the way it ended up working out,” distance runner Sophie Gitlin CM ’22 said. “We had to recognize that was why we were doing it.”

While the Athenas did not log many top finishes, they raced, jumped and threw to a number of mid-scoring performances. Standouts who won their events included Jacque Desmond SC ’20 topping the pole vault, becoming the first woman in SCIAC history to clear 13 feet.

With four runners scoring in the event, the 5,000 was also significant for the Athenas. Malea Martin CM ’19 finished third at 18:04, with Abigail Johnson SC ’21 finishing fifth, Riley Harmon SC ’22 in sixth and Natalie Marsh SC ’19 in seventh.

Martin also finished second in the 10,000-meter race the day before.

Despite a number of first-place efforts, the Pomona-Pitzer women’s track team finished fourth overall.

Vicky-Marie Addo-Ashong PO ’20 accumulated 26 of the team’s 100 points, winning the high jump at 5-feet3.75-inches and the triple jump with a mark of 38-feet7.75-inches. Addo-Ashong’s 14.46 third-place finish in the 100-meter hurdles set the Sagehen record for the event.

TALIA BERNSTEIN • THE STUDENT LIFE

Connor Lehner CM ’20 runs with the ball during a men’s rugby practice March 27.

GABBY HERZIG After falling short last season, the Claremont Colleges men’s rugby team is back on top.

Last weekend, the Lions claimed their second National Small Colleges Rugby Organization National Championship in the past three seasons, defeating Christendom Athletics 5717.

Despite the 40-point win, the game was competitive and action-packed, Frankie Rayis CM ’20 and team captain Conner Pederson CM ’20 said. The Lions’ gameplan and fierce defense allowed them to shut out some of Christendom’s most talented offensive players.

Connor Lehner CM ’20 led the team’s defense, lining up against Christendom’s top playmaker all game; Lehner was one of eight CMS football players who, when forced to choose, quit the sport in favor of playing rugby this spring. His decision paid off for the Lions — Claremont’s defensive edge allowed for several turnover opportunities.

The game reached a turning point when two Lion players were out with yellow cards, leaving the team down 13 men to 15, according to Pederson.

During that time period, however, the Lions still managed to outscore Christendom 7-5. From that point onwards, the Lions pulled away.

“I really believe we played our best game of the season as a team on Sunday,” Rayis said, “which means almost everyone had their best game of the season.”

Chance Sears CM ’21 was

named MVP of the tournament.

“I attribute our team’s success to our desire to perform for each other,” Pederson said.

“We had several key players and seniors out with injury, and so we made an extra effort to come home with a national championship for their sake.”

Throughout the season, the Lions have struggled to overcome the obstacles of injured players and a lack of team depth. Pederson tore his ACL in January, which put him out for the season. Despite these setbacks, Claremont’s team camaraderie kept them on the track to a title.

“To put it all together and win it for Conner and our other players we lost to injury during the season means everything to me,” Rayis said.

Rayis and Pederson said the Claremont coaching staff, which includes some of the best coaches they’ve ever worked with during their athletic careers, deserve much of the credit.

“Our three coaches are three of the best men I have ever come to know,” Pederson said. “They truly care for their players’ success on and off the field. This makes a player very willing to listen to their coach’s advice and genuinely try to improve and perform in those areas.”

The Lions’ all-star coaching staff, as well as 21 of the 23 players that traveled to New York for the championship game, will be returning next spring. Pederson is optimistic about the team’s potential and momentum going forward.

“I am completely confident in our ability to win a national championship next year. Anything less would be considered a failure from the team’s perspective,” he said.

PAGE 10

SPORTS THE STUDENT LIFE

MAY 3, 2019

WEEKLY ROUNDUP

Pomona - Pitzer

Athlete of the Week

Sagehen men take 2nd, women 4th at SCIAC track championships At the SCIAC championship meet last weekend, the Pomona-Pitzer track and field teams both finished behind the meet-winning Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags and Athenas. The men finished second, with the women placing fourth.

On the men’s side, P-P swept the podium in the 10,000-meter run, with Andy Reischling PO ’19, Daniel Hill PO ’19 and Hugo Ward PZ ’21 finishing in the top three spots. In the 1,500-meter, Carter Floyd PO ’21 finished first and Dante Paszkeicz PO ’22 was second.

For the women, Vicky-Marie Addo-Ashong PO ’20 single-handedly scored 26 of the Sagehens’ 100 points, finishing on the podium in three events.

Besides setting a P-P record and finishing third in the 100-meter hurdles, she won both the high jump and the triple jump. Helen Guo PO ’20 and Lauren Hamilton PO ’20 finished first and second in the 5,000-meter run, and Hamilton took first place in the 10,000 the day before.

Women’s Lacrosse Lilly Thomey PO ‘19 Edina, Minnesota Thomey led the Pomona-Pitzer lacrosse team to the No. 2 seed in the SCIAC Tournament after a big win against Chapman April 24, in which she picked up six goals and one ground ball, going 1-for-1 on free position attempts.

Thomey was also announced as First-Team All-SCIAC after leading the Sagehens in goals scored over the season with 41. Thomey was awarded SCIAC Athlete of the Week last week for her impressive performance and followed up with a three-goal outing against Occidental in the semifinal of the tournament.

AMY BEST • THE STUDENT LIFE

Natalie Hill PO ’19 fights the goalie for the ball in the final minutes of the Sagehens’ close 10-9 loss to Cal Lutheran in the SCIAC Championship match April 28.

falling 9-6 at home Friday, before losing on the road 3-2 and 6-5 Saturday. In the first game P-P was up 3-2 at the bottom of the fourth, before giving up seven runs over the next two innings.

Both games of the doubleheader went down to the wire.

In the first, P-P tied the game at two before the Panthers scored the go-ahead run in the bottom of the eighth. In the final game, P-P got out to a 5-0 lead before giving up six straight runs to seal another loss.

Kronenberg and Gearou represent P-P men’s tennis at Ojai Invitational Jed Kronenberg PO ’21 and Josh Gearou PO ’19 represented the Sagehen men’s tennis team (10-13, 5-2 SCIAC) at the Ojai Invitational last weekend. Both competed in the singles competition, where Kronenberg reached the quarterfinals and Gearou made it through to the round of 32. The duo then competed in doubles, where they won 8-6 in the first round before losing in the quarterfinals 8-3.

Sagehen softball goes 2-2 in inconsistent week of SCIAC play The Sagehen softball team (2910-1, 21-7 SCIAC) split a pair of doubleheaders last week, recording dramatically different results in each. On Friday, P-P beat Cal Lutheran (12-28, 6-22 SCIAC) 11-1 in the first game before losing 7-6 in the second. The next day the team traveled to La Verne (17-23, 13-15 SCIAC), where they won 1-0 before losing 10-2.

P-P blew out CalLu in its first game of the Senior Day doubleheader. Liz Rodarte PZ ’19 shut down the Regals on the mound, striking out eight and

Sagehen baseball puts up a fight, drops 3 straight to Chapman The P-P baseball team (17-18, 7-17 SCIAC) got swept by Chapman (27-9, 16-5 SCIAC) last week,

allowing one run and two hits in five innings before the mercy rule was invoked. Izzy Deatherage PO ’20 went 2-3 with a home run and four RBIs. The Sagehens remained in control early in the second game, going ahead 5-1 before giving up six runs in the third and fourth innings.

Rodarte came out on top Saturday in a pitching duel against La Verne’s Katherine Navarro in the first game, striking out seven and holding the Leopards scoreless, while also delivering the game’s only RBI on a single in the top of the third.

P-P women’s water polo comes up just short of SCIAC 3-peat The P-P women’s water polo team (20-13, 14-0 SCIAC) fell 10-9 to Cal Lutheran (21-8, 12-2 SCIAC) in the SCIAC Championship last Saturday after beating La Verne (11-14, 9-5 SCIAC) 9-8 in the semifinal the day before.

In the championship, P-P trailed 5-4 at halftime, but held onto a 9-8 lead midway through the fourth period. However, the Regals scored twice in just over a minute to take the lead and then played keep-away for much of

the remaining three minutes.

Anna Yu PO ’19 and Natalie Hill PO ’19 each had two goals in their final game for the Sagehens.

Sagehen lacrosse downs Chapman in SCIAC semifinal, setting up championship matchup with Athenas The Sagehen women’s lacrosse team (13-5, 7-3 SCIAC) picked up a 17-12 win over Chapman (7-9, 4-6 SIAC) in the SCIAC semifinals Wednesday, setting up a rematch with rival CMS (15-2, 10-0 SCIAC) in the conference championship Saturday.

P-P came out quickly, building a 7-0 lead within the first six minutes, but Chapman came back to pull within 11-8 at halftime. The Panthers then pulled within two with 20 minutes remaining before P-P put up four straight goals to go up 16-10 and put the game out of reach.

Kiera Havill PZ ’21 led the team with four goals, while Sarah Woo PZ ’21 and Lilly Thomey PO ’19 each finished with hat tricks.

Emily Vomvas PO ’22 and Annie Price PO ’20 split time in goal, finishing with seven and six saves, respectively.

Weekly Calendar Friday, May 3 Men’s Tennis Redlands Softball SCIAC Tournament Chapman Women’s Tennis Caltech Baesball at Linfield Saturday, May 4 Baesball at Linfield

Women’s Lacrosse SCIAC Championship at CMS Men and Women’s Tennis SCIAC Championship Softball SCIAC Tournament TBA Sunday, May 5 Baseball at Linfield Thursday, May 9 Women’s Tennis NCAA Tournament

Claremont - Mudd - Scripps Athlete of the Week Women’s Track and Field Malea Martin CM ‘19 San Luis Obispo, California Martin scored 13 total points at the SCIAC track and field championships April 27 and 28, all in long-distance events. Martin ran more than 37 laps of the Burns Stadium track over the two-day competition, placing second in the 10,000-meter race Saturday, before coming back to finish third in the 5,000-meter Sunday. Thanks in no small part to Martin, the Athenas pulled out a fifth consecutive team title Sunday by a three-point margin over Redlands.

Weekly Calendar Friday, May 3 Softball SCIAC Tournament Whittier Men’s Tennis Caltech Baseball La Verne Women’s Tennis Redlands Saturday, May 4

Men and Women’s Tennis SCIAC Championship Baseball at La Verne Women’s Lacrosse SCIAC Championship P-P Sunday, May 5 Softball SCIAC Championship TBA

Softball SCIAC Tournament TBA

TSL welcomes nominations for Athlete of the Week at sportseditor@tsl.news

Athena softball loses final regular season games to Whittier Claremont-Mudd-Scripps softball (30-9, 24-4 SCIAC) dropped a pair of 5-4 games to Whittier (19-17-1, 16-12 SCIAC) to close out the regular season. The Athenas had already solidified themselves as the hosts of the SCIAC tournament for the first time since 2011.

CMS used just two pitchers across the two games: Chloe Amarilla CM ’19 started the first game, allowing three runs on five hits, and Lauren Richards CM ’22 came on in relief. Richards started the second game, giving up four runs on six hits, while Amarilla took the loss and allowed one run in relief.

Athena lacrosse advances to SCIAC final with win over Chapman The CMS women’s lacrosse team (15-2, 10-0 SCIAC) will face Pomona-Pitzer (13-5, 7-3 SCIAC) in the SCIAC championship final after defeating Chapman (7-9, 4-6 SCIAC) 18-6 in the semifinal Wednesday night.

Corie Hack CM ’19 scored six goals for the third straight game in the Athenas’ rout of the Panthers. Coming off the bench, Alex Futterman CM ’22 added four goals of her own, and goalie Anna Gillespie SC ’21 racked up nine saves.

Stag baseball sweeps 3-game set against Caltech A f t e r d r o p p i n g t wo o f three games to P-P (17-18, 7-17 SCIAC), CMS baseball (18-12-1, 11-10 SCIAC) rebounded to take three games from Caltech (8-23, 5-16 SCIAC) last Friday and Saturday.

The Stags scored 15 runs in the series, allowing just five.

In the second game, CMS starter Diego Avila CM ’22 threw six innings of shutout ball as team captain Zach Clarke CM ’20 went 3-for-4. In game three, starter Brandon Mitchell CM ’21 threw six innings, allowing one run, and Clarke went 3-for-3 with two of the Stags’ 15 RBIs. CMS women’s track wins SCIACs by 3 points Jacque Desmond SC ’19 became the first woman in SCIAC history to crack the 13-foot mark in pole vault as the Athenas won their fifthstraight SCIAC title by just three points last weekend, 150-147.

Redlands led the meet with two events left, but CMS had four runners score in the 5,000-meter race to pull ahead. Abigail Johnson SC ’21 competed in three races on the final day of competition, winning the 1,500, taking sixth in the 800, and fifth in the 5K. Stag throwers have perfect meet as CMS men’s track wins SCIACs Despite being picked fourth in preseason polls, CMS men’s track posted a l i g h t s - o u t S C I A C p e r f o rmance to win the meet by 40 points.

Matthew Sill CM ’21 and Reese Peterson HM ’20 went one-two in both the hammer throw and discus, and Peterson added a win in shot put.

CMS finished first in three track events, including a huge win by Miles Christensen HM ’22, who passed P-P All-American Andy Reischling PO ’19 on the final lap of the 5,000-meter to win by six seconds.

AMY BEST • THE STUDENT LIFE

Corie Hack CM ’19 hugs Sally Abel CM ’21 after she scores her third goal in the Athenas’ 18-6 win over Chapman in the SCIAC semifinals May 1.

SPORTS THE STUDENT LIFE

MAY 3, 2019

PAGE 11

CMS INTRAMURAL SPORTS

‘Everyone has to play’: Innertube water polo games are no joke for some Mudders

ALLIE GOULD At Harvey Mudd College’s North Dorm, several athletes are preparing for an important championship tournament taking place this weekend.

The sport? Intramural innertube water polo.

Innertube water polo teams that compete in the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps intramural league are pillars of the communities of several Harvey Mudd dorms. However, the dorms vary in how seriously they take the sport.

In North Dorm, for example, participation is mandatory.

“Everyone has to play your freshman year,” North resident Stephanie Blankley HM ’20 said.

In other dorms, first-years are just strongly encouraged to join.

This is what led Sara McAllister HM ’19 (East Dorm) and Eli Weissler HM ‘19 (Sontag) to first try out the sport.

Regardless of the participation requirements, the sport features a steep learning curve for first-year players.

“The first time you get on it’s really tough, and you sort of are flopping around like an ungraceful whale,” Weissler said.

Blankley said the first games are always the most comedic.

“We kind of set them up for failure because we do not tell

them the rules beforehand, so the first game’s always really funny,” Blankley said.

Luckily, it’s easy to improve.

“There was one person on the team this year who’s a freshman who could not get in the tube the first game — it took him four minutes at the beginning of the game to just get into the tube — and now he’s one of the best players on the team,” Weissler said.

Of all the dorms that participate, North is the only one with multiple teams. Those are “Norf Frosh,” the first-year team; “Big Norf,” which includes non-firstyears with more of a focus on fun than winning, and “Ultimate Norf,” which is the varsity equivalent.

Blankley is a member of Ultimate Norf, a team that she said has won all championships in recent memory.

The team’s focus on winning sets them apart, she said.

“We’re trying to win the championship,” Blankley said.

“We will kind of get mad at people if they don’t come to games.

We’ll ask to move games if most of the team can’t make it. We’re not trying to forfeit a game here where other teams are like ‘yeah, sure.’”

Unlike Big Norf, Ultimate also discourages any alcohol consumption before games.

Many athletes on Ultimate —

Blankley included — are already accustomed to a competitive atmosphere as members of a Claremont-Mudd-Scripps varsity sport. The teams represented include swim, softball, volleyball and track.

McAllister plays on the team from East Dorm — “The Marvelous Breadfish.” While she said they also want to win the championship, that doesn’t come “at the exclusion of people having fun.”

“We try to play everyone who wants to play, independent of whether that’s going to cost us the game,” she said.

North Dorm and East Dorm are geographically located across from one another and are rivals outside of intramural sports as well.

“We have a rivalry against North and want to win against North,” McAllister said. “Usually on sports things we lose, but we’ve won against various teams of theirs in innertube water polo.”

While East and North traditionally have the largest teams, several other dorms compete. According to Weissler, most dorms take the sport less seriously, including his team from Sontag.

“Everyone’s sort of there just trying to have a good time,” Weissler said. “That’s like most of the dorms at Mudd that have intramural water polo teams.”

Though happy when Sontag

CMS WOMEN’S TENNIS

Dynamic duo Cox and Allen ‘know each other’s moves,’ lead Athena tennis into postseason HARPER RUBIN

Catherine Allen SC ’20 and Caroline Cox CM ’21 sit kitty-corner at a table outside Claremont McKenna College’s Bauer Center.

The two are part of the reigning national champion Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women’s tennis team, and are currently the top-ranked doubles team in the West region, according to the most recent Intercollegiate Tennis Association poll.

They haven’t lost a match in the SCIAC, are 23-1 overall since the start of the school year and won the ITA Cup doubles national title in the fall.

They seemed unfazed by their success.

“It’s a compliment to us that people want to beat us,” Cox said.

There is an undoubtable rapport between the two. Occasionally, they answered questions in unison. Despite focusing for much of their tennis career on singles matches, both said they enjoy the doubles game.

“It’s been a really great experience,” Allen said. “I definitely like playing for a team more than I did individually.”

They said their connection helps them on the court, and that the experience of playing with a friend, not just a teammate, has been fun and productive.

Both played doubles as juniors, but neither with anyone they had formed a bond with.

“It was always with a different partner,” Cox said. “I would go out on court having

played with this person maybe one time before, so it was like going out there just to get more practice, but it was never like I trained for doubles or anything.

Everyone cared way more about singles.”

This year, though, doubles has been an especially strong area for the Athenas, who are ranked No. 2 in NCAA Division III play.

In collegiate team tennis competitions, the teams face off in three doubles matches, followed by six singles matches, with each match counting for a point. Teams that can take a lead through doubles play have a significant advantage when it comes time for singles.

The Athenas have won at least two of the three possible doubles points in all but two of their matchups this spring — one of those times coming in their only loss of the season, at the hands of No. 1 Emory.

After defeating Pomona-Pitzer last week, the Athenas will begin postseason play this weekend, and enter the SCIAC Tournament as the top seed. If they want to complete a long postseason run and defend their NCAA title, they’ll surely need to rely on Cox’s and Allen’s doubles play to help them get there.

Luckily for the Athenas, the pair believes their relationship and play is only strengthening with time. As they became more accustomed to each other on the court, they said their friendship off the court has blossomed.

Nowadays, come gametime, they mostly know what to expect from one another.

“We kind of know each other’s moves,” Allen said.

The two communicate on a variety of levels.

“I think when we’re winning on the court, there’s a lot less conversing,” Allen said.

Still, Cox explained that talking becomes more important to them during tighter matches: “If we are struggling during a match, then that will lead to more communication on what we need to do differently and how to throw our opponents off their games a little bit.”

On court or not, it’s obvious the two are well in-sync at this point in the season. But it wasn’t always clear it would be that way.

“We weren’t really friends before,” Allen said.

The pair did play together last spring, but “not in the fall,” Cox quickly interjected.

“Honestly, though,” Allen continued, “this fall, as we started to play more together and we became more successful and winning the fall ITAs — we went to [Georgia] together — and that’s where we got to know each other.”

Cox and Allen, along with the rest of the Athenas, will try to ride the momentum the duo has built so far this season to carry them to a second consecutive national championship in May. But when asked about their postseason plans, both Cox and Allen were cautious.

Cox neutralized the question with a classic athlete cliché: “[We’re] really just taking it one match at a time.”

AMY BEST • THE STUDENT LIFE

Caroline Cox CM ’21 (left) and Catherine Allen SC ’20 are defending national champions in Divison III women’s tennis and have only lost one match together this season.

AMY BEST • THE STUDENT LIFE

Intramural innertube water polo has become an integral part of Harvey Mudd culture, with multiple dorms competing against each other.

does well, he primarily plays for fun.

“You can just go out there and be competitive, but also sort of just be doing this ridiculous fun thing,” Weissler said. “It’s also a fun communal activity where you can get together with a lot of people in your dorm or a lot of your friends.”

Regardless of their level of play, the teams consider the league good for dorm bonding.

Mudd dorms tend to have a strong culture, and students often

elect to live in their dorms for all four years.

But according to Weissler, while an innertube water polo team is often a part of a dorm’s culture, it doesn’t have to be.

“I think it’s sometimes a little overblown — not all the dorms even have teams,” he said. “I think it’s bigger in some dorms.

It’s usually when some of the upperclassmen are really into it, it becomes a way for the classes to get to know each other and will become really popular.”

Different levels of competition are common in intramural sports, however, according to CMS intramural supervisor Gabby Clouse CM ’20.

“There’s such a wide range,” Clouse said. “You have some people who have never done whatever intramural sport it is before in their lives, and they’re just there to laugh, and then you have people who used to be varsity athletes here, so it’s pretty funny, especially when the two different types of teams play each other.”

MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL

Former P-P softball player leads education program for Derek Jeter’s Miami Marlins GABBY HERZIG

Last March, Emily Glass PO ’15 got a call from the Miami Marlins. The Major League Baseball team had a vision for the future of its program and wanted Glass to be a key component.

While traveling for her Watson Fellowship after graduation, Glass, who played softball while attending Pomona College, had the opportunity to work with the MLB for the first time.

She researched baseball player development programs and philosophies in six countries: as a baseball coach for Little League Japan, as an intern for the MLB in the Dominican Republic and while playing baseball in Australia and Curaçao. She also conducted research in Puerto Rico and Chile.

Glass’ experiences around the world led her to realize that building an education program for a professional baseball team was her next career goal.

“Baseball is a very small world,” Glass said. “One day I got a call from the Marlins, after the team was bought by Derek Jeter, Bruce Sherman and a group of 11 owners.

They were looking to build a program, and I eventually got the opportunity to work with a really great team there.”

For the past year, Glass has overseen the Marlins’ education programs in their player development department.

The initiative prepares players for both on- and off-the-field success in a variety of areas.

Glass teaches her players life skills such as community service outreach, leadership, media preparation, public speaking, cooking and budget management. Perhaps the biggest piece of the education program, however, is its focus on language and communication.

“Our goal is to become the first bilingual professional sports team in the world,” Glass said.

While about half of MLB teams have begun teaching Spanish to English-speakers, the Marlins have garnered the most attention, perhaps due to the former Yankee star Jeter’s involvement.

According to The Guardian ore than 30% of professional baseball players are Latino, so Glass’ program teaches Spanish to the franchise’s rookies,

COURTESY: EMILY GLASS

Emily Glass PO ’15 has overseen the Miami Marlins’ education programs in their player development department over the past year.

specifically the catchers, who need to be able to communicate effectively with Latino pitchers.

Additionally, all international players begin to learn English from the moment they enter the Marlins’ system.

“What’s so important from a language perspective is just having our team truly be able to communicate and work together,” Glass said. “The power to have strong relationships really needs that foundation of communication.”

Jeter has been extremely supportive of the Marlins’ education initiatives, according to Glass. He is a partial owner of the team, but also the CEO of the franchise.

The goals of Jeter’s personal foundation, “Turn 2,” directly coincide with those of the Marlins’ player development system. During his rookie season with the Yankees in 1996, Jeter created the foundation with his father to encourage high school students to lead healthier lifestyles.

“Education has always been a core value for him,” Glass said. “He and our entire leadership team have really helped bring the program to fruition.”

In developing the program, Glass said she has drawn upon her athletic and educational experiences at Pomona, where she majored in public policy analysis and played for the Pomona-Pitzer team.

“What we’re trying to teach these guys is how to compete,” Glass said. “My experience

playing softball at Pomona and playing softball prior to that really helps me connect with them.”

Glass said Pomona’s academic style served as inspiration for her when she began to plot out the program’s structure and curriculum — particularly its interdisciplinary nature.

Glass said she does not teach classes with more than 12 players in the room. Often, classes only have five to six students. She said she valued the benefits of small class sizes at Pomona, and her choice to incorporate this style into the Marlins’ program is modeled after that experience.

As for further development, Glass mentioned several projects that are in-the-works for the Marlins, who are in the midst of a full roster rebuild.

Glass said she wants to take the program on the road. The Marlins are starting to invest in “affiliate language labs,” so that when minor league players are on road trips, they will have access to computers where they can continue their education.

Another aspiration relates to community service.

“We have a goal that this year, every player in our organization will complete one community service event per month,” Glass said. “We’re trying to build a fan base in Miami, and we’ve seen that when our community members meet our players, that’s when they become fans.”

PAGE 12

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