Vol. CXXXIII No. 13

VOL. CXXXIII NO. 13

FRIDAY, FebRuARY 18, 2022

CLAREMONT, CA

Pomona extends funding restrictions for international opportunities KEVIN HUA & RYA SARA JETHA

LILLIAN VISAYA • THe STuDeNT LIFe

Los Angeles County will consider easing its indoor mask mandate if cases fall to fewer than 730 a day for seven consecutive days, public health officials said this week.

As California eases pandemic restrictions, LA County will continue to require masks indoors MARIANA DURAN California has relaxed many of its statewide pandemic restrictions, but a more significant drop in COVID-19 cases will still need to occur for Los Angeles County to ease its indoor mask mandate, officials said this week.

LA County would consider lifting some of its mask mandates if conditions improved, Barbara Ferrer, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Public Health (LACDPH), said Tuesday.

This would mean no further dangerous variants would need to surface, but could happen as soon as next month.

The county will consider easing its indoor mask guidelines if COVID-19 cases fall to less than 730 a day for seven consecutive days, Ferrer said. As of Thursday, there were 3,312 new cases in LA County, but the latest case counts suggest a relative decline in positive cases each week.

On Wednesday, LA County stopped requiring masks outdoors at large-scale events such as concerts and at K-12 schools. Ferrer announced the change after the number of COVID-19 hospitalizations in the county dropped to fewer than 2,500 for the past seven

days, meeting a previously established parameter.

Masks, however, are still required indoors in LA County.

According to Ferrer, if cases continue to drop at the current rate, LA County is set to reach its daily case limit goal of 730 cases per day

by March 16, suggesting that the indoor mask mandate could be lifted by late March.

LA County’s current mask guidelines are more stringent than those throughout California.

On Wednesday, the state lifted its statewide mask mandate for indoor public places, following a Feb. 7 announcement by Gov. Gavin Newsom that the requirement, which was last put in place last December amidst the rapid spread of the Omicron variant, would be revoked.

Masks will still be required indoors for unvaccinated individuals, as well as in high-risk places such as hospitals, schools and public transport. California will reevaluate its indoor mask requirements for K-12 schools Feb. 28.

The end of this statewide mandate doesn’t affect COVID-19 regulations in Claremont, since it will continue following the guidelines set by the LACDPH.

Who is Lauren Rodriguez PO ’22?

A ‘Jeopardy! National College Championship’ semifinalist ZOEY LOFGREN In an episode airing Feb. 10, Lauren Rodriguez PO ’22 swept the board on “Jeopardy! National College Championship,” proving herself — and her Pomona College sweatshirt — to be the winner of the night.

Rodriguez advanced to the semi-

finals, competing against Isaac Applebaum, a junior at Stanford University, and Stephen Privat, a junior at Louisiana State University. She came in second in an episode airing Thursday, losing to Applebaum but earning $20,000 for her spot.

See JEOPARDY on page 6

COuRTeSY: LAuReN RODRIGueZ

On her first ‘Jeopardy!’ National College Championship episode, Lauren Rodriguez PO ’22 crushed the competition.

But it affects counties without their own mask mandates, such as neighboring Orange and San Bernardino counties. Places such as Laguna Beach, Anaheim and Big Bear are located in the counties that will no longer require masks indoors.

LA County will also consider lifting its indoor mask mandate eight weeks after children under five years old become eligible for the COVID-19 vaccine, according to Ferrer. Recent developments with Pfizer’s vaccine trial for children under five may complicate that milestone, though.

Ferrer said she expected vaccines for this age group to be approved by late February, meaning the county would have potentially eased restrictions by the end of April. But on Feb. 11, Pfizer announced that it would postpone its FDA application for vaccines in the five and under age group, saying it was still waiting for data on a third dose.

Pfizer expects data to come out early April, which means that if cases don’t drop to the required amount, LA County won’t consider lifting its indoor mask mandate until after midJune, based on the guidelines outlined by Ferrer.

For the third consecutive summer, Pomona College will not provide funding for student internships, research and study opportunities outside the U.S. due to uncertainties and fluctuating travel restrictions brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Exceptions in the policy remain for students residing outside of the U.S. seeking opportunities in their home country, Associate Dean of the College Anne Dwyer said in a Feb. 7 email to students.

In summers prior to 2020, Pomona provided students with funding for domestic and international summer opportunities.

The Pomona College Internship

Program provided stipends covering the costs of living and travel expenses for internships, while the Summer Undergraduate Research Program connected students with faculty for summer research as well as with student-driven projects around the world.

The decision was made by Pomona’s Travel Risk Advisory Committee, which existed before the pandemic. The committee is comprised of the director of international and domestic programs, the associate dean who coordinates international initiatives and other administrators, Dwyer said.

“The Travel Risk Advisory Committee affirmed a recommendation made by a group of faculty and staff members who administer summer

See ABROAD on page 3

Keck prof sheds light on prehistoric sea monster

COuRTeSY: MARTIN SANDeR

Schmitz has been involved in the process of excavating this fossil since 2003.

LELA MAZDYASNIAN Deep in desertous Fossil Hill, Nevada, Lars Schmitz was part of a team that discovered a new gigantic species of marine ichthyosaur — a group of fishshaped marine reptiles — from the early Triassic period, about 220 to 250 millions years ago.

Schmitz, an assistant professor of biology at the W.M. Keck Science Department, has been involved in the process of exca-

vating this giant since 2003.

In 2015, the fossil was finally “air-lifted off the mountain with helicopters ... and brought to Los Angeles in a beer truck,” Schmitz told TSL. This phase of the project was funded by the W. M. Keck Science Center, Schmitz’s alma mater the University of Bonn and Great Basin Brewery. The fossil is currently on display at the Natural History

See MARINE on page 3

PZ Threads seeks to celebrate sustainable fashion, campus creatives in upcoming fashion week INDIA CLAUDY From spotlighting designers to its iconic fashion shows, New York Fashion Week has a reputation for being the center of clothing design. But this year, Claremont may rival New York with the advent of the PZ Threads fashion week.

Throughout the week of Feb. 21, the club will host its annual celebration of style across the Claremont Colleges: five days of style-centered, student-celebrating events concluding with a fashion show.

PZ Threads held a virtual version of the event last spring.

Each day of the fashion week, they featured a different guest speaker and a different student designer via a Zoom webinar, culminating in a digital fashion show at the end of the week. Accumulating much more student engagement than they anticipated, the club was pleased by its first fashion week, although remote, and looked forward to hosting another one next year.

COuRTeSY: PZ THReADS

The PZ Threads fashion week will run throughout the week of Feb. 21.

PZ Threads president Natasha Gardiner-Feldman PZ ’23 said the remote format helped club leaders evaluate their plans for this year’s in-person event.

“I’m honestly grateful [the first fashion week] happened in that form,” Gardiner-Feldman said.

“I learned from our mistakes in

the digital version so that it could really be put together thoughtfully this year.”

While the remote version was almost entirely put on by Gardiner-Feldman and vice president Jad Gorman CM ’24, many more

See THREADS on page 4

SAMSON ZHANG • THe STuDeNT LIFe

ARTS & CULTURE Without a Box blended humor, creativity and audience participation in its first improv performance of the semester, Without a Box of Chocolates, on Feb. 11. Read more on page 5.

The student newspaper of the Claremont Colleges since 1889

OPINIONS

SPORTS

Pitzer Community Fridge, a mutual aid initiative aiming to provide free and accessible food, may help address the issue of food insecurity facing 5C students and employees, write Juliane Hyvert SC ’25 and Sydney Watson SC ‘25. Read more on page 8.

The Claremont Foxes Womxn’s Rugby Club opened their season with a blowout 72-5 game against UC Irvine. With a talented team and the addition of two female coaches, the Foxes are poised to win it all in the 15s National Championship. Read more on page 10.

INDEX: News 1 | Arts & Culture 4 | Opinions 7 | Sports 10

News

PAGe 2

FebRuARY 18, 2022

Pomona prof edray Goins on being a Black mathematician, building community, and confronting racism in academia RYA JETHA & ELISA MEMBRENO In 2017, Edray Goins, then a tenured professor of mathematics at Purdue University, wrote in a widely circulated blog post: “I hate working at research universities.” He was tired of his colleagues viewing teaching as a punishment. And he was done being the “only one” — the only Black mathematician in almost every space he occupied — with no access to community support.

But Goins had a solution, one that allowed him to continue his research with undergraduates, join a department with faculty engaged in teaching and mentor students in minority communities.

Goins began a new chapter at Pomona College in 2018. Since then, he has taught classes, led summer programs, mentored students, and served as president of the National Association of Mathematics. He is currently working with students to expand a research database about mathematicians of the African Diaspora, which he hopes to develop into an institute dedicated to studying the lives and achievements of Black mathematicians.

TSL sat down with Goins to talk about this project, his transition to Pomona and thoughts on making academia more inclusive.

TSL: How did you find your way to the field of mathematics and to Pomona College?

Well, for mathematics, it’s kind of a long, long roundabout route. I originally wanted to go into physics.

That was my whole thing back when I was in high school. When I was a first year in college, I had a really good calculus teacher that would talk a lot about the history of mathematics, how math was all related to physics. Seeing that relationship to physics is what got me interested in learning more about it.

Getting to Pomona College was actually a stranger thing. I was a professor at a large research university in the Midwest — Purdue University — for 14 years. Several people at Pomona, like Stephan Garcia here in the math department, asked me if I was interested in coming here to Pomona as a faculty member and I said no. I was relatively happy with my job and didn’t really want to move to California. But the math department is such a welcoming place that I considered it more and more, and eventually I decided to come here.

But it was something that took about three years.

TSL: What was the evolution that took place over those three years?

Some of it was me thinking that I really wanted to be back to a smaller school, like where I went as an undergraduate. I went to Caltech, where there’s about 2,000 students.

I was becoming more and more disillusioned. Being at a larger school, I would have a class of 200 students.

I’d be lucky if I even got to know the name of one of the students in the class. And I hate to say it, but Purdue gave me more and more reasons to consider leaving.

TSL: In your blog post you wrote about your feelings of isolation at Purdue due to being one of the only Black members of the mathematics faculty. Do you think there have been more community building

opportunities at Pomona?

In general, [Purdue] felt like it was an isolating department, but I’ll say the campus itself was just very isolating. It is a very conservative campus. And there really weren’t many options to meet students, to get to know the other Black faculty from other departments. I feel that it’s very different here. Granted, there aren’t any other Black faculty in the math department here, but there’s just so much activity, and really so much of an interest in having a welcoming department.

TSL: Could you speak more about the work that you’ve done with underrepresented students in mathematics?

I run a summer program called PRiME — Pomona Research in Mathematics Experience — where I bring in students from all over the country and a handful from Pomona. The goal is to have a community of people doing mathematics. Pomona is an excellent place to have this type of community, because you have the facilities here and you also have a very welcoming atmosphere. Outside of that eight week summer program, I also try to get to know the students one-on-one.

So doing little things, like inviting students out to dinner or taking them to the movies, just to get to know them better.

TSL: How do you see these programs and your engagement with students inside and outside the classroom enhancing the field of mathematics in the long run?

Mathematics has a stereotype of being a very elitist field, a solitary field. You know, you think of a mathematician and you think of a crazy older white-haired guy in his room doing math by himself. I’ve been slowly trying to replace that image by saying, you know, we can have women, we can have minorities, we can also work in groups.

That’s why I’m really big about having the summer program here — I really want people to work in groups and get to know each other.

TSL: Can you speak about your involvement with the Mathematicians of the African Diaspora research project? What are the goals of this initiative?

[Mathematicians of the African Diaspora] was originally a website that was started in 1997 by a Black mathematician named Scott Williams who wanted to keep track of the different Black mathematicians he was meeting at conferences.

When he would meet a mathematician, he would create a website for that person. Eventually, over about 10 years from 1997 to 2008, he came up with about 600 profiles of people that he met.

Well, every good thing comes to an end, and he decided to retire, so myself and a few friends of mine decided to take over the site so that we could continue to add more profiles and update the information that was there. And now it has turned into a much, much larger project.

I also have a group of undergraduates that’s working on writing biographies of the mathematicians. My hope is to eventually turn all of this into a center here at Pomona, where the idea will be to

COuRTeSY: POMONA COLLeGe

Pomona mathematics professor Edray Goins is leading the charge to document the first Black pioneers in mathematics, a feat that has yet to be attempted to the same extent.

focus on the history of Blacks in the mathematical sciences, the first of its kind in the country.

TSL: This level of documentation has never been done before.

Have any of your findings surprised you?

I think what’s most surprising is the fact that it’s never been done before. When I was an undergraduate, I was essentially a minor in history, and one of the first quotes that my advisor told me was, “History is written by those who write it.”

What you learn in all these history projects is that it shouldn’t really surprise you that it hasn’t been done before, because you have to ask the question, “Who would have sat down to do all of this?”

We’re still learning a lot of stories of individuals and asking basic questions, such as who were the first five Black women to have gotten their degrees in math? We’re also looking to see what are the trends of African Americans getting their PhDs in mathematics. The first one did so in 1925. Race really wasn’t kept track of in this way until 1980. So we can’t just look up government records and look at the data. We really have to do a lot of work to figure out how we find the

data. So it’s an interesting project, but it’s not as straightforward as you might think. You have to be very creative about it.

TSL: In 2019 you were featured in a New York Times article in which you spoke about being one of the few Black doctorates in mathematics. What changes need to be made within academia to expand the field of mathematics’ scope and representation within minority communities?

I’d say a couple of different things. One, an overall rethinking of what a mathematician looks like.

It’s still too much of this idea that, if you don’t look or behave a certain way, maybe you aren’t cut out to do mathematics, or maybe you aren’t good enough to do mathematics. That’s very self-selecting for students.

Also, I think that math needs to be more welcoming in the sense of trying to explain what it does.

I, myself, was hesitant about majoring in math, because I didn’t know what a mathematician did.

I knew that math people were college professors, but I wasn’t really interested in being at a chalkboard all day. I think that if more people understood what mathematics

did as a profession outside of just teaching in a classroom, then more people would take math seriously.

But I would put a lot of it on the culture of mathematics, that we haven’t really been willing to open up and tell people what we do, or be encouraging to people that aren’t traditional. That’s why I say I think that we ourselves, we as a culture, have to rethink what we’re putting out there for the rest of us.

TSL: Do you believe that it’s possible to combat structural racism from within academic institutions?

I think a lot of issues [of racism] are very deeply rooted in American culture. Some of this is structural, like redlining and what’s happening with insurance properties and voter fraud. Others are more psychological. I don’t really know if academia can solve all of those problems. But I think academia has its own problems that it has to work on solving. So I do hope that Pomona is doing the right thing and really asking, “Are we doing everything that we can do?” I think right now that’s what academia can do. Think about itself.

The conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.Read the full interview at tsl.news.

Harvey Mudd College purchases new house for president MARCELLA TODD When Harvey Mudd College sees a change in its president at the end of the 2022-2023 academic year, the location of the president’s house will change along with it.

The new president will reside at Rankin House, which is located a brief walk from campus on the corner of 12th Street and College Avenue. The new president, who is yet to be selected, will be the first to live at the new location.

The historic Rankin House was built in 1923. At 5,000 square feet, it has multiple sustainable and eco-friendly features such as a 9kv solar photovoltaic array, two Tesla powerwalls and a hot water solar heater.

“We are thrilled that the Rankin House is a smart house that incorporates advanced technology, solar power, water use reduction and many other sustainability features that align with Harvey Mudd’s commitment to becoming a more sustainable campus,” Harvey Mudd spokesperson Judy Augsburger said via email.

The current president’s house — known as Garrett House — is on the southeast edge of Mudd’s campus at Mills Avenue and Platt Boulevard and has been home to all five HMC presidents since the college was founded in 1955.

Some Mudd students were impressed by the innovative nature of the Rankin House. Dimitri Avila HM ’25 said that the features of the Rankin House made it “Mudd-y.”

On the flipside, some questioned the purchase of the Rankin House, wondering if the funds could be used better elsewhere on campus.

FLOReNCe PuN • THe STuDeNT LIFe

Harvey Mudd College President Maria Klawe’s successor will reside in a new house come June 2023.

“Was it necessary? I’m not sure about that,” Avila said.

Ava Sherry HM ’22 called the purchase an “interesting use of funds.”

“Honestly, half the time I don’t realize the president’s house is on campus,” Sherry said.

“It doesn’t really affect my day to day. I remember freshman year we TP[’d] the house, and that was

the last time I interacted with it.”

The relocation of the president’s residency may provide the college with an opportunity to use the current space for other purposes. While Harvey Mudd has not expressed any formal plans on what will happen to the Garrett House property, Augsburger acknowledged that the land could be used in future

projects such as “student housing, faculty housing, academic or facilities space.”

A recent article in Mudd Magazine suggests that the school’s master plan calls for the construction of an “approximately 20,000-square-foot building” on the house’s footprint, according to Andrew Dorantes, Chief Operating Officer and Treasurer.

“I think the space is prime real estate. I think a new dorm should be built, especially with the housing crisis,” said Sherry.

In 2020, Harvey Mudd said it would need to rent off-campus apartments for approximately 70 students to reduce density on-campus and limit dorms to housing no more than two people per room.

News

FebRuARY 18, 2022

ABROAD: Students feel ‘blindsided’

by Pomona restrictions on international summer programs

PAGe 3

MARINE: Researchers puzzled by fossil: ‘How did it become so big?’

Continued from page 1

SeOHYeON Lee • THe STuDeNT LIFe

Continued from page 1 opportunities for students … student safety had to be the top consideration as we faced an unclear view of the summer,” Dwyer told TSL in an email.

The majority of funds for international summer projects will be reallocated to opportunities within the U.S., Dwyer said.

For students hoping to pursue summer opportunities abroad, the announcement was a disappointment. Riya Sivakumar PO ’23, a neuroscience major who secured a summer internship in January at the Max Planck Institute in Germany, said that she was “blindsided” by the announcement.

“I’m a tour guide and I talk a lot about PCIP and SURP on my tours. I talk about how you’re able to find your own opportunities and the school will enable you to do it without a financial burden,” she said.

Now, ineligible to have the opportunity funded, Sivakumar is trying to find alternative ways to pay for her summer internship in Germany.

For Sivakumar, the decision is indicative of a decision-making process that doesn’t include transparency and student input.

“We have dialogue,” she said, “but maybe not about the most important things.”

Other students faced challenges in finding domestic alternatives to experiences they hoped to

have abroad this summer. Riaan Dhankhar PO ’25 was planning to use college funding for an immersive Arabic-language program in the Middle East this summer.

Dhankhar was hoping to spend time in the region after his freshman year to gain cultural and language expertise integral to a career in diplomacy and government affairs.

“When you go to a small school, one of the things they talk a lot about is the access to incredible resources, internships and research for freshmen and underclassmen,” Dhankhar said. “But when you’re not given those resources, especially when this is something you’ve planned ahead for, it’s frustrating.”

In 2019, 16 percent of students pursued international opportunities, so the policy will not likely affect the majority of Pomona students’ summer plans, according to Chelsea Ahn, director of the Pomona College Internship Program.

“Since the pandemic started, students have creatively found ways to engage in their global learning by pursuing virtual internships with international employers.

Students have also engaged in their global learning with U.S. employers through international project topics or connections to international partners,” Ahn said in an email to TSL. Ahn’s hopeful sentiments were echoed by David Tanenbaum, associate dean of the college and

director of the Summer Undergraduate Research Program.

“In the past two years we have supported some domestic programs that support language acquisition skills, and some of the RAISE [Remote Alternative Independent Summer Experience] projects done remotely with Zoom and internet sources have been focused on international locations,” he said in an email.

The other 5Cs have varying policies on summer funding.

Pitzer College’s policy currently aligns with Pomona’s, according to Pitzer spokesperson Kimberly Shiner. Its summer 2022 policy, however, is subject to change.

Claremont McKenna College is taking a country-specific approach in providing summer funding, currently allowing students to work in eight countries including China and New Zealand, according to spokesperson Gilien Silsby.

Scripps College is providing summer funding for international opportunities, spokesperson Rachael Warecki told TSL via email.

Harvey Mudd College’s resources are primarily directed toward on-campus research experiences, according to spokesperson Judy Augsburger, with travel abroad expected to be allowed after March 1 and subject to administrative approval.

Museum of Los Angeles County.

A paper co-authored by Schmitz was published in December, describing findings related to the ichthyosaur.

Weighing in at 45 tons, with a six-and-a-half-foot-long skull and a 55-foot-long body, the rapid development of gigantism in this species is strikingly different from the modern day giants of our oceans, such as whales, Schmitz said.

In an interview with The New York Times, Schmitz said the team of researchers had just one question after discovering the fossil: “How did it become so big?” While modern whales took around 45 million years to evolve to their massive sizes, this ichthyosaur did it in three million.

Schmitz hypothesizes that the rapid development of the ichthyosaur’s large size is partially a result of the short trophic networks caused by the Permian extinction. He explains that shorter food chains are more efficient in sustaining apex predators.

Additionally, Schmitz said, researching the giant ichthyosaur can benefit modern marine conservation by enabling a deeper understanding of marine evolution, especially since the massive creature evolved rapidly after a mass extinction.

“So when we’re looking at conservation of modern giants, the changes to the trophic network can have massive consequences for the overall health of the ecosystem,” Schmitz said.

He hopes that this research can assist with efforts to stabilize climate change’s effects on fauna.

Schmitz puts a positive spin on the events of mass extinction by emphasizing that “life has bounced back every single time.”

“We are causing massive climate change right now. If we let it go back to a stable, stable condition, it should bounce back over geological time,” Schmitz

said.

In 1998, a group that included Schmitz’s masters adviser and longtime collaborator, Martin Sander, discovered Cymbospondylus youngorum, a giant marine reptile.

Schmitz refers to C. youngorum as a “fish-lizard” — one that dominated the Triassic era oceans after the mass extinction at the end of the Permian era.

Schmitz also received press coverage in 2021 for his role in analyzing a much smaller creature — Shuvuuia deserti — which were only two feet in length. S. deserti were theropods (three-toed and bipedal carnivores) that lived about 75 million to 81 million years ago during the late Cretaceous period in what is now Mongolia.

The study, which was published in May and co-authored by Schmitz, was the first time that extreme specializations for both hearing and vision were documented in a fossil.

According to a jointly authored article, the team’s findings describe the “most convincing evidence to date for nocturnal dinosaurs.” By studying the sensory abilities of these dinosaurs, they said, scientists can learn more about nocturnal animals.

Schmitz’s Keck-based lab is currently working closely with the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County to continue conducting comparative morphology research.

His projects, which 5C students are actively involved in, include comparing the eye size of Ichthyosaurs to other reptiles, comparing eye size evolution of Ichthyosaurs to whales, and comparing the evolution of teeth specialization and arrangement of Ichthyosaurs, Mosasaurus and whales.

“My long-term goal is to help [with] facilitating the synthesis of phylogenetic comparative biology and quantitative paleobiology,” his website says. “A unification of these two distinct disciplines is expected to reconcile many of the conflicting conclusions and result in an improved understanding of evolutionary patterns and processes.”

Correction In Issue 11, a photo of basketball athlete Sam Cooper PZ ’25 was incorrectly attributed to Abbey Liao. It was taken by Aaron Gray.

COuRTeSY: MARTIN SANDeR

TSL regrets the error.

The fossil was air-lifted off of the mountain in 2015 and brought to Los Angeles in a beer truck.

5C Prison Abolition Collective campaigns against ‘inhumane conditions’ at California Institution for Women AMARA MIR & UMER LAKHANI After receiving reports of water contamination and dangerous COVID-19 protocols at the California Institution for Women, the 5C Prison Abolition Collective helped organize a phone and social media campaign earlier this month to raise awareness and call for action.

The collective first learned about the conditions at CIW from

the California Coalition for Women Prisoners, a grassroots statewide abolitionist organization.

CCWP first received reports about water contamination and a lack of heating in December.

Due to these conditions, several inmates got sick as temperatures in prison cells dropped to as low as 40 degrees Fahrenheit, according to a CCWP member who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation from institution

authorities.

In the last six weeks, these issues have been compounded

by CIW’s handling of a surge in COVID-19 cases among prisoners due to the Omicron variant.

CIW failed to adequately accommodate prisoners who had contracted COVID-19, according to the CCWP member; basic medication like Tylenol was not provided, nor were inmates properly quarantined. When inmates

were quarantined, it was in an old building “where the windows [were] broken and there were rats, spiders, and feces in the toilets and showers,” they said.

In response, the CCWP launched an action campaign calling for a wave of phone calls to public officials as well as for social media posts to be shared Feb. 8-9. The “blitz” was meant to call attention to the CIW conditions and demand that the CIW

beLLA PeTTeNGILL • THe STuDeNT LIFe

provide prisoners with drinkable water, healthcare, adequate heating, sanitary quarantine areas and access to phone calls, among other points.

The 5C Prison Abolition Collective supported the campaign after receiving an action toolkit from CCWP via email, according to Alessia Milstein PZ ’22, the collective’s co-chair. The collective spread word about the campaign on social media and shared the CCWP toolkit online, which contained the phone numbers of officials, scripts for calls and templates for social media posts.

Milstein had previously been inside CIW through Pitzer College’s Inside-Out program and witnessed its “inhumane conditions” firsthand, she said.

As of Thursday, 138 tweets reaching around 140,000 users had been posted as part of CCWP’s campaign. Although the full impact of the February 8-9 campaign remains unclear, previous campaigning by CCWP and family members of CIW prisoners have already resulted in “minimal changes.” The prison was prevented from shutting off water for five days in one instance, and medically at-risk prisoners were put in single cells to decrease the risk of contracting COVID, according to the CCWP member.

CCWP’s campaign is part of their larger abolitionist mission, according to the campaign’s action toolkit.

“We continue to believe in and advocate for decarceration as the only real solution to alleviating these untenable conditions; however, we cannot ignore the present dire situation and the need for immediate resolution to these conditions,” an excerpt from the toolkit reads.

CIW did not respond to a request for comment about CCWP’s allegations or demands.

Arts & Culture

PAGE 4 bEING rEEL

Bhutan’s first Academy Award nominated film redefines purpose

FEbruAry 18, 2022

tHreADs: Fashion week spotlights 5C style, student designs Continued from page 1

COurTESy: SAMuEL GOLDWyN FILMS

“Lunana: A yak in the Classroom” is an Oscar nominee for best International Feature Film.

ADAM OSMAN-KRINSKY This column contains spoilers for “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom.”

Ever since “Parasite” conquered the Oscars in 2019 with its historic four Oscar wins, American audiences have become more attuned to the Best International Feature Film category. Criticism of the Oscars’ representation problem across award categories is valid, especially considering how actors of color in international films rarely get recognized. This year’s international feature category, however, included some new and unexpected representation.

Bhutan’s submission for the category, “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom,” managed to score an Oscar nomination. This came as a surprise, as most critics expected “A Hero” directed by Asghar Farhadi (who won in 2011 for his film “A Separation”) to get it. Considering it came out in 2019, it is even more remarkable that “Lunana” made it into the nominees, especially since it was rejected from competition last year.

“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom” is, superficially, a story we have seen before. It’s about a teacher who is disinterested in his career in education and has larger aspirations to be a singer in Australia. Finally, by the end of the film, he commits to his goals of becoming a singer but with a renewed sense of purpose after having been inspired by teaching children.

Director Payo Choyning Dorji elevates this from simply being a cliché coming-of-age story by placing the bulk of the story in a village that has the most remote school in the world — Lunana, a town near the Bhutan-Tibet border, with a population of 56.

The main character in the story is a young man named Ugyen Dorji (Sherab Dorji) who is dreading completing his last year of mandatory government service.

He lives with his grandmother who wants him to display some national pride by completing his teaching gig with fervor. Instead, the government agency in charge of Ugyen decides to teach him a lesson and sends him to Lunana, reasoning

MOMENTS TO SAVOr

EMILY KIM A kiwi made me want to create again after two years. Yes, a kiwi.

“What are you saying, Emily?” you may be thinking. Well, unexpectedly, it was a small kiwi cut into the shape of a star, sitting on an empty charcuterie board, that jolted me out of a two-year creative slump.

To provide some context: I went to an arts high school where I studied visual arts, and by the time I graduated, I was burnt out creatively. What once was a leisurely pastime became a chore. I didn’t like anything I drew and, slowly, I lost motivation to draw at all. So, after graduation, I put down my art supplies and vowed to explore other passions, which took me to South Korea for an unexpected gap year.

There, I studied Korean and helped develop stories for an animation company in Seoul. When I returned to school, I immersed myself in non-visual arts related activities: writing for TSL, practicing piano at Thatcher and many other things.

Writing, piano, language learning — all of these are great things that I was happy to explore. But in the back of my mind I was always wondering when, or if, I would ever want to make art again.

Would my visual arts career end in high school and remain a thing of the past?

Fall semester flew by and, again, during winter break I did a lot of non art-related activities: I read, played more piano and fiddled around with my guitar. But when I wasn’t home, I spent a lot of time with my aunt, and one day I was sitting in her kitchen when

that Ugyen’s presence there as a teacher will help the government raise Bhutan’s “gross national happiness” — a real metric that gets calculated by the Bhutanese government to prove, on the world stage, that they are indeed the world’s happiest country.

Ugyen is an unprepared and pampered man, but when he finally reaches Lunana, he gets inspired by the fiery “class captain” Pem Zam, and decides to stay in the village to teach the eager children. Eventually, Ugyen procures his visa to go to Australia to become a professional singer, but the decision to leave has become much harder than he originally thought. He leaves behind a legacy of being the best teacher Lunana has ever seen, and he leaves with memories of his country that are unique compared to what he had previously experienced from living in the capital.

This film accomplishes something remarkably subtle in recognizing and acknowledging the film’s origin. The other nominated films also consider localized geopolitics and regionspecific aspects like dialects or local histories, but “Lunana” is the only film nominated this year that could not be remade in another country’s context. The inclusion of Bhutanese geography, folklore and personal history brings the outsider perspective of the audience into direct intimacy with the source content. The film is deeply empathetic and relatively simple, but it doesn’t distill Bhutan just to the film’s runtime.

For a country that has lived in relative cinematic obscurity, this film piques the interest of viewers while not essentializing the culture.

Bhutan still has a royal family and its government highly values the “gross national happiness” metric. These two aspects are consistently mentioned throughout “Lunana” in order to illustrate how important commitment to a nation is. How could you possibly want to leave the happiest country in the world?

This question rings in Ugyen’s ears, yet we realize over the course of the film that it is his

commitment to music which ties him to Bhutan, not the country of Bhutan itself, where he feels like he has reached a dead end with his ambitions.

He gets his guitar sent to him in Lunana, where he sings for the children and teaches them songs like “Old McDonald,” but he also puts down the guitar and relishes in the villagers teaching him classical yak-herding songs.

Ugyen struggles with his sense of belonging, especially in his own country.

When he finally gets to Australia, he becomes sentimental, interrupting the cover he is singing in a bar to sing that exact yak-herding song — with its lyrics scribbled on his old “visit Australia” pamphlet. He will always be tied to Bhutan, especially through his experiences in Lunana. One gets the sense that, by the time this film ends, his pride is directly a symptom of those experiences. It is a story that is about particular cultural practices in Bhutan, but also is the story of countless immigrants who leave home to chase a dream and yet are still nostalgic for home.

The film further benefits from gorgeous cinematography which displays the Bhutanese snow capped mountains, and provides an insight into how villagers like those in Lunana are being affected by climate change. The performances by the children in the film are fantastic, and their excitement for learning is clearly communicated, especially considering that these village kids are playing themselves.

“Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom’’ is still the biggest underdog for Best International Feature Film, but it deserves more recognition. It is purely charming and explores the choices we make to feel fulfilled at home or by our dreams, making the 100 minute journey well worth it.

Adam Osman-Krinsky PO ’25 is from New York City. He loves movies and logs all his most recent watches on his letterboxd @Adam0k and talks about movies on his twitter @ahoyvey.

people are playing a role to bring this year’s event to fruition. With more club members and an overall larger production this year, the pair needed more hands on deck. PZ Threads meets every Monday night, and since the beginning of September, fashion week has been at the top of the agenda.

“Fashion week at the beginning was just dreaming, conceptualizing: What would our dream 5C fashion week look like?” Gorman said.

“And then the second half of last semester was when we started to try and put [those dreams] into place.”

Collaborating with the Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College and the Hive for this year’s fashion week, PZ Threads has also worked in tandem with Justine Bae Bias, the museum’s communications and engagement manager, as well as Nick Endicott PZ ’20, the Hive’s post-baccalaureate associate.

The schedule for the week has two parts, with the first half of the events focused on learning about fashion and the later ones about celebrating it.

On Monday, Feb. 21, PZ Threads members will hold a styling series detailing how attendees can sustainably style their wardrobes. On Tuesday, Julien Sanz, a designer at Sacrificed Studios, will speak on his introduction to the field, his inspiration and his work at the streetwear company. Wednesday presents a sustainable workshop series at the Hive, complete with painting and embroidery tutorials on thrifted clothes.

On Thursday, the agenda moves into the celebration-focused events with a student bazaar. Creatives on campus will have booths to sell their clothing, jewelry, art and more, and student band Josie on the Rocks will play the event.

Fashion week will culminate on Friday with a fashion show in the Benton’s courtyard. Complete with lighting, risers and music, the show will feature the work of 10 student designers — both individual designers and duos — and students will model these looks.

“It’s going to be hopefully a spectacular event,” Gorman said.

Gardiner-Feldman, who founded PZ Threads her freshman year, has looked forward to an event like this one since she arrived on campus and noticed the gap in fashion-focused programming at the 5Cs. “I’m just excited to physi-

cally be in the space of the fashion show,” she said. “Sitting right by the stage of the fashion show, it will become all real …

What I had hoped for PZ Threads before COVID even started is finally happening, and we’ve been able to go through these obstacles throughout all of COVID …

I think that in itself is a very big accomplishment and something that I’m just really proud of.”

While the club and event may have started as Gardiner-Feldman’s idea, many more minds have come to share this vision.

By printing magazines, hosting launch parties and chronicling student looks on their Instagram, PZ Threads has grown its reputation at the 5Cs. The club’s social media, graphic design, blogging, videography and photography crews have already worked diligently throughout the year, and this week-long event is a testament to that work.

“Students’ time and energy have gone into making this happen,” Sabina Eastman PZ ’23 said via email. “I’m still so inspired that everyone has put so much work to make it such a big and impressive event.”

Eastman, who serves as the club’s social media director and liaison to the Benton, is another person who has devoted considerable effort to the cause.

Working on this event has also exposed her to the wide variety of talent and vision across the campuses.

“Before getting involved with fashion week, I thought I had a pretty good idea of the arts scene on our campuses, and I can genuinely say that I was so shocked and impressed by the designers in the show,” Eastman said via email. “I had no idea so many people were not only capable of creating clothing but executing entire lines of unique designs.”

Seeking to spotlight these student designers who may not be able to show their work otherwise, PZ Threads’ fashion week celebrates them as much as it does sustainable fashion.

Gardiner-Feldman explains that aside from sustainable fashion, the event is really about bringing community.

“Fashion week is for everyone, not just students and individuals who are interested in fashion,” she said. “Fashion week is just a celebration of the arts … It’s a space and an environment on campus to bring the community together, and it’s really just an avenue for that. And so even if you’re not a lover of fashion, we hope to see you there.”

PZ Threads fashion week will run from Feb. 21-25. The featured events include a fashion styling series, talk with Julian Sanz, denim painting and embroidery workshop, student bazaar and fashion show. For more information, visit @pzthreads on Instagram.

Finding creativity in charcuterie my eyes turned to an array of neatly sliced fruits — in particular, the star-shaped kiwi.

“What are you making?” I asked her. My aunt has always been very crafty, and she excitedly informed me that her newest hobby was making charcuterie boards. Now that she finished slicing the fruit — the most labor intensive part of the process — she could start arranging them on the board alongside the crackers, cheese and other goodies.

I watched her reach for a handful of moon-shaped melon slices and, noticing my intrigue, she took it as her cue to elucidate more of her charcuterie-making process to me.

“Starting with the bulky fruits helps create a general framework for the board’s design,” she explained. “I like to weave the melon slices across the board in an S shape, which is more visually interesting than going straight across.”

Slowly, I felt a distant yet familiar feeling swell up in me and wanted to hear more.

“For me, charcuterie is all about the color, shape and texture,” she continued. “Look at how pink this grapefruit is! The star-shaped kiwi is cute, right?

Did you know that you could do the same thing with persimmons, too?”

As we talked more about charcuterie design essentials, the board slowly came together.

My aunt filled the empty space around the fruit with crackers and cheese, even shaping salami slices into flowers to place in the corners. In the spirit of winter, she even nestled some Trader

SArAH FLEMMING • THE STuDENT LIFE

Joe’s gingerbread men among the crackers, laying raspberries and cubed dragon fruit atop the melon slices to naturally lead the eye towards the cookies.

The process not only made the physical board come together, but also my thoughts. I felt intrigued when I first saw the bright green kiwi, satisfied at the way my eyes glided across the board and, altogether, inspired to create again — charcuterie boards and more.

I had hardly drawn anything in two years, so it had been a long time since I talked about things like color, visual movement, all the elements of art and principles of design. But discussing these

things in the context of charcuterie! How to accomplish visual and textural balance on the board’s blank canvas.

How to create a satisfying visual rhythm for the viewer, and seamlessly transition from warm to cool tones.

Seeing these art concepts outside of the studio was exactly what I needed to pull myself out of my creative slump. Through watching my aunt craft a charcuterie board, I found myself engaging with the visual artist in me once again, and I realized how much I missed it.

This semester, my desire to

create art has been reignited. We may not share the same experiences — you may not be recovering from an intense period of creative indifference — but maybe you are searching for some unconventional creative inspiration.

I was able to find some in a humble kiwi, so maybe all you need to do is grab a piece of fruit from the dining hall (or even the trees) and start sketching away. Who knows — that might be just what you need to get those creative juices flowing.

Emily Kim PO ’25 is from Irvine, California. She loves baggy sweaters, YouTube karaoke and banana bread.

Arts & Culture

FEbruAry 18, 2022

PAGE 5

An ABBA musical that isn’t “Mamma Mia?” Queer art-heist musical takes it all SASHA MARLAN-LIBRETT While many people associate the words “ABBA” and “musical” with the smash hit “Mamma Mia,” Spotlight Musical Theatre gave the band’s popular music a new story with its production of “The Winner Takes It All.” The queer, campy art heist musical they came up with — how can one resist it?

The show follows the story of a lesbian couple, Jamie and Alex, who are former criminals turned musicians struggling to make ends meet. Sick of settling for mediocrity, they return to their criminal roots for one last heist. Everything goes smoothly, until it turns out that the art auction they were planning on stealing from is run by Emmeline, Jamie’s ex-girlfriend, and her new husband, Alan. Alex, Jamie and their accomplices (disguised as a cover band) dance and jive their way through it all and, in the end, money money money is stolen and the two main lovers live happily ever after.

Rinny Williamson SC ’23 first thought of the idea when they heard about a “Mamma Mia” rewrite contest. Since “Mamma Mia” is one of their favorite musicals and ABBA is one of their favorite bands, Williamson was immediately up for the challenge; they even wrote the two-hour play in just two weeks.

Their goal was to write a fun, upbeat and utterly over-the-top show.

“When I wrote this show, I was going through a really hard time,” Williamson said. “I just really [wanted to make] a fun show that’s happy … It’s a queer couple and everyone’s having a really good time and it’s the ’80s but there’s no homophobia … it’s all just supposed

COurTESy: SHANNyN COrCOrAN

Left: “The Winner Takes It All” follows the story of a queer, AbbA-themed heist. right: The show ran from Feb. 11-12 at Pomona College’s Seaver Theater.

to be completely camp, that really is the word of the show.”

Williamson worked in collaboration with the play’s director, Claire Foster SC ’23, to develop the play, adding scenes and forming a story that suited both of their visions.

“We added a whole song, and a whole scene — a whole plotline, actually,” Williamson said. “And it was very major.”

The show was intended to be an uplifting experience for everyone involved. At the beginning of the rehearsal process, Foster and Williamson met with each actor individually to delve into the details of their characters — what pronouns they would use, how they wanted to be presented and even their backstories.

“We wanted everyone to feel very very welcome and comfortable in the space,” Foster said.

“Since this is a cast of primarily queer people, we just wanted to make this [was] space that felt the best [it possibly could] and where

SHELF LIFE

The reading slump support group

they could just rejoice.”

Williamson also tried to imbue the script with this inclusive and welcoming energy. They wanted to make sure that there were no small roles — that each one “would be really fun to play.” After stepping in at the last minute to fill a few roles, Williamson attested that they were “still having the best time,” confirming that all of the characters were a blast to be.

The intentionality and good-spiritedness that the writers and directors’ brought to producing the play did in fact pay off — the performances were a lively and celebratory affair. Audience members such as Jenna Wu-Cardona SC ’23 were so ecstatic they danced in their seats.

“It was so fun,” Wu-Cardona said. “At the last song, everybody stood up … and the audience was dancing all together and clapping along.”

Margo Lusinchi SC ’22, who played the role of Apollo, believes the vision behind the play is im-

KATE JONES I started winter break with a substantial reading list — which included titles such as Alexandra Kleeman’s “You Too Could Have A Body Like Mine,” Zuo Ma’s “Night Bus” and Tolstoy’s “War and Peace” (I wish I was kidding).

I had the books. I had the necessary tea and cozy blankets. And, for the first time since fall semester began, I had the mental space to devote to reading.

The only problem? I wasn’t able to actually start.

I would pick up a book and last only five minutes before becoming distracted by my phone, my dog or my siblings arguing in the next room, or start skimming so aggressively that I’d finish three chapters only to realize I had no idea what was going on. One week of winter break passed, then two, then three. I started to eye my to-read pile with a sick, guilty feeling. I was miserable.

This experience wasn’t new to me. For someone who bases an unfortunate amount of her identity off her literary inclination, I often find myself unable to read. The internet defines this phenomenon as a “reading slump,” and the fact that there is Urban Dictionary language placed to this phenomenon is comforting — it means I’m not alone.

I spent elementary and middle school reading ceaselessly, between class periods, before bed, in the library during recess and at late night sleepovers. Now, I’m newly twenty, and overwhelmed with classes and job applications and making plans with friends. In the few spare moments I have to possibly pick up a book, my attention span is nonexistent. And TikTok is so deeply appealing.

I collect the titles of books I should read the way some people collect coins or stamps. It’s an ever-growing catalog, and I do earnestly want to read them. I know many college students who feel the same way. But, during my winter break reading slump, I simply couldn’t start.

I ended up in my favorite Seattle bookstore — the Elliott Bay Book Company — wandering through bookshelves and adding more titles to my towering mental to-read list.

It was there, on the new sci-fi/fantasy releases table, that I picked up “The Final Girl Support Group” by Grady Hendrix: a book which, despite my literary stasis, I would go on to finish. In just one day.

“The Final Girl Support Group” is about exactly what its title suggests. The girls left over at the end of slasher films, the ones who defeated the serial killer and went home bloodstained but safe, are all struggling through group therapy together — until, of course, the killer comes back. I don’t have a stom-

ach for violence; I’ve never seen a slasher film in my life. But this book was fun and clever, bloody and dramatic. It had plot twists and faux-newspaper clippings strewn throughout. More importantly, I was able to pick it up and keep reading.

“The Final Girl Support Group” shocked me out of my reading slump, giving me the momentum I needed to start and just keep going. I went on to finish ten more books (including the trippy, dreamlike, absolutely stunning “Night Bus”) and returned to campus feeling grounded and well-read.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized this feeling could be traced back entirely to Grady Hendrix’s cheesy slasher satire — a book I had never heard of, a book recommended to me by nobody, a book I didn’t even know I would like until I couldn’t put it down.

Curious about this phenomenon, I reflected back on past reading slumps and the books that pulled me out of them, reviewing titles on my digital reading log. I found that I could identify these books clearly, but not because they were big names. They weren’t classics, groundbreaking debuts or long-standing recommendations. They were young adult novels and romances, comic books and, now, apparently, slasher film parodies.

“The Final Girl Support Group” falls into the company of other sweet, engaging and authentically fun books, such as “Cemetery Boys” by Aidan Thomas, “Get A Life, Chloe Brown” by Talia Hibbert, “This is Not A Test” by Courtney Summers and “Sisters” by Raina Telgemeier. These aren’t the books that, as a twenty-something college student, everyone had been telling me to read. Yet each and every one I raced through, breathless and finished in a single day. I recommend them all wholeheartedly.

I probably won’t remember much about the plot of “The Final Girl Support Group,” but I’m hoping that the lesson it taught me will stick. Being unmotivated to read doesn’t mean that I’m aimless and unintelligent, or that I’ve lost the ability forever. The only thing that a reading slump signals is that it’s time to throw out all the pressure and pick up something legitimately interesting, new and exciting instead.

Because ultimately, reading for fun should be fun. “War and Peace” can wait.

Kate Jones PO ’24 is from Seattle, Washington. The last book that made her cry was “You & a Bike & a Road” by Eleanor Davis.

when they came back from winter break. Like super troupers, they managed to throw the show back together in only a week, with nearly the entire cast returning to put on a weekend of performances Feb. 11 and 12.

Lusinchi said they were worried about returning to the show and remembering everything, but after rehearsals started again, everything came back. “[It was] flowing through our bodies,” Lusinchi said of the choreography. “I felt like I knew [it] even better than I did before.”

Although it was devastating that the show was canceled last semester, the experience brought the cast much closer together, said Carson Hambuchan PO ’24, the show’s stage manager.

The show ended with an homage to “Mamma Mia’s” ending, the cast asked emphatically, “Do you want an encore?” The theater was filled with excitement. The audience cheered loudly, a metaphorical ‘thank you for the music.’

Yes, and … Without a Box’s steamy night of improv DIYA MEHTA

LuCIA MArQuEZ-uPPMAN • THE STuDENT LIFE

portant and beautiful. They had always wanted to be in a musical and, when they heard the plot, they couldn’t resist auditioning last fall. Being in the production bought them much joy.

“The most exciting part has been seeing how powerful a group of students can be,” Luscinchi said. “[We made] something that’s truly beautiful that’s all totally student produced … It’s an honor to be a part of it.”

But after rehearsing for months, the show was canceled on opening night in December due to rising COVID-19 cases.

“It was really heartbreaking,” Lusinchi said, and they didn’t know if the show was going to happen again.

Despite the live show’s cancellation, the cast and crew persisted and performed an Instagram live show that same weekend they were originally supposed to perform. They were asked if they wanted to pull together an in-person performance this semester

Where can you find keto doggy biscuit burgers, a coven of sparkly, incestuous Twilight vampires and a sex-dungeon paint connoisseur? The answer is none other than the Without a Box Valentine’s improv show — Without a Box of Chocolates — on Feb. 11 at the Rose Hills Theater. Without a Box of Chocolates was the troupe’s first performance of the semester, a steamy, hilarious Valentine’s Day--inspired jaunt of an evening, treating the audience to improv involving love, sex and everything in between.

The evening began with a cabaret dance involving one-liners. But these weren’t ordinary one-liners: they were inspired by names of audience members and paired with dancing that took them to the next level.

This was a highlight for many, including audience member Eli Taub PO ’25.

“My favorite part of the show was the one where they built a cabaret number based on the names of the audience participants,” he said via email. “Something about the song, the dance and the jokes just worked great together, and I couldn’t stop laughing.”

In fact, a highlight of the evening was the element of audience participation.

Whether as a guest on a dating show or as the inspiration for a new scenario, audience members engaged with performers throughout the show.

The audience’s level of involvement echoes the philosophy of team manager Lily Lucas SC ’22 when it comes to improv. She particularly values the community building that improv facilitates.

“It’s a really great space,” she said. “And of course getting laughs is part of why we do it, but it’s truly more about sharing laughs — just laughing in a room with people that you like.”

Community spirit resonatedd throughout the night, especially when the troupe played the game “Aside.” This led to a gripping scenario involving keto cooking, a frustrated couple and an angry boss, which showed off the group’s skill in creating comedy on the fly.

“The shows are based around games,” troupe co-president Zalia Maya SC ’22 said.

“With those games, each practice we tell a completely different story. And then the one on stage is completely brand new.

So even though we’re replaying and replaying the games, we do it in a way that ensures that each time there is a new character, a new story. It’s a new relationship.”

The night continued with a dating game, in which an audience member asked performers questions to ascertain who would be their one true love.

But of course, it wouldn’t be a Without a Box show if they didn’t take things one step further. Performers answered questions in colorful characters constructed specifically for the game: the famous wax sculptor Madame Tussauds, the blacksmith Brucephalus who had a vendetta of revenge against his village’s resident drago; and Gabriel, otherwise known as Dark Painter, regular Joe by day, and connoisseur of paint, sex and blood, by night.

Throughout all of these games, the troupe’s sense of teamwork and coordination shone.

“Improv is really like a team sport,” Lucas said. “And really good improv is when you know and understand the strengths of your fellow teammates, and you know how to make space for one another. It can be really harmonious and in sync, which is really satisfying.”

Their clear confidence contributed to the audience’s enjoyment.

“It was a fun time!” Taub said. “I always really enjoy watching improv and it was

nice to have a laugh after a tough week of school!”

To end the evening, the troupe played “Numbers,” creating a delightfully tense fight among a polyamorous throuple, one of whom was feeling a little left out of their spooning practices. Then, they acted out a scene based around a cab driver, in which all the riders changed characters each time a new passenger got on: guests included robots, vampires and the mafia.

Finally, the troupe acted out a new and improved version of “Twilight,” complete with the Obama campaign, a communist conspiracy and a good sprinkling of love-starved vampires, who couldn’t stop themselves from making out with each other (disregarding incest). The troupe’s rendition of the film had the audience in stitches, and it was a spectacular way to close the show.

Even more impressive, most of the troupe’s members are brand new, a point of pride for returning members like Maya.

“For the new members, I wanted to see them flourish and become incredible as individual performers,” she said. “And I think they have, and I think they’ve definitely shown that progress.”

All in all, Without a Box thought outside the box to check all the boxes of a riveting improv performance.

For those who would like to get involved in the 5C improv scene, Without a Box is holding auditions Friday and Saturday.

“I think auditions are a great way to try it out,” Maya said.

“We’re also planning on doing a lot of open practices this semester, so people who are not in improv and want to try it out — or [who] have done improv but haven’t had a chance to do it in college — are all welcome. And we’ll just play a bunch of games.

I think improv is such a fun thing to practice and to work on.”

Follow Without a Box at @withoutaboximprov on Instagram, or on their Facebook page.

EMMA JENSEN • THE STuDENT LIFE

The Without a box student improv group performs a cabaret dance game during their Feb. 11 show.

Arts & Culture

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FEbruAry 18, 2022

Professor of Psychological Sciences Patricia Smiley to retire after 33-year teaching career VIDUSSHI HINGAD After decades at Pomona College, Professor of Psychological Science Patricia Smiley will teach her final courses this year. Retiring after serving 33 years teaching in Claremont, Smiley will be remembered for both her contributions to students’ learning and her presence beyond the classroom, students said.

“I was completely floored by the amount of dedication, persistence, effort and overall engagement that Professor Smiley creates in the classroom,” Aashna Saraf PO ’21 said. Saraf, a recent graduate, worked closely with Smiley in the AMH-Care Lab, an intercollegiate collaboration between Pomona and Claremont McKenna College.

Smiley has taught multiple courses over her long tenure at Pomona, with her most popular courses including child development, statistics in psychology, socio-emotional development and the senior seminar. She also served as associate dean of the college and was chair of the Department of Psychological Sciences from 2007 to 2008.

Smiley is not only known for her contributions to psychological literature but also as a mentor to her students.

“She was just always there supporting me, cheering me on,” Saraf said. “So much so that she actually had a pitch competition with me, and we ended up raising money for the app for my thesis project, which actually funded the entire development process.”

Her interest in developmental psychology stemmed from her interest in understanding how families operate.

“You know, I was just interested in communication … that back

and forth,” Smiley said. “And I guess I spent my whole life thinking about it and then studying and teaching it.”

After studying educational psychology at the University of Chicago, Smiley applied her learnings to her classrooms by practicing innovative ways of learning. She believes that the most profitable form of education is active learning.

“Active learning means trying to make the reading you do, the activities you do, connect with … experience and knowledge you already have,” she said. “I just think that that is the best way to build knowledge.”

Students said Smiley impacted their lives by teaching them skills that go beyond just those on a class syllabus.

“She taught me that sometimes the best way to take care of others can also be applied to yourself,” Luke Williams PO ’23 said.

Smiley believes that teaching has been one of the most gratifying experiences of her life.

“I think the most rewarding thing is that I’ve grown doing it, so I’m a very different teacher now than I was,” Smiley said. “I feel that I’ve been able to incorporate my experience and my personality in my teaching, more and more, over the years, and the exciting thing about doing it is watching students get excited about things that I find interesting.”

But students also recognized her strength at building teacher-student relationships.

“She was also very concerned about what’s happening in your life, as opposed to just what’s happening in class,” Saraf said.

“She ensured that you brought your whole self to work and to

COurTESy: PATrICIA SMILEy

Patricia Smiley has taught at Pomona College for 33 years in the Department of Psychological Science.

class so that you could properly engage, and she always made accommodations and adjustments accordingly.”

From serving on the writing committee to the Student Affairs committee, Smiley has influenced students beyond her department. Within her department, students say she has cared for her students by going above and beyond the duties of her role as a mentor.

In one instance, Smiley realized the seniors she was mentoring during the thesis-writing process were feeling overwhelmed.

“Smiley said, ‘I feel like you guys need something to cuddle.

Like, do you have something

THE 5 TO THE 10

Wait, this is not los Angeles — how white flight created the LA suburbs CASSIDY BENSKO

I’d put money on the fact that whoever is reading this has told some poor, confused soul that they “go to school in (or just outside of) Los Angeles.” I mean, it’s technically true. And, to be fair, you probably thought you’d be closer to the City of Angels before you arrived on campus.

Closer to lively nightlife, vibrant multicultural enclaves and maybe even the beach. Claremont’s meticulously manicured suburban streets stand in striking contrast to the bustling behemoth that is Los Angeles proper — and that is no mistake. Claremont, like the LA suburb I grew up in, is the product of white flight, the mass exodus of white people from Los Angeles to the suburbs beginning in the 1950s.

Take it from me, someone who is probably too familiar with the Los Angeles suburbs.

On my first day of college, I loaded my brand-spanking-new shower shoes and Twin XL sheets into the back of my car and drove from one end of LA County to the other. More specifically, I drove an hour and ten minutes down the 5, then the 10, from one Los Angeles suburb — Santa Clarita — to another. Both of them happen to be clinging onto Los Angeles County by their fingernails.

Compared to Santa Clarita, Claremont felt like an aberration. Santa Clarita has long been a Republican stronghold in an otherwise dark blue county, making it a less-thankind place to grow up in as a queer leftist. It didn’t make sense for a place lush with rolling green lawns and shady oak groves to exist in the desert I’d grown up in. More than the greenery, the presence of pride flags and progressive lawn signs signaled that I was in a different environment entirely. It was hard to believe I had found a place that felt so antithetical to my hometown in such close proximity.

However, when you cross Claremont Boulevard, the aberration dissipates. The trees begin to dwindle and expansive parking lots and cookie-cutter homes reappear, reminding me that this place is not so different from home. Despite their differences, Claremont and Santa Clarita share a common lineage of white flight that remains alive and well in both cities.

Threatened by the looming possibility of desegregation, aided by post-war highway construction programs and redlining and startled by the Watts Riots of 1965, thousands of white families migrated to the suburbs, transforming the makeup of Los Angeles. Keeping in mind that the Brown v. Board decision was released in 1954, LA’s white population dropped from 93.4 percent in 1950 to a staggering 24.6 percent in 1980. White flight became self-perpetuating, as the fight to desegregate LA public schools magnified white fear and created “throngs of new commuters transforming former orange groves into suburban refuges,” education scholar Jack Schneider wrote.

This left us with the ex-citrus fields we now call Claremont.

Unlike our neighboring cities, Claremont has a unique knack for maintaining near-post-war levels of whiteness. According to Data USA, while Pomona and Ontario are currently only 10.8 percent and 15.9 percent non-Hispanic white, Claremont is a striking 48.9 percent non-Hispanic white. How is it that Claremont is only 22 percent less white than it was in 1950, while its neighbors continued to diversify?

A recent 5C student project, “Deconstructing Claremont,” identifies a complicated history of “restrictive housing practices, the explosion of the interstate highway system and the unchecked sprawl of suburbs that accompanied this new, car-centered infrastructure.”

A closer-to-home example of this was the Claremont Colleges-approved construction of Claremont Boulevard in 1960.

Outlining the easternmost edges of Pomona College, Claremont McKenna College and Pitzer College, the road is a monument to de facto segregation. The authors of Deconstructing Claremont assert that the road split the Latino community of Arbol Verde, destroying homes and a church in the process and ultimately resulting “in the physical division and eventual dissolution of a once-cohesive community.” Hidden under a veil of neoliberal progressive attitudes, the racist violence of Claremont’s construction is built into the city’s infrastructure.

In contrast to Claremont, Santa Clarita’s population has changed dramatically over the past few decades. This shift in demographics is represented in a lawsuit against the Santa Clarita City Council.

The suit demands the abolition of election practices that violate the California Voting Rights Act by dramatically diluting Latino votes. The city is utilizing an illegal “at-large” winner-take-all voting system, which means that theoretically each council mem-

ber represents the whole city. In reality, the system is antithetical to representation. Attorney Sage Rafferty asserts in a petition to the city that this practice has “entrenched incumbents who were elected when Santa Clarita was 80% white, and only 20% Latino.”

Instead, Rafferty proposes the implementation of single-member districts. District elections would, for the first time, open the door to the possibility of ending an incumbent Republican dynasty which has dominated the council since 1998. Santa Clarita’s at-large election process is but one devastating legacy of white flight, which Rafferty alleges has cemented “electoral choices taken twenty years ago, by a very different city.”

To the untrained eye, these suburbs are innocuous. Claremont Boulevard looks like every other street, and Santa Clarita elections chug along like any other mundane municipal election. As for Claremont, its progressive exterior tends to shield the history of white flight in a way Santa Clarita’s explicit bigotry doesn’t. Nevertheless, both are crucial and often overlooked living elements of LA’s past.

Though local politics aren’t sexy, they are remarkably important, especially in the suburbs that permanently altered the trajectory of Los Angeles. I cannot overstate the importance of showing up for public comment at a city council meeting, voting in off-cycle elections, and canvassing for down ballot candidates. It is truly remarkable what local officials can get away with without oversight from an engaged, activist constituency.

So, be a pain in your city council’s ass today.

Cassidy Bensko SC ’25 is TSL’s Southern California columnist, from Santa Clarita, CA. They’re a certified tree hugger, goldfish enthusiast and lover of comedy.

SArAH FLEMMING • THE STuDENT LIFE

to cuddle?’ And the following Thursday she came in with basically a sign-up sheet with all different kinds of pillow pets,” Anna Sipowicz PO ’22 said.

Even in the pandemic, the unprecedented circumstances didn’t hinder her teaching.

“It seemed like in the remote setting that students were able to kind of grapple with less at a time.” Smiley said. “So I started thinking about the form of modules, like three or four little things, little lessons that I wanted to do in each class period.”

Smiley intends to continue with writing projects over the next couple of years, such as studying longitudinal datasets of

families during COVID-19. In addition to that, she has begun training as a psychological therapist.

As she departs, she said she’s leaving behind two main sentiments: first, gratitude for the wonderful staff and students that she has worked with, especially the faculty that have retired recently. Second, she hopes that Pomona finds a talented successor who carries on her teaching in developmental psychology.

“I hope that the Department of Psychological Science hires a fantastic developmental psychologist because it is such an important area of work and learning,” Smiley said. “That would be a happy legacy for me.”

JEOPARDY: Rodriguez comes close in the second round Continued from page 1 The special edition of the show runs Feb. 8 to Feb. 22 and features “36 of America’s sharpest undergraduates” competing for the $250,000 grand prize in the collegiate championship.

Rodriguez first decided to test her luck while in quarantine in the fall of 2020. Since the pandemic put the world in jeopardy, Rodriguez had a lot of time to broaden her horizons — and her brain. Studying for the test “broke the monotony” of pandemic life.

“I was really bored … and I sort of got into watching ‘Jeopardy!’” she said. “I had never watched a lot of ‘Jeopardy!’ before but … I watched it and I would think to myself, ‘I know a lot of these answers.’

I was like, ‘maybe I could do this?’”

Between October 2020 and January 2021, Rodriguez had “Jeopardy!” on the brain constantly, completing three rounds of auditions (the Anytime test, a proctored Zoom quiz and a final interview).

Nine months later, she heard that she was chosen to be a finalist on the show.

“I was surprised, but honestly after my audition, I felt pretty confident about how I did,” Rodriguez said. “I felt pretty good about my chances.”

This confidence might be what made her champion.

Rodriguez trounced her opponents — Matthew “Matt” Downing, a senior at the University of Notre Dame, and Elijah Odunade, a junior at the University of Georgia — in the quarterfinals on Feb. 10, competing like it was a no-brainer. She took the lead with the first question and controlled the game until the end, with a final total of $20,300 and a $16,500 lead on her competitors. “[Downing and Odunade] were really confused,” Rodriguez said. “They were like, what is this small school that’s just crushed [us], like why [is it] able to compete against these big schools.”

Rodriguez, a sociology and public policy major at Pomona College, said she’s proud to promote Pomona and the 5Cs on a show that has such a widespread presence and national recognition.

The 5Cs’ tight knit community translated well to the “Jeopardy!” environment and helped Rodriguez feel comfortable as a contestant. The supportive community of smart students was one of her favorite parts about being on the show.

“It was really nice to bond [with] the contestants,” Rodriguez said. “The experience

of being there at the stage was really surreal. When I first got there, it was overwhelming, but in the best way. I had a lot of fun with it.”

Rodriguez has always really loved puzzles and trivia games.

As a kid, she enjoyed doing word searches on road trips and planes. Eventually, she branched out to doing Sudoku and crossword puzzles — which she admits she used to be “awful” at because the pop culture references went over her head. She credits her parents with preparing her for the big competition, as they encouraged her interest in these games.

“They taught me that it was cool to be smart, and it was okay to be smart,” Rodriguez said. “I used to really like doing stuff like competing in spelling bees, and nerdy stuff like that … I feel like kids can feel self-conscious about that. But my parents always celebrated it for me and really encouraged me to pursue what I wanted to do.”

Pomona has also played a significant part in Rodriguez’s success as a “Jeopardy!” contestant.

“Going to Pomona [has] helped me develop a really wide breadth of knowledge,” Rodriguez said. “On ‘Jeopardy!’ they asked [questions] about so many different things and disciplines: art and history and politics and science; they just really run the gamut. I think that taking a bunch of classes in all these different areas … prepared [me]. I also just feel very inspired by the accomplishments of people at Pomona.”

Rodriguez is currently working on her thesis, which is an exploration of the link between mass media and public policy.

She is writing about the sociology of game shows and how they influence public discourse and, ultimately, impact our society. “Jeopardy!” and what sort of questions are asked on it are, naturally, her starting point. “‘Jeopardy!’ is not perfect,” Rodriguez said. “In many ways, it can perpetuate inequities and can reinforce existing hierarchies … I want to dig deeper into that and think about ways that ‘Jeopardy!’ can be [a] more equitable and positive influence on discourse and therefore, policymaking.”

After graduation, Rodriguez is planning on moving to San Francisco to work for a management consulting firm. Her sagacious advice for fellow students who want to be future “Jeopardy!” contestants: “Instead of studying, just try to be a sponge.”

“Soak up things in the world around you, be curious when you see something in your classes or if you’re reading an article … just try to always be learning,” she said. “I think that the best type of studying that you can do is to try to always learn more about the world around you.”

OpiniOns

February 18, 2022

PaGe 7

‘The women’s college’ isn’t just for women anymore NIKKI SMITH As the only women’s college at the 5Cs, it’s time for Scripps College to reassess its role in regards to transgender and nonbinary applicants.

Scripps’ current application policy is confusing, arbitrary and was clearly written without an understanding of trans and nonbinary identities. The Scripps admissions website says that the college will consider “all applicants who indicate their legal sex as female submitted through the Common Application, in addition to applicants who self-identity as women.” This means that Scripps considers applications from cisgender women and trans women, as well as trans men and nonbinary people whose legal sex is female.

But there may not exist one all-encompassing legally designated sex for each person. A person’s sex/gender is indicated on many different legal documents, including driver’s license, passport, and birth certificate, and they are not required to match each other. A trans person may have different, conflicting legal sexes because editing each document can vary drastically in process and difficulty. In fact, it is impossible for someone whose sex was assigned male at birth to change their legal sex with the U.S. Department of Defense after being registered for the Selective Service.

Scripps’ application policy also fails to account for the wide range of gender identities that exist outside of the binary of woman or man. This lack of consideration results in a policy that is ambiguous and arbitrarily exclusionary. A non-binary person whose legal sex is female is presumably eligible, while a nonbinary person whose legal sex is male is presumably not, despite the fact that these two hypothetical people might share the same gender identity.

I say “presumably” because the policy is so unclear. Would Scripps consider an applicant

CaeLyN SMITH • THe STuDeNT LIFe

Scripps must re-evalaute its policy on admission of transgender and non-binary applicants, argues Nicole Smith SC ‘25.

whose legal sex is male if they only sometimes identify as female? What about if they identify as female, among other things?

If they don’t identify with any gender labels? I emailed the Scripps admission department to clarify their stance on nonbinary applicants, and they declined to answer my questions, instead directing me back to the woefully inadequate paragraph on the admission website.

The reason that Scripps’ application policy makes no sense is a direct result of the conditions under which it was originally written. In 2013, prominent women’s institution Smith College rejected the application of a transgender student named Calliope Wong. Smith’s dean of admissions originally told Wong that her application would be considered as long as her identification documents indicated that she was female, which they did. However, Smith rejected

Wong on the basis that she was not female, since her Free Application for Federal Student Aid identified her as male because she was registered for the Selective Service. The national backlash over this rejection caused every women’s college in the country to scramble to outline a clear, consistent policy in regards to the applications of trans women to avoid a scandal of their own.

To understand how the Scripps policy was written, I spoke to Nancy Williams, associate professor of chemistry at the Keck Science Department, who was aware of and consulted on the process. Williams told me that in 2014, the Scripps Board of Trustees set out to formally define who was considered a woman in order to be inclusive of trans women in the application process. They originally planned to draft the policy over an entire academic year, culmi-

nating with a vote at the end of the term.

But while the Board was debating who should be considered a woman, students started questioning whether or not Scripps should even continue to be exclusively a women’s college, with many advocating for the inclusion of trans men and nonbinary students in the Board’s new policy as well. At the same time, a vocal group of transphobic Scripps alumni fought against the acceptance of any trans students at Scripps.

Williams speculates that the Board “was stuck between a rock and a hard place,” worried that letting this conflict play out would cost the college alumni funding and prevent the passage of any new policy. Abandoning the original year-long plan, the Board quickly drafted the current policy and voted to approve it in a private board meeting that fall. Williams theo-

rizes that this accelerated timeline reflected a desire to get a policy passed, which was at least somewhat inclusive of trans women before opposition from alumni could grow even louder. However, this rushed policy was drafted without the direct involvement or feedback of trans and nonbinary people, leaving us with the incomplete policy that Scripps has used ever since.

Eight years after the policy change, I believe that Scripps is beyond overdue to reopen the conversation around trans and nonbinary students.

Scripps should adopt an application policy like that of Mount Holyoke: “As a women’s college that is gender diverse, we welcome applications from female, trans and non-binary students.” This policy is simple, clear, and inclusive; it sets a precedent of valuing queer diversity on campus.

Scripps’ student body and administration need to consider whether Scripps is exclusively a women’s college or a historically women’s college that is truly inclusive of those outside the gender binary; and more broadly what the role of our institution in the 21st century should be. It is essential that the board of trustees update the admissions policy carefully, transparently and with input from people with real knowledge of queer issues.

It is unacceptable to allow a handful of rich donors and influential alumni to hijack the process with regressive, transphobic demands for a second time. Scripps students deserve to be at the forefront of this discussion, especially trans and nonbinary students who have historically been treated as a liability or an afterthought by the admissions process. Most importantly, it is everyone’s responsibility to ensure that the Scripps community respects and uplifts its trans and nonbinary members, in the admissions process and beyond.

Nikki Smith SC ’25 is from Boulder, Colorado. They enjoy hiking, poetry, and the Oxford comma.

Find the Olympics a permanent home ANNIKA REFF The 2022 Winter Olympic Games currently being held in Beijing, China have been marred

by China’s severe human rights violations, concerns relating to management of the COVID-19 pandemic, environmental issues, displacement of local residents and growing global political tensions. These issues are symptomatic of a larger problem: the Olympics aren’t working. Moving the Olympics to a permanent location would go a long way towards fixing the games.

There are several reasons why the current system no longer works. According to the International Olympic Committee, the stated goals of the games are to “create a way of life based on the joy found in effort, the educational value of good examples and respect for universal fundamental ethical principles.” Nevertheless, the fact that China won the right to host the games despite its massive human rights violations, most notably the genocide of Uyghurs and other minority groups, underscores the corruption of the Olympic bidding process.

What used to be a competitive process for choosing an Olympic location has changed entirely, as the high costs of hosting the games has resulted in fewer cities bidding, increasing corruption of the process. For the 2022 Games, only two cities — Almaty, Kazakhstan and Beijing, China — made it through the bidding process. Only Paris and Los Angeles bid for the 2024 Summer Games.

The huge costs of the games and the financial burdens placed on the host city are the main factors in the decline of interest. This attitude has enabled a culture of corruption in the bidding process.

Charges of corruption were filed against the head of Rio’s Olympic Committee, and controversies of illegal payments also surrounded the 2020 Tokyo bidding process.

The most recent Olympic summer games, held in Tokyo, Japan in 2021 following a postponement due to the COVID-19 pandemic, reveal much about the IOC’s issues surrounding corruption in the bidding process and performative sustainability. The former governor of Tokyo, Naoki Inose, resigned from his post in 2013 after a vote-buying scandal only two months after Tokyo was voted to host the 2020 Games. In 2019, Tsunekazu Takeda, former President of the Japanese Olympic Committee, was indicted for his role in bribery payments made to obtain votes from the IOC for the same games. Additionally, the Tokyo Games were branded with the phrase: “Be better, together – For the planet and for the people.”

While the 2020 Tokyo Games

LuCIa MarQueZ-uPPMaN • THe STuDeNT LIFe

implemented some sustainable initiatives, like recycled materials and cardboard beds, critiques remain surrounding “greenwashing” of the games.

The Olympics have embraced strategies like carbon offsetting, an effort which is not an effective method of true climate action. Such claims only further the appearance that the Olympic Committee is more concerned with the appearance of sustainability, rather than substantive action.

Additionally, public support for the games has fallen due to the impact of the Olympics both on the environment and citizens of the host country. The 2016 Rio Summer Games saw a rise in labor trafficking, police violence and forced evictions. These human rights violations, which occurred during the construction of and during the games, continue to plague Rio de Janeiro.

The environmental fallout of the Rio Games has also been disastrous, with many stadiums and facilities “sit[ting] largely abandoned,” falling into disarray due to lack of upkeep and maintenance.

This year, the American public’s hostility to the games cen-

tered largely around China’s human rights atrocities, with a 47 percent plurality of Americans in support of the diplomatic boycott of the games. China’s treatment of its Uyghur Muslim population has been called a genocide by the U.S. government. Free speech has been severely curtailed by the Chinese government, which has warned that “athletes are subject not only to Olympic rules, but also to Chinese law,” thus preventing many athletes from speaking out about China’s human rights record and other key issues.

To eliminate some of these issues and enable the Olympics to return to alignment with their stated goals, a fundamental change must happen: the Olympics must move to a permanent location.

In 1896, King George I of Greece proclaimed that Athens should be a permanent location for the games due to Greece being the birthplace of the ancient Olympics. This location would provide tradition and historical significance to the games, and Greece, whose economy is heavily reliant on tourism, would benefit financially from consistent streams of tourism

and related revenues with every Summer Games. Another strong option to permanently host the summer games is Los Angeles. Los Angeles already has all of the stadiums and venues in place, and so no new permanent venues are required to host the Summer Games. The city is currently expanding its public transportation infrastructure, ahead of the 2028 Summer Olympics that will be hosted by LA. The 1984 Summer Games in LA were widely considered to be a success, with the city even turning a profit, making LA a strong contender for a permanent location.

For the Winter Games, it is essential that the host location has a reliable natural supply of snow. The Beijing Games rely mainly on artificial snow, a process which yields high levels of carbon dioxide emissions and consumes a lot of water. Potential permanent winter locations include Switzerland, which has an abundance of snow and represents a symbolically neutral site, and Norway, which hosted the games in 1994 and has infrastructure already in place. While Oslo pulled out of hosting the 2022 Games due to lack of pub-

lic support and the expensive nature of the project, it figures that a permanent location would draw consistent tourism and increased revenue every four years, without the expenses of constructing new facilities.

The IOC could also opt for a rotating model of Olympic host cities, with a few chosen cities that are cycled through. A diversity of recurrent locations would retain the international spirit of the games while also reducing repeated infrastructure and bidding costs.

While some downsides of a permanent location include less of a global atmosphere and potential irritation regarding traffic for the people of whichever city is selected, this change would do more good than harm. Having a permanent home for the games would ensure that the sports, not scandal, are in the spotlight. For the Olympics to modernize and meet the times, they must return to the ancient tradition: a single location.

Annika Reff PO ’25 is from Los Angeles, California. She enjoys consuming an unhealthy amount of caffeine and listening to the soothing voice of Michael Barbaro.

OpiniOns

PaGe 8

THE

CLARGUMENT In our new feature, we ask TSL’s Instagram followers a question every Monday and share their responses here.

What’s the worst place for a first date?

Frank @abrayaser

Collins @abelino.f

Frank dining hall @ginayum

Collins @_annabagley

Frank dining hall @slaziy

Collins @dr.nolan97

Frank dining hall

...

@cicerice

The movies @ryantrc48

To weigh in on next week’s question, follow us on Instagram @TSLnews and keep an eye on our story on Monday!

If you have a suggestion for a future question, send us an email: opinions@tsl.news.

February 18, 2022

Students are going hungry.

Mutual aid can help SYDNEY WATSON & JULIANE HYVERT Despite attending some of the most well-resourced liberal arts colleges in the U.S., 5C students are not excluded from the issue of food insecurity.

This issue was highlighted this fall when a member of the mutual aid group Pitzer Community Fridge surveyed students, faculty, and staff at Pitzer College about the prevalence of food insecurity on campus.

They found that up to a third of respondents had experienced food insecurity within the previous 30 days — and this data isn’t an anomaly. Temple University’s Hope Center for College, Community and Justice echoed these results on a national scale in its fall 2020 survey.

To some, this issue might be slightly puzzling — after all, we have institutions in place with the sole purpose of ensuring that college students are fed. And yet, the meal plans offered by these very institutions, the elaborate dining halls and cafés that adorn each of the Claremont Colleges, not only detract from the visibility of food insecurity but also contribute to it.

Most 5C students living on campus are required to purchase an annual meal plan. But without opting for the highest-priced meal plan offered, students are left at a meal deficit each week, leaving them to fill the gaps with their own means. For example, Pitzer’s 12 meal plan is priced at over $7,000 a year. This heavy price tag leaves many students without the funds to cover the remaining cost of the meal deficit.

One solution might be turning to a local food pantry to bridge the gap. Yet, without a car, nearby food pantries that college students qualify for require lengthy walks, with hours that often conflict with mid-day classes.

Further structural barriers prevent students from accessing necessary aid; governmental institutions have been no more effective in serving as a safety net for college students. Established through government policy, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, better known as SNAP, or food stamps, has exceedingly limited criteria for those eligible for assistance, criteria that often exclude college students.

In an article for The Virginian-Pilot last fall, Dr. Javaid Siddiqi and Dorothy McAuliffe cite

that “fewer than 50 percent of students who are eligible for SNAP benefits currently receive them,” illustrating a knowledge barrier that prevents qualified students from accessing resources already in place. Without awareness of SNAP eligibility, the resources directed toward these specific students fail to reach their target audience.

Even for those who are knowledgeable about these resources and able to surpass the obstacles posed by structural barriers, we would be remiss to ignore the social stigma surrounding food insecurity that prevents students from accessing the resources available to them. Such stigma also hinders programs in place designed to aid those who are food insecure, as people shy away from expressing how this issue can be best addressed and sharing the assistance they need. Many other students downplay their degree of need for fear that, by taking advantage of the resources in place specifically for people in their situation, they might be drawing resources away from others they falsely view as more in need than themselves.

There is no radical solution to the issue of food insecurity at the 5Cs. In our current age, we often reach for seemingly revolutionary change, promising to cure the issue at hand in a few simple steps, yet failing as short-term fixes. That’s why addressing food insecurity will require intentional, concentrated action.

A group of 5C students based at Pitzer have established Pitzer Community Fridge, a mutual aid initiative aiming to provide free and accessible food to 5C students and employees. Their efforts will culminate in the placement and continual stocking of a tangible fridge to be housed on Pitzer’s campus. The fridge will act as a micro-food pantry of sorts and is founded on the principle of collective responsibility. It will be stocked by community donations, local community gardens and a partnership with the Food Recovery Network striving to make accessible food that would otherwise be disposed of by 5C dining halls.

The initiative flourishes from both direct and indirect student involvement. Currently, the group is working with administrators and donors to approve a location for the fridge and establish funding, surveying the community to learn how best to address need, and raising awareness of food insecurity through political education. Alternatively, students can contribute extra items from trips

to Trader Joe’s or Target and donate snacks bought using unused Flex dollars.

In deciding on a location for the fridge, the group aims to provide unsurveilled food access while also ensuring the fridge is accessible to all who need it. In order to reduce stigma, they also hope to foster a community around the fridge, including organizing a community meal this semester to celebrate its opening.

The group is using an Instagram page, @pzcommunityfridge, to communicate project updates to the community including regular meeting dates and the future location of the fridge, planned to open by the end of the semester.

The fridge won’t entirely eliminate food insecurity at the Claremont Colleges. It is not a quick fix — students have dedicated months to its establishment and will dedicate many more to its maintenance each year. But it is a step in the right direction, one that might act as a blueprint for aspects of future initiatives. Going forward, their idea is simple: “take what you need, leave what you can” — and, maybe, 5C students will be moved to leave more than food: a legacy of efforts to support their peers.

Guest writer Juliane Hyvert SC ’25 is a contributor to the Pitzer Community Fridge initiative and has declared “We’re All In This Together” as the official soundtrack to this article.

Guest writer Sydney Watson SC ’25 is also a contributor to the initiative and was excited to switch out her regular TSL copy editing hat for a writing one.

COurTeSy: MeGS VIa WIKIMeDIa COMMONS

Pitzer Community Fridge may help address the issue of food insecurity at 5Cs, writes Juliane Hyvert SC ’25 and Sydney Watson SC ‘25.

We owe Taylor Swift an apology SHAY SURESH We owe Taylor Swift an apology.

A big, heartfelt, sorry-I-hated-youfor-no-reason apology.

I’ve been there. I always admired her ability to write her own songs, but I never wanted to be one of “those girls.” At the time when One Direction, Taylor Swift, and Five Seconds of Summer were the big names, there was a sense of unity in hate, in disliking someone for their mainstream pop influence.

Being a fangirl made you basic, obsessive, annoying. There was no positive verbiage around being a fangirl, so I socially conformed to avoid being labeled as one.

The media didn’t quite help with Swift’s image. In their eyes, she had too many boyfriends. She was always the victim. She had half a brain and her songs were shallow.

In order to avoid the shame that came with being associated with Swift, some of us internalized those opinions. We absorbed these sexist ideas and then cast them onto ourselves and other women with the hope that we wouldn’t be judged all the same. In other words, internalized misogyny, or “the byproducts of [the] societal view [that women are inherently inferior] that cause women to shame, doubt, and undervalue themselves and others of their gender.”

The media was inclined to project the image of Taylor Swift, the serial dater. Nevermind that her male counterparts in the industry were never criticized for their

dating lives, for the frequency or infrequency of relationships they had. The truth is, it is never our business how much or how little a public figure is dating; her fame just made it easier to publicize. It wouldn’t matter that Taylor had a normal, healthy dating life if the public was waiting to pick apart every aspect of her relationships.

We dramatized a lifestyle that was perfectly standard to begin with.

Then there’s Taylor Swift, the victim. Unfortunately, a substantial part of Taylor’s career was her back-and-forth, he-said-shesaid feud with Kanye West. Fans of Kanye lauded him for asking permission to use her name in his track “Famous,” though the leaked video of Swift approving the lyrics did not include the line “I made that b*tch famous.”

To think that the Twitter hashtag #TaylorSwiftIsOverParty was number one worldwide in 2016 is inconceivable. Swift all but had a scarlet letter on her back, known by the world for something she had no control over, shamed and derogated for another man’s actions. Mass animosity is bound to make someone feel like a victim.

In her documentary “Miss Americana,” Swift talks about the pressures of her career, the journey repairing her negative self-image following an eating disorder and the mental reparations following a sexual harassment case.

Swift talks about her greatest obstacle in the interview “Tay-

Editorial Board

lor Swift on ‘Lover’ and haters”: “There’s a different vocabulary for men and women in the music industry … A man does something, it’s strategic. A woman does the same thing, it’s calculated. A man is allowed to react, a woman can only overreact.”

There’s also the negative connotation around Taylor Swift, the unfailing romantic. Why do we admonish women for singing about love and praise men who do the same? Think of Ed Sheeran, Swift’s good friend. Sheeran’s biggest hits focus on matters of love. We should ask ourselves why it’s acceptable for a man to do something we reprimand women for.

Thinly veiled sexism aside, as a devoted listener, I can say that a significant portion of Swift’s music does not center around the concept of romantic love. Her most recent albums emphasize the range of her lyrical prose and ability to shift genres expertly.

Take “The Last Great American Dynasty,” which follows the story of Rebekah Harkness, the woman who used to occupy Taylor’s Rhode Island residence.

Or “My Tears Ricochet,” which documents Taylor’s narrative following the manipulation and subsequent fallout concerning her old manager, Scooter Braun.

A personal favorite, “This Is Me Trying,” illustrates the mindset around addiction and feelings of inadequacy. “Epiphany” and “Marjorie” are tales about her

grandfather and grandmother, respectively. “Soon You’ll Get Better” is Taylor’s emotional tribute to her mother’s battle with cancer.

Swift has grown tremendously as a songwriter, which I feel is important to acknowledge given she writes or co-writes all of her songs. I concede that early tracks like “You Belong With Me” and “Better Than Revenge” fall prey to the putting-other-women-down trope, scrutinizing women for acting one way while Swift proves she stands apart. But take recent tracks like “Betty” and “Cardigan,” two perspectives from the fictional folklore love triangle: She writes from the perspective of two women who have been wronged, who carry a degree of maturity and introspection that defy preconceived notions of the scornful, rejected woman.

Thus, Taylor Swift is one of the many women to whom the music industry, and society in general, got wrong. We so easily discredit women for things we uplift men for, and as a result, women have to work harder to reinvent and outperform themselves to stay relevant and entertaining to the public.

Because we hold women to higher standards, they have to work that much harder to please an audience.

It’s on us to change our mindset instead of expecting performers to change themselves constantly to be more acceptable. Once we confront our internalized misogyny, we can practice being more thoughtful with ourselves and other women.

Shay Suresh CM ’24 is from San Jose, California. She loves literary fiction, indie music and making Pinterest boards.

JaDyN Lee • THe STuDeNT LIFe

THE STUDENT LIFE

JASPER DAVIDOFF, Editor-in-Chief ANUSHE ENGINEER, Managing Editor CAELAN REEVES, Managing Editor

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LARKIN BARNARD-BAHN, Arts & Culture Associate SAE FURUKAWA, Opinions Editor BEN REICHER, Opinions Editor ALEX CHUN, Sports Editor HANNAH WEAVER, Sports Editor KENNY LE, Diversity & Inclusion Editor ANURADHA KRISHNAN, Diversity & Inclusion Editor GWYN WONG, Business Manager

TSL’s 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.

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OpiniOns

February 18, 2022

PaGe 9

Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill represents a national attack on LGBTQIA+ acceptance in schools GWEN TUCKER On Feb. 8, Florida’s “Parental Rights in Education” bill, commonly known as “Don’t Say Gay,” was approved by the State Senate’s Educational Committee — its first step toward becoming law. This bill has garnered significant national attention, and rightfully so.

Proposed by Republican legislator Dennis Baxley, the “Parental Rights in Education” bill claims simply to allow parents to have a voice in their children’s education.

In reality, the bill is a facade for restricting students’ privacy and access to information. It includes provisions that require school staff members to disclose a student’s sexuality or gender identity to their parents or guardian and prohibits a school district from “encourag[ing] classroom discussion about sexual orientation or gender identity in primary grade levels or in a manner that is not age-appropriate or developmentally appropriate for students.”

Although making it out of one committee by no means guarantees the bill’s overall passage — it still has to pass through two more committees, get approved by the state House and Senate, and be signed into law by the governor — LGBTQIA+ activists in Florida are assuming the worst. Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has already voiced his support of “Don’t Say Gay,” commenting that it is “entirely inappropriate” for students to be learning about LGBTQIA+ identities in school.

More importantly, the “Don’t Say Gay” bill is not alone in its impact; it follows a dangerous national trend of proposed and implemented legislation attacking the existence of LGBTQIA+ students and families. Indeed, seven states have already proposed bills to reg-

COurTeSy: TeDeyTaN VIa FLICKr

“Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill attacks the existence of LGbTQIa+ students and families, says Gwen Tucker SC ‘25.

ulate how sexuality and gender identity are discussed in textbooks and school curricula.

These pieces of legislation are not only ignorant, but downright damaging. Previous studies have shown that LGBTQIA+ youth are at a much higher risk for suicide compared to their cisgender-heterosexual counterparts, largely as a result of a lack of acceptance from family members and school communities. But learning about LGBTQIA+ history and identities in school can help combat this; in fact, a 2021 study from The Trevor Project found that students who have seen LGBTQIA+ history and

We need to dismantle the beauty standard ANNA TOLKIEN

OFF THE RECORD

As women, we need to be there for each other. And yet, I cannot tell you how many backhanded comments I’ve heard over the years: “How can you walk in those shoes?” “Is your hair real?”

“Are you tired? Your face looks different.” “Why are you wearing so much makeup? You don’t want to look like a clown!” The list goes on.

I always feel a certain nervousness when it gets hotter in Claremont. As the weather heats up, my style inevitably shifts from baggy sweaters and leggings to crop tops and jean shorts. I worry about how my body will look different and find myself feeling insecure about the comments I will receive. They’re never overtly mean, but instead are subtly scathing, criticizing how my shorts are too short or how my chest is spilling out of my shirt.

These comments highlight a systemic insecurity and judgmental attitude that many young women share.

To be fair, it makes sense where this is coming from. From a young age, we are bombarded with images of perfect airbrushed celebrities and Instagram models; we are told to look ‘natural’ while being sold 500 different makeup products and being confronted with idealized, surgically enhanced body types. Insecurity and confusion about the male gaze has caused us as women to tear each other down to reassure ourselves. This is a serious problem that needs to be discussed and explored.

As someone who is passionate about body positivity and self-expression, I try my best to be non-judgmental to myself and others. However, I still find myself comparing my body, makeup, and style to my friends. My friends ask me questions like, “What type of makeup do guys like?” “Is red lipstick too much?”, or “Do guys like big or small boobs?”, in a desperate attempt to please peers around them. While these little questions seem harmless in the moment, they hint at the deeper issue: self-hatred and comparison.

Fashion, and especially makeup, are two of the most powerful ways to express yourself. I can paint the night sky on my eyelids with a smokey eye, or wear long fake eyelashes to feel glamorous. I wish I could slip on a red party dress for Vegas Night, and then wear sweatpants and a baggy sweatshirt the next day and feel comfortable. These choices should be for ourselves, and they don’t define who we are as people or our personal values.

We need to stop making connections between how much or how little clothing someone is wearing and what that means about their life. Specifically as women, we need to stop being snarky to each other and thus feeding into a system that’s built against us. The solution to this is awareness. We think cattiness comes from women being “bitchy” or bullying and, in fact, this catty behavior is praised by guys. They love to say “catfight” and feed into our drama and bullying.

When one of your girl friends makes a comment that doesn’t sit right with you, let her know how it makes you feel. Reinforce that your friend’s looks don’t relate to yours, and that beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.

I think real beauty comes from intelligence, confidence, and kindness. This process of reality-checking every time we feed into society’s beauty standards is tiring and difficult, but it’s worth it. Unfollow accounts that make you feel worse about yourself, follow fashion trends that excite you, and don’t be afraid to cover up or wear as little as you like. Celebrate your friends’ uniqueness and the things that make them different from you, because that’s what will start to dismantle this misogyny at the core of the idea of female beauty.

Anna Tolkien CM ’24 is a literature and film dual major. She loves her pugs, creative writing, and iced coffee.

Walker flea market was bountiful New duck print goes hard on my wall

Could not buy fleas False advertising

My Datamatch results are here!

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identities represented in their school curriculum are 23 percent less likely to attempt suicide.

Representation of LGBTQIA+ issues in schools can not only reduce bullying but allow queer and transgender students to feel internally affirmed and understood. Instead, pieces of legislation like this one are depriving LGBTQIA+ students of much needed representation, exposing them to further bullying and risk of suicide.

Along with these proposed bills “regulating” educational conversation and lessons about sexual orientation and gender

identity, many states in the U.S. have passed laws banning young transgender athletes from participating in school-sponsored sports. Recently, in October 2021, Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed the most restrictive ban on transgender childrens’ participation in sports, declaring that students may participate only in K-12 sports teams aligned with the sex assigned on their birth certificate. Florida passed a similar policy in June, banning transgender women in particular from playing on women’s sports teams in the state’s public high schools and colleges.

These bans on participation in sports also negatively impact the mental health of LGBTQIA+ students. Sports increase psychological, social, and physical well-being among all students, and transgender students in particular have reported that sports teams and other extracurricular groups are places where they are able to find the most acceptance. In simultaneously rolling back educational representation of LGBTQIA+ students and restricting their participation in athletics, state governments are completely disregarding the mental well-being of transgender students, as they are time and time again denied access to empowering communities.

For people at the 5Cs — an environment that is relatively more inclusive for LGBTQIA+ students — it could perhaps be easy to underestimate the prevalence of homphobia, transphobia and discrimination throughout the country. It is essential that we acknowledge life outside of this “liberal bubble” and continue to advocate for a world where LGBTQIA+ students can lead happy and fulfilling lives without the burden of discrimination. Consider signing Equality Florida’s petition in opposition to the “Don’t Say Gay” bill, donating to mutual aid funds for trans and other queer individuals or finding ways to support the LGBTQIA+ community at the 5Cs, like attending events and trainings at the Queer Resource Center. In a moment where the floodgates have reopened for anti-LGBTQIA+ policies and attitudes, it has never been more important to fight back.

Gwen Tucker SC ’25 is from Evanston, Illinois. She is passionate about community organizing, Jewish identity and showing everyone pictures of her foster dogs.

Jasper’s Crossword: Making great points

JaSPer DaVIDOFF • THe STuDeNT LIFe

ACROSS 1. Sponsored posts, e.g.

4. Did some coding 11. Sick 14. Hummus, e.g.

15. Spot for a vaccine injection 16. Cultural Revolution leader 17. Fall Out Boy’s genre 18. Pokemon heavyweight 19. “___ me in, coach!”

20. The Marvelous ___ Maisel 22. Places for air travel?

23. Ending to NPR dot 24. Burger unit 26. Bread option 27. Dust-up 29. Mad Men’s lingo 31. Sailors, genderedly 33. ___ Hill (SF neighborhood) 34. Soap ingredient 35. “Yikes!”

36. Kissing on the quad, e.g.

37. AI-based writing helper 39. What you get when you connect each of this puzzle’s circles 41. Belgrade resident 42. “___ the ramparts we watched...”

45. They follow strikes 46. “Told you so!”

51. Chem. some water bottles are free of 54. Supplemental 55. Peak 58. Part of a cage 59. Writes, as a music note

60. Subject of some NFT profile pics 61. Loosened, as a knot 63. Garten of Barefoot Contessa 64. Chips with a “Fuego” flavor 66. Do some homework 67. Clean the floor 68. _____virus (J&J vaccine type) 69. ID card security feature 70. Poet’s “before” 71. Family members that might be confused with an awards show DOWN 1. Lemon or lime ending 2. Fairly OddParents person/place 3. Place to watch the game 4. Channel for Sherlock or NOVA 5. Kentucky politician Paul 6. Texas politician Beto 7. Manhattan neighborhood 8. White toy dog 9. Timespans 10. Late rapper on Def Jam 11. Off the cuff 12. Made fun of 13. Auction item 21. Chem. condition 23. “And I — ___!”

24. Spelling Bee solvers’ goals 25. Holler 27. Go backpacking 28. “The eyes” and “they see,” e.g.

30. “Let’s go!!!”

32. Liver disease, for short 38. Baseball stat.

40. “Just kidding!”

42. Vintage 43. First lady Roosevelt 44. Metaphor for bureaucracy 47. Valentine delivery option 48. Fuss 49. A deer, a female deer 50. App with stories and reels 51. Paint implement 52. Bean option at Chipotle 53. Singer and TV judge Paula 55. George on Star Trek 56. Make a claim 57. Cash in Cancun 62. Wedding words 65. Top navy rank, briefly

LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS

SportS

PAGE 10

FEbruAry 18, 2022

Claremont Foxes Womxn’s Rugby dominates in season-opener against UC Irvine

COurTESy: brETT rILEy

Adeena Liang PO ‘23 outsprints uC Irvine’s defenders to score a try.

HANNAH WEAVER Around a hundred spectators gathered around Claremont McKenna College’s Parents Field on Saturday in anticipation of the Claremont Foxes Womxn’s Rugby team’s first 15s game in almost two years.

Some set up on the sidelines to support their friends on the field, while others had stumbled upon the game, intrigued by the Home Depot music playing from a speaker on Green Hall’s balcony. Regardless of why they were there, everyone cheered as the Foxes charged to the try-zone over and over throughout the two 40-minute halves.

Facing UC Irvine, the Foxes dominated their opponents at an impressive score of 72-5.

“I think it was fun to start the season with a win; I think we definitely all want to clean up our play a little bit, but everyone is happy overall,” scrum-half Kate McArthur SC ‘24 said.

Getting off to a hot offensive start by scoring 24 points within the first 20 minutes, the Foxes never looked back on defense. After scoring their only try of the game in the 24th minute, Irvine was shut out for the rest of the game due to a tenacious Claremont defense.

India Soranson-Way SC ‘23, the game’s top scorer, scored tries in the 10th, 20th and 39th minute.

Maya Nichols SC ‘22, Madeleine Masser-Frye HM ‘23 each scored two tries. Rookie Caroline Bullock CM ‘24 was given Player of the Game honors for her stellar debut, aiding in both offense and defense. Forward Savanna Beans HM ‘22 knocked in six two-point kicks in between the goal posts, completing 6 conversions for a total of 12 points.

In the fall, the Foxes competed in 7-on-7 games and qualified for the USA Rugby Club 7s National Championship in May. The team’s focus, however, is on the spring season with 15-on-15 games, with a goal of qualifying for 15s National Championships.

The Foxes have had very successful previous seasons, receiving runner-up in the 2018 15s championship and third place in 2019. Their goal for this season is to make it to the championship game once more and end up on top.

“I think the goal of any team is to, you know, win nationals which I think we definitely have a shot at,” rookie wing Catie Cryan SC ‘25 said.

The field was surrounded by fans on the sidelines, with a much greater turnout than expected.

The game had a casual air, with some students blasting music from a speaker propped up on the balcony of Green Hall and

adding informal commentary throughout the game.

“To whoever it was playing ESPN music during warm ups, I really appreciated that,” Cryan said. “That brought me joy, got me pumped for the game. Everybody was just super excited and had so much energy.”

This season, the team is guided by two female coaches for the first time in Foxes’ history, including Assistant Back Coach Ana Lavongtheung SC ’21, known as Coach A. Playing as a scrum-half for the Foxes during her time on campus, she said her tenure was a defining part of her college experience and helped her realize her passion for rugby.

“Ever since that first practice, I was hooked not only on the Foxes, but rugby in general,” Lavongtheung said.

While still playing for the Foxes, she then got recruited to play for the Laos women’s national rugby team. “[In] 2019… I was able to play in Indonesia,” Lavongtheung said. “So that was pretty cool to go from never not even knowing what rugby was to playing internationally in less than three years.”

Lavongtheung credits this improvement to the Foxes coaches, which is partly why she wanted to join the coaching staff after graduating.

Home sweet home: CMS men’s tennis earns two wins in opening home series

“Ever since I was a freshman, we didn’t have a female coach, so I always knew I wanted to coach.

I thought I was just gonna coach basketball, but I really love the strategy side of rugby and I felt like it came naturally to me,” she said. “I just knew I wanted there to be more women leadership in the sport, especially on a women’s team.”

Lavongtheung describes her coaching style as “approachable,” and she especially likes helping those who are newcomers like she once was.

“I really love showing new girls the game because I remember when I was a freshman,” she said. “Rugby usually starts with a whole bunch of people trying the sport out, so I wanted to be an additional coach to help show people how to pass and give them that extra support.”

McArthur is one newcomer who Lavongtheung coaches. Although she played touch-rugby in high school, tackle rugby feels like a whole new sport to her, so she’s grateful for the coaches and team environment who have greatly aided in her transition.

“It doesn’t feel cutthroat, like competing for spots, but more like wanting the best for the team, and pushing and helping each other,” she said.

Cryan is also a rookie Foxes player who joined after friend

Devin Waddell PO ’25 runs the two-way show for P-P in double header victories ALEX CHUN

CAELyN SMITH • THE STuDENT LIFE

Ethan Carroll HM ‘22 hits a backhand in the No. 1 doubles match-up against Hope International.

DAISY ALVAREZ After a tough loss against Division I University of Southern California, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps men’s tennis returned home and redeemed themselves in two statement games Feb. 12., at the Biszantz Center. With wins against Westcliff (6-1) and Hope International (7-0) this weekend, the Stags begin the year with a 2-1 record. “[We’re] just incredibly thankful to be out here,” head coach Paul Settles said. “Our last match here was March 10, 2020, so it’s really a big deal just to be out here competing.”

Even with an inexperienced 12-man roster, four of which are first and second-years, Settles noted that Christopher Li CM ’24, Morgan Schilling CM ’25, Daniel Blackman CM ’24 and Matthew Robinson CM ’25 shook off early nerves and ended up playing “wonderfully.” “[I] felt the guys got better and better as the day went on,” he said.

The excellent play was also featured by senior captain Jack Katzman CM ’22. He pulled off an impressive doubles win with fellow captain Robert Liu CM ’22, narrowly edging out a Westcliff opponent pair 6-4.

“The first match is sometimes the hardest of the season, it’s really good just to get the first one under the belt,” Katzman said.

“It was a little bit rocky, but [we]

found the rhythm.”

For Katzman, establishing a lot of his rhythm revolved around perseverance. The senior captain’s efforts shined in his singles match against Hope International’s ace Adam Szello.

“Because I don’t hit the ball very hard, [I focused on] the willingness to run down for one extra ball, make ‘em play one more, and then when I get an opportunity, make them pay for it,” he said.

This competitive attitude was reflected across his teammates as well. For Li, his strategy involved reading the movements of Hope’s Yahia El Sheikh.

“Moving him side to side was the game plan,” Li said following his win. “He didn’t like to get moved around, he didn’t like my slice – [so] I kept using my slice.”

Still, Li’s first at home collegiate match presented some challenges.

“I felt distracted at times,” he said. “His tempo was pretty slow, he took pretty long in between points, and that threw me off a little bit.”

This same uphill battle was felt by inexperienced and experienced players alike. “[My opponent] had a very fast game and dry conditions favor the faster pace,” veteran Michael Hao CM ‘23 said. “It was frustrating when he was teeing off on his forehands, while I had

a lot of trouble holding my first serve in the first set.”

He expressed how his 2-6 first set loss was caused by narrowing in excessively on trying to win every point, a mindset that proved to be unproductive for him. Instead, the veteran managed to climb back into the match by “slowing down, de-stressing and not taking himself so seriously.”

“A [result] of wanting to win too much is you get a little tight and so you try not to miss too many points,” Hao said. “But what actually happens is, at least for me, you end up missing a lot more.

So, I loosened up.”

With this new strategy in mind, the veteran dominated his opponent 6-2 and 6-0 in the second and third set respectively, sealing the comeback win.

As for end-of-the-season goals? To no one’s surprise, the team has big ambitions.

“Winning the national championship,” Katzman said without hesitation. “We definitely have the team to do it.”

After winning two consecutive matches, the Stags will remain at home in another doubleheader against Point Loma Nazarene University and UC Santa Cruz this afternoon.

and now teammate Bullock recommended she try it out.

“I literally knew nothing about rugby when I joined and yesterday I was one of the subs, which was a super big deal for me,” she said.

A highlight of the game for her was a 40-yard run, or “take” down the field, which led to another teammate finishing it out, taking the ball all the way to the try-zone. After every try, the team has a chance to kick a conversion, and to Cryan’s surprise, the coaches gave her the opportunity to attempt one.

“All of a sudden I hear, ‘Kate, you’re kicking, you’re kicking the conversion,’ and somebody is running at me with a tee and a water bottle,” she said. “And they’re like, ‘here you go,’ and I was like, ‘oh, wow, okay, so looks like I’m kicking. [It] did not go in. But that was very, very nerve wracking because I was not expecting it at all.”

After their win over Irvine, both the players and coaches are looking forward to what the season and postseason has in store for the Foxes.

“I am really excited to see what we do next weekend at Long Beach, because it’s a different team, it’s a new game,” Cryan said.

“I want to see how we implement the things that we changed last game and see what we do in practice to keep going with our skills and our teamwork.

Sun beaming down on the plate, uprising two-way player Devin Waddell PO ’25 stared down the Pacific pitcher as she went into a circular wind motion. As the ball approached, the batter set her feet and crushed the pitch to deep center field.

To begin its 2022 campaign, the Pomona-Pitzer softball team proved triumphant in both games of the opening double header, pulling out two impressive victories over Pacific (Ore.) University.

In their first collegiate action on the field, Waddell shined brightest among the Sagehens throughout the weekend. By contributing three home runs, five runs batted in and three runs scored, the rookie infielder dominated Pacific pitching, hitting an efficient .571 batting clip on 12 plate appearances.

Waddell also tossed an impressive game on the mound, nearly pitching a complete six-inning game in the second match. Facing 26 batters, she only surrendered four runs to Pacific’s 12, striking out four women in the process.

The first match featured a tense defensive battle throughout the entire game, with pitchers Kailey Newkirk PZ ’22 and Paige Blackwell PO ’22 combining for only one run and seven base hits over seven innings. On offense, Waddell and catcher Deijah Bradley PZ ’23 generated three runs for the Sagehens via home run balls, leading to a tight 3-1 victory.

Throughout the match, the Boxers had traffic all over the basepaths on offense. Despite the early hiccups from the starting P-P pitchers, the Sagehen infield played excellent defense to keep runners left on base at the

ends of innings, especially apparent with third basewoman Katy Hurley’s double play in the top half of the fifth.

Meanwhile, the Sagehen offense was relatively cold throughout their opening match, becoming victim of three 1-2-3 innings from impressive Pacific pitching. However, after continuing to chip away at the pitchers by drawing walks, Bradley capitalized on a prime opportunity in the bottom of the fifth inning, blasting a two-run homer past the fences.

The second game proved to be an entirely different story. With 16 runs scored between the two teams, the Sagehens blew out the Boxers 12-4 in a shortened six-inning game.

After giving up two runs in the first inning on the mound, Waddell redeemed herself immediately at the plate by crushing two home runs in her first two plate appearances.

Her excellent hitting inspired other teammates to follow suit.

Outfielder Hannah Brajkovich PO ’22 pummeled a pitch in the zone with two women on second and third base in the third, turning in a three-run home run in a two-out situation.

The scoring rally continued in another three-run bottom of the fourth inning, highlighted by an RBI and a run scored from veteran shortstop Amanda Robman PO ’23.

Despite a futile comeback attempt from the Boxers via a tworun RBI double in the top of the sixth inning, the Sagehens instantly responded with double the number of runs. Left fielder Morgan Groves PZ ’24 crushed a two-run pinch hit home run to begin the bottom sixth, followed by a two-RBI double from Waddell to cap off her 3-4 afternoon with four RBIs. With these impressive twin victories, the 2-0 Sagehens look to continue their dominance in a three game home stand against the Redlands Bulldogs this weekend.

COurTESy: AArON GrAy

Devin Waddell PO ‘25 begins her home run trot after crushing a ball.