Vol. CXXXIII No. 15

VOL. CXXXIII NO. 15

FRIDAY, MARch 4, 2022

CLAREMONT, CA

Mentor groups rebuff Pomona’s proposed changes MARIANA DURAN & KHIMMOY HUDSON

ABBEY LIAO • ThE STUDENT LIFE

Brendan Mora PO ‘23 dribbles past Chapman defenders towards the net at Sunday’s SCIAC championship game.

Sagehen men’s basketball snags third SCIAC championship ALEX CHUN Wi t h t h e r o a r s o f Po m o na-Pitzer’s crowd filling Roberts Pavilion last Sunday, Matt Eberle PO ’22 drained a clean mid-range swish with 17 minutes remaining in regulation.

Up 20 at this point, the Sagehens seemed like they would cruise to victory against the formidable Chapman Panthers, who had no defensive answer for scorers like Eberle and Brendan Mora PO ’23.

Meanwhile, the Panther offense was stagnant, opening out the second half shooting 1-for-6 from the field and missing easy layup opportunities.

But after a shot-clock beating three from Chapman right after, the

Sagehens missed nine consecutive shots for the next seven minutes of play. Tensions high with a small Chapman crowd rallying, the Panthers staged a scoring barrage and slashed the deficit to four points.

This back-and-forth affair between the Sagehens and Panthers mirrored the fight to climb atop the SCIAC postseason peak, with both teams vying to be crowned as champs.

With P-P battling for its third consecutive SCIAC title and Chapman looking for their first since 2016, stars on both squads came out to play. Eberle and Mora combined for 40 points and 15 rebounds, with Mora recording double-doubles in every SCIAC postseason game. For the Pan-

Scripps implements caste discrimination protections

thers, star guards Chandler White, Hayden Moore and Jack Roggin combined for 56 points, nailing ten three-pointers in the contest.

The majority of the first half featured both squads trading major scoring streaks backand-forth. When the Sagehens opened up small leads, Chapman would immediately respond with buckets of their own, with the two teams not being separated by more than six points.

With eight minutes remaining in the first half, however, the Sagehens shifted gears. Eberle scored 10 of his 23 points by

See BBALL on page 10

A recent proposal put forth by Pomona College Associate Dean of Students Brandon Jackson will require peer mentorship groups to choose either institutional support or student-led autonomy by Mar. 18, a decision that has been met with backlash from students.

In a Feb. 24 town hall meeting, students gathered on the first floor of Walker Hall, some joining the conversation via Zoom, to discuss the changes that the dean’s proposal would implement. Nearly 100 students — mentors and mentees alike — convened to express a shared discontent regarding Jackson’s proposed changes.

While the dean did not attend the town hall, Dean of Students Avis Hinkson did in his place and has reached out to head mentors for a meeting next week.

Organized by FLI Head Mentors, along with other student mentors who wanted to discuss the implications of Jackson’s proposal, the town hall focused on the structural changes the dean’s plan would implement.

The six mentorship programs that are required to make a decision regarding the proposal include the Indigenous Peer Mentoring Program, FLI Scholars, IDEAS, International Student Mentorship Program, the Multi-Ethnic and Multi-Racial Group Exchange Program, and the South Asian Mentoring Program.

As they exist today, mentorship groups are allotted a designated space and annual budget to support students while paid head mentors match volunteer mentors

with mentees.

But, several of the head mentors of the mentorship programs worry about what implications may arise if left to choose one structure over the other.

Under Jackson’s proposal, mentorship programs would be subject to following guidelines set by the dean, a relationship from which they previously had more independence.

Guidelines implemented by the dean would eliminate open enrollment while also limiting mentorship programs to first-year students only.

In addition, programs that currently pay head mentors would no longer receive funding for those positions unless they opt to be department-led.

Mentorship programs that choose to align with the dean’s department would be required to maintain mentee-tracking along with an engagement point system and mentee assessments, amid other arrangements.

Some students felt that requiring students to sign onto the department-led approach to ensure school support, serves as an unfair incentive that corners groups into giving up autonomy and encourages administration surveillance that can interfere with the programs’ ability to exist as a safe and community-based space.

Conversely, those that sign onto the dean’s proposal would continue to reap the benefits of a fully-supported relationship with the college, including guaranteed access to a lounge space and secure financial backing headed by Jackson’s department.

“It’s like we’re being told what they are [structural changes], but the specific isn’t being flushed out,” said Derrick Nguyen PO ’23, a FLI mentor. “There’s just weird semantic misunderstandings, like what do we

See MENTOR on page 2

‘Nobody really expected that this would escalate so quickly’ Ukraine invasion weighs heavily on 5Cers with ties to the conflict

ANUSHE ENGINEER In a first at the Claremont Colleges, caste is now a protected category as part of Scripps College’s discrimination and harassment policies, thanks to advocacy by the 5C South Asian Mentorship Program.

The change comes as part of a wider movement across the U.S. for colleges and universities to include caste in their list of identities within their non-discrimination policies, after surveys uncovered that Dalit students in the U.S. were being discriminated against in educational spaces.

At the forefront of this fight has been Equality Labs, a non-profit Dalit civil rights organization committed to fighting against casteism at a social and institutional level. SAMP was contacted

by Equality Labs at the end of 2021, and by the spring 2021

See CASTE on page 2

BELLA PETTENGILL • ThE STUDENT LIFE

LILLIAN VISAYA • ThE STUDENT LIFE

Left: Hundreds of civilians have been injured or killed and over a million have fled Ukraine as refugees since the beginning of the war.

Right: “I’m just constantly anxious about what’s gonna happen next and how my family is going to be,” said Maria Lyven PO ‘22.

AVA FRANCIS-HALL & KATHERINE TAN Last week, Maria Lyven PO ’22 messaged her family in Ukraine to ask how they were doing. Her mother replied that she had woken up to the sound of explosions.

Lyven’s extended family members described hearing “explosions everywhere” and evacuated to the suburbs of the city, unable to leave the country entirely due to the declaration of martial law that prevented men aged 18-60 from crossing the border. Friends of hers slept in basements and subway stations for safety.

Alexej Latimer’s PO ’24 grandaunt and granduncle, both in their 80s, were recovering from COVID-19 when they heard air raid sirens fill the city. Because Latimer’s grandaunt required hospice care, she was forced to re-

main in Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine and a main target of the ongoing Russian invasion.

As family friends attempted to drive to Moldova or Romania for safe refuge, Latimer’s uncle was issued a gun by the Ukrainian government in preparation for potentially being sent to fight in Kyiv.

Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, its missiles targeting civilians and residential buildings alongside military targets. At the time of this article’s publication, hundreds of Ukrainian civilians have been injured or killed and more than one million residents of the country of 44 million have fled the country as refugees.

The invasion will have deep global consequences in the long run, but for students at the 5Cs with friends and family in Ukraine and Russia, the effects have been sharp

and swift.

Lat imer grew up visit ing his grandmother in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk, where his mother was born. In 2014, Russian separatists seized control of local governments in Donetsk and the neighboring region of Luhansk, declaring them the independent Donetsk People’s Republic and attempting to join the Russian Federation.

As a result, the current invasion isn’t the first time that Latimer has experienced the fallout of Russian aggression. Though Russia did not recognize the independence of the DPR, Latimer described the new state of the region as being under “Russian occupation” under which Donetsk became a “ghost town,” with a large number of residents fleeing to other parts of Ukraine.

Before the current invasion, Latimer was aware that the possibility

of further Russian aggression “had been discussed in academia, politics [and] international relations.” But even with his prior knowledge and personal experiences, the magnitude of the invasion caught Latimer by surprise.

“We didn’t realize that this would be a full scale invasion of the entire country. [Only] when I spoke to people in the west and east and in [the southern Ukranian city] Odessa did I realize that this was supposed to be a full, sweeping, surrounding the country kind of invasion and takeover,” he said.

Nastia Kurochkina SC ’22, a dual Russian-US citizen, had planned to return home to Moscow next week.

Although technically graduating this May, Kurochkina finished her remaining courses in the fall and intended to go home to work while

See UKRAINE on page 3

SAMSON ZhANG • ThE STUDENT LIFE

ARTS & CULTURE Don’t let the lack of a car stop you from exploring all Downtown Los Angeles has to offer. If you don’t know where to start, Southern California columnist Cassidy Bensko SC ’25 already has a triedand-true itinerary that won’t break the bank. Read more on page 5.

The student newspaper of the Claremont Colleges since 1889

OPINIONS

SPORTS

5C students should understand the history of Ukraine and stand in solidarity with the Ukrainian people as they resist Russian invasion, writes guest columnist Valerie Braylovskiy PO ‘25. Read more on page 7.

For the first 50-plus years of Scripps and Pomona’s history, there were no women’s varsity sports teams. So, women made their own way, forming intramural teams and leading immensely successful athletic careers without any institutional help. Read more on page 10.

INDEX: News 1 | Arts & Culture 4 | Opinions 7 | Sports 9

NewS

PAGE 2

Elle Roc PO ’24 awarded prestigious Patti Grace Smith Memorial Fund aerospace industry scholarship RYA JETHA & AMARA MIR For Anaelle Roc PO ’24, physics isn’t just rocket science — it’s a way to create a more equitable future in the aerospace industry. Roc’s efforts and vision earned her the prestigious Patti Grace Smith Memorial Fund Scholarship last month, enabling her to delve deeper into the industry.

Roc, a physics major on the astrophysics track and an Asian studies minor, was one of three women to receive this year’s award.

The scholarship is a joint partnership between the Commercial Spaceflight Federation and the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, the latter of which was created to memorialize the legacy of the late Patti Grace Smith. Roc was a recipient of the fellowship last year and became eligible to receive the memorial fund scholarship this year.

Smith was a trailblazer in the aerospace industry and racial justice advocacy, overcoming adversity in many aspects of her life. After growing up in the South during the Jim Crow era, she worked her way to top levels of the Federal Aviation Administration. Smith is remembered for her pivotal involvement with the early days of commercial spaceflight.

To honor Smith’s legacy, the scholarship supports young women of color pursuing careers in STEM or aerospace fields. To commemorate the annual recipients, those awarded the scholarship were flown to Washington D.C. Feb. 16 to attend the 24th Commercial Space Transportation Conference.

Earning the scholarship is a prestigious feat, and for Roc and the two other scholarship recipients, it also meant some high-profile recognition from the likes of Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and Colorado Senator John Hickenlooper at the conference.

“I didn’t quite understand the impact that we would be having at this conference until that moment,” Roc said of being recognized by Buttigieg, who attended the conference via video. “It was definitely a pinch yourself sort of moment.”

The conference included two days of presentations, networking and panels with some of the biggest names and organizations in the aerospace industry. The Patti Grace Smith Memorial Fund Reception was held at the end of the first day of the conference, where Roc was recognized onstage with astronauts from Blue Origin’s New Shepherd Mission.

“When we came off the stage, CEOs and really high profile people came up to us with business cards, saying, ‘when you graduate, call me.’” Roc said.

According to Roc, the confer-

ence signaled major ongoing and upcoming changes in the space industry. While the privatization of space has been in motion for years, NASA’s announcement earlier this year that the International Space Station will be deorbited in 2030 confirmed that aerospace will be privatized in the next decade.

“It’s really the end of an era in how space is structured,” Roc said, “because it’s no longer NASA and then everyone else. It is kind of strange, exciting and terrifying.”

In the midst of such drastic changes to the industry, Roc said she aspires to work with groups that try to fuse both the realms of technology and equity. Referencing the non-profit AstroAccess, whose groundbreaking flight simulation last year included 12 disabled passengers, Roc added that she hopes to make space travel accessible to everyone.

“How can we make sure that when we go to space, everyone can go to space? It would be really cool to work for startups thinking about space equity,” Roc said.

With a career in aerospace, Roc aims to combine both her love for engineering and policymaking.

After a summer internship with Relativity Space as a liaison between the engineering and diversity, equity and inclusion teams, Roc was encouraged to apply for the scholarship by her Pomona professors.

Only having interacted with her through virtual classes, professor and chair of physics and astronomy Dwight Whitaker encouraged Roc to apply for the scholarship. Whitaker described Roc as a natural leader who is exceptional in the classroom and the lab.

“I was ecstatic for Elle when she won this award.” Whitaker said via email. “It was fantastic to see Elle recognized with such

a prestigious award and I hope that this will validate to her what a great physicist she is becoming.”

Although the Pomona physics department doesn’t have formal routes for supporting aerospace students, the physics and astronomy departments use the resources of the consortium like engineering courses and clinics at Harvey Mudd College. Roc has taken advantage of these 5C resources by joining the Harvey Mudd Advanced Rocketry Club, which has been an essential aspect of her aerospace endeavors in college.

Roc and her peer mentor Christina Dong PO ’22 bonded over their shared interest in creating space for more diversity and inclusivity in a traditionally exclusive field.

“Because I am also going into aerospace, I know how difficult it is to break into the aerospace industry as a student from a non-engineering, liberal-arts college, without an engineering degree and as a minority in a white male dominated field,” Dong told TSL via email.

Herself a recent recipient of a competitive fellowship, Dong added that seeing Roc’s success is an inspiration for other students striving to reach similar heights.

Dong was recently awarded the Brooke Owens Fellowship in its most competitive year, which pairs 51 women and minority undergraduate students with aerospace positions and executive-level mentorship.

“I think to say that I’m proud of Elle is an understatement,” Dong said. “Being able to accomplish such high achievements regardless is a testament to the stellar student, scientist and person Elle is.”

cOURTESY: ANAELLE ROc

Elle Roc PO ‘24 (third from left) stands with Wally Funk, the oldest person to go to space, and two other award recipients.

MENTOR: Students worry changes could reduce groups’ ability to support students continued from page 1 mean by programming? What do we mean by autonomy?”

While ISMP head mentor Scarlett Wang PO ’22 said there has been a back-and-forth discourse between the dean and mentorship programs since he was brought on last semester, the town hall came about after he announced his proposal in the days leading up to the town hall.

Jackson did not respond to TSL’s request for comment by press time.

The conversation regarding the changes to the mentorship programs began five days before the initial town hall meeting, when the head mentors from each program met with Jackson, who informed them of the proposed structural changes.

“I feel like we were kind of jaded,” said Yosi Mayoral PO ’23, a FLI head mentor and town hall organizer. “We were just kind of like, ‘what is going on?’ We were just very confused.”

For Wang, the proposal has several drawbacks and felt “like there is a lot of room to improve the proposal and receive student input” before mentorship programs make a decision.

The head mentors released a petition where they recommended that Jackson receive extensive training to help him understand the experience of the mentorship programs community.

Among their complaints is the dean’s “inaction regarding the dismantling of MERGE,” using insensitive language, such as “using terms like ‘minoritized groups,’ emphasizing surveillance and tracking within our communities, referring to American students of color as ‘international,’” according to the petition released by the head mentors.

Mentorship groups also took issue with the dean’s “attempt to equalize and flatten [the mentorship programs] into a singular definition [by] actively removing our respective organizational constitutions and refusing to disclose how he will accommodate our intrinsic differences.”

Head mentors felt violated when asked to grant “access to our re-

spective [mentorship programs’] private folders, documents, and data,” including “usernames and passwords to our Google Drives and other social media accounts.”

In a document outlining their experiences, head mentors from the six groups called for several changes to the dean’s proposal.

First, they called for guaranteed compensation for student leaders, access to lounge spaces for all mentorship programs, while scrapping the incentive-based tracking system and 3 mentees per mentor limit, mentor-mentee.

Wang added that the proposed changes aren’t a new development. “[Jackson] has been trying to spoon feed us these proposed changes ever since last semester, but every time we tried to push back or try to propose something else he would listen and then dismiss it, and then never bring it up again or take it into consideration,” she said.

After experiencing a series of push back and little progress made with the dean’s suggestions last semester, Wang said she felt like Jackson was offering an ultimatum.

As a sophomore who is experiencing her first year on campus, Brisa Salazar PO ’24 told TSL via message that she was confused by the dean’s intentions with the proposal.

“I don’t understand why Dean Jackson wants to take that safe space

from us, if the FLI mentor group decides to stay student-led,” Salazar said.

With limited access to the FLI lounge this year due to COVID-19 restrictions, Salazar said “it’s been hard to find space on campus where I feel safe and seen.”

In asking mentorship groups to risk losing their physical spaces, Salazar said a sense of community for many affinity groups is at risk, adding “it’s so disheartening and frustrating to see Dean Jackson actively trying to eliminate any sense of community for FLI and/ or POC identifying students.”

“He is making us choose between community and autonomy – and it’s simply not okay,” Salazar said.

Salazar maintained that the core to how mentorship groups operate today would essentially be altered if the dean’s proposal is implemented.

“I love that FLI is student-led.

I love that I feel safe and understood around other FLI students.

I love that I can always count on the FLI community to be there, and love that I will never not feel welcome,” Salazar said. “Making FLI department-led means losing all those things I love. It means losing the community others and myself have fought so hard to create on Pomona’s overwhelmingly white and wealthy campus.”

BELLA PETTENGILL • ThE STUDENT LIFE

MARch 4, 2022

Judicial Board discussions aim for restorative justice in Pomona student code

LILLIAN VISAYA • ThE STUDENT LIFE

JBoard chairs and five other attendees at the roundtable spoke about their issues with the current student code.

MAXINE DAVEY Pomona College’s Judicial Board is pushing for policies that focus on transparency and restorative justice. On Feb. 23, the student-run judicial council hosted a student roundtable discussion regarding the proposed changes to the student handbook’s amnesty policy.

JBoard chairs Vera Berger PO ’23, Charlotte Tapp PO ’23 and Rya Jetha PO ’23 facilitated a collaborative discussion about the policy in an attempt to “serve an educational role on campus, increase student awareness of the disciplinary system and the philosophies underpinning it and to incorporate student voices and values into the Code,” according to a Feb. 21 email advertising the event to students.

The amnesty policy is the 15th provision under the school’s alcohol policy. According to the policy, when a student “in need of immediate medical assistance to prevent their own death or serious injury or that of another person” contacts entities such as Campus Safety or 911 for help, neither the reporter nor the student in danger will be punished for intoxication or possession of alcohol or drugs.

The chairs and five student attendees at the roundtable identified their qualms with the clause, including its vague language and the subjectivity of what constitutes a life-threatening emergency.

The students also discussed the difficulty of the decision to call a transport vehicle for a friend.

“I don’t think an alcohol violation should stop someone from getting help from an RA or campus safety when a situation isn’t life threatening or related to a medical issue,” JBoard panelist Devlin Orlin PO ’25 said in a post-roundtable interview. “An expanded amnesty policy would create a more supportive campus as students respond more readily to their peers’ comfort and safety.”

The policy also states that “the incident may also result in notification of parent(s) or guardian(s).”

Roundtable participants said this clause makes the dangerous assumption that every student has supportive parental relationships.

By the end of the hour-long discussion, the general consensus among the attendees was that the amnesty policy should be rewrit-

ten to clarify its terms and conditions, and that procedural advertising is necessary to demystify the process of calling for help.

“We want to give students who are going through the contact process [of calling for help] more agency,” Berger said.

In the past few years, JBoard has been making strides to be a more equitable and accessible resource on campus. Revisions enacted in January included the removal of punitive fines and a “larger emphasis on educational and restorative measures over punitive sanctions,” according to JBoard’s 2021 fall semester report.

Additionally, one long-term goal is the implementation of a mediation program to “create restorative resolutions and responses to interpersonal and community conflict and harm,” Berger said.

“I’m hoping that we’re making the institution a little bit more approachable and connected to the broader student community,” Berger said.

“We’re becoming more of a restorative institution. We’ve been putting a lot of focus on prioritizing community safety and restoration throughout our conduct process.”

Last March, JBoard released a file of redacted case write-ups in an effort to increase transparency surrounding its decision making process. In the Feb. 21 email, JBoard announced the file was up to date with case histories from 2018 through 2021.

In another effort to increase restorative justice at Pomona, JBoard finalized a plan to replace the points system, which was established in 2016 to replace fine-based penalties, with a non-punitive conversation-based conduct system, according to a TSL article from April 2021.

JBoard will host three more roundtables over the course of the semester to discuss other policy shifts: Restorative Hearing Outcomes on March 9, Compensation and Restitution on March 30 and Mediation on April 13. JBoard hopes these events will increase participation and accessibility for students as they interact with the school’s judicial system.

JBoard is also currently hiring a new chair for the 2022-2023 academic year. Applicants must be a rising junior or senior at Pomona, with the application due March 27.

Editor’s note: JBoard Chair Rya Jetha PO ’23 is a TSL news writer, but was not involved in the reporting or editing of this piece.

CASTE: Divisions are still relevant today, students say continued from page 1 semester SAMP had begun creating awareness about the issue among the Claremont community.

In April 2021, the group circulated a petition to add caste as a protected category at the Claremont Colleges, simultaneously hosting a virtual Caste 101 event which was attended by more than 40 people.

The caste system is a social hierarchy in Hinduism that categorizes people into groups at birth, defining their place in society. Dalits — who were referred to as ‘untouchables’ at one point — are at the bottom of this hierarchy and have been marginalized and discriminated against across South Asia for thousands of years.

“Caste is a system of division and inequality that emerges from a certain subset of the population in the subcontinent, most notably those who identify or who are identified as upper caste or Brahmin,” said Mohammad Bilal Nasir, who worked closely with SAMP as they reached out to administrators across the Claremont Colleges. Nasir is a postdoctoral fellow at Pomona College and is teaching South Asian American Studies this semester.

Although caste discrimination is officially banned in India and other South Asian countries, it is still perpetuated in the region and among the diaspora. Because of this, Dalits bare the brunt of institutionalized

discrimination that prevents them from equal access to education, jobs and healthcare.

Nikita Chinamanthur SC ’22, one of SAMP’s head mentors, described the system as a “caste apartheid” and an “inherent unequal distribution of resources or even value and worth attributed to a human being.”

The prevalence of caste discrimination in the U.S. was brought to light as alarming cases were exposed in recent years. In 2021, Dalit laborers from India sued a religious sect group in the U.S. for inhumane treatment and living conditions while building a religious temple in New Jersey.

In another instance just a year earlier, California sued Cisco and two of its employees for discriminating against one of their employees because he belonged to a lower caste background.

“While most understandings of caste treat it as a relic of the past, or see it as something that’s specific to the subcontinent, these forms of inequality migrate when you have a diaspora,” Nasir said.

“And places like Claremont and broader university systems like the Cal State system or the UC system [are] not immune to these types of inequalities.”

For Binita Pandya SC ’22, also a SAMP head mentor, a lot of the work with this movement is about “centering Dalit voices in what we do, and having that kind of be the focus as we move forward, and that’s something we really want to emphasize.”

For the full article, visit tsl.news.

NewS

MARch 4, 2022

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Claremont Police Department arrests suspect for CMC burglaries REIA LI & MAXINE DAVEY The Claremont Police Department arrested a Claremont resident Feb. 7 for more than 20 counts of burglary and theft on Claremont McKenna College’s campus this semester.

The suspect had earlier been identified via security footage for his previous thefts. On the morning of Feb. 7, Campus Safety notified CPD about the man after he was spotted on campus attempting to steal a bag from an unattended housekeeping cart, but he fled the scene, Campus Safety said in a statement.

According to a Claremont Courier article, the man left behind his car, which Campus Safety impounded as evidence and used to arrest him when he returned to inquire about it. He appeared before a judge Feb. 9 and was charged with three felony counts of burglary.

“CMC Public Safety identified additional suspects in these crimes and CPD is continuing their work, which may lead to other arrests,” Director of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Brian Weir said in an email to the CMC student body Feb. 11.

Sara Habaibeh CM ’25 lives in Stark Hall, where one burglary occurred. Although none of her belongings were stolen, her friend’s personal laptop was stolen when their room was broken into, despite it being locked.

CMC hired its own private security firm in 2018 to promote safety on campus, assist with event planning and investigate thefts, among other responsibilities.

Even so, CPD was brought in to

investigate this incident because the colleges have a “Memorandum of Understanding” with CPD which stipulates that Campus Safety officers respond to campus calls but police, fire or medical services are called when needed.

Students have run into complications working with police, though. When Allison Fitz PO ’24 had her car stolen last December, she called Campus Safety, who then called CPD. First, Campus Safety told her they’d found the culprit, who had apparently been driving the car in and out of the garage.

However, after Fitz reviewed the footage, she realized that Campus Safety had mistaken her car for a car of similar make and color. The supposed car thief “was just taking her own car in and out of the garage.”

After identifying the correct car, Fitz attempted to file a report with CPD. A CPD officer asked if Fitz wanted to press charges against the thief. Fitz expressed hesitation.

“Once I got my car back, I [didn’t] have any reason [to want] for this man to be in jail,” she told TSL. The officer told her that CPD would be more likely to find her car if she agreed to press charges, she said.

Fitz eventually agreed, but said the decision was “really hard” and described the situation as “stressful and overwhelming.” Officers from the Pomona Police Department recovered her car in the city of Pomona the next day.

Fitz was asked again if she wanted to press charges. Pomona police told Fitz that the court would contact her to proceed, so

Alumni Jennifer Doudna PO ’85, Stewart Smith PO ’68 announced as Pomona commencement speakers

cOURTESY: POMONA cOLLEGE

Stewart Smith PO ’68 (left) and Jennifer Doudna PO ’85 (right) will speak at the Pomona College class of 2022’s in-person commencement ceremony this May.

SAMSON ZHANG Nobel Prize-winning biochemist Jennifer Doudna PO ’85 and Kinsmith Financial Corporation CEO Stewart Smith PO ’68 will speak at the Pomona College class of 2022’s commencement ceremony, Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr announced to students via email Feb. 15.

Doudna was awarded the 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her discovery of the genome-editing potential of the CRISPR/Cas9 enzyme, becoming the first Pomona graduate to earn Nobel honors.

Smith served on Pomona’s Board of Trustees for over 30 years and as chair of the board for nine, overseeing the selection of Pomona’s eighth and ninth presidents and the construction of the Smith Campus Center, which bears his family’s name.

Smith was “instrumental to the development of the College,” Pomona spokesperson Patricia Vest said via email.

Smith also served as the chair of the Board of Trustees of the Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens for 10 years.

Doudna and Smith were selected by a committee of trustees, faculty members and student leaders. The committee looks for speakers who “reflect and exemplify the College’s values … based on their contributions either to academic life or through social and civic contributions to society,” Vest said.

ASPC Vice President of Student Affairs Gerardo Rodriguez PO ’22 learned about Doudna in a biology class he took at Pomona and was “very excited” to hear that she had been selected as a speaker.

“I focus more on Latin American politics and international policy now, but even then I [felt] closely tied to an alumni member who is doing phenomenal work and is the first [alumnus] to ever receive the [Nobel] Prize,” he said.

ASPC President Nirali Devgan PO ’22 appreciated that Doudna was confirmed as a speaker just a year and a half after she won her Nobel Prize. “I’m really glad and surprised that [the college] was able to pull that off,” she said.

Devgan also said that Smith, whose father, son and daughter all

attended Pomona, would bring students’ attention to the generational contributions to Pomona that they might not usually think about. “[Smith] seems to have contributed to pretty pivotal parts of our lives here, so I’m definitely interested in what he has to say,” she said.

Devgan said that she would like to see the commencement speakers acknowledge the hardship many students faced to get their degrees during the pandemic.

“Commencement is a big deal for so many people. So many first generation, low income students, they’ll be the first in their family [to graduate]. Even for someone like me, whose parents both went to school in the United States, it’s a big deal to be part of the group walking across getting my degree,” she said.

ASPC Senior Class President Andreah Pierre PO ’22 is the only student who is part of this year’s selection committee. In addition to helping select speakers for future commencement ceremonies, Pierre herself will speak at this year’s commencement ceremony and organize a vote for one other student who will speak at the ceremony.

Pierre hasn’t started writing her speech yet, but intends to highlight the accomplishments and growth of the senior class. “‘We’re still graduating on time, and we still made it to where we needed to be even through a freaking pandemic’ … things like that, keeping it light,” she said.

The commencement ceremony for the class of 2022, set to take place on May 15, will be the first fully in-person ceremony in three years, as ceremonies for the classes of 2020 and 2021 were forced online due to COVID-19. The college is also hosting a “Take Two” celebration for the pandemic’s graduates the weekend of May 20.

After the uncertainty of the last three years and the stress of writing senior theses and hunting for jobs, “we’re all just grateful for actually being back and having a graduation,” Rodriguez said.

Fitz told the officers she wanted to press charges, with the intention of dropping them once reached out to later on.

But aside from a notice delivered to her home in Washington state in January, Fitz never heard about the case again. She doesn’t know what happened to the suspect.

Corporal Nick Martinez of CPD’s Detective Bureau told TSL that a victim’s desire to press charges has no effect on police efforts to recover stolen property.

“As a part of the investigation, we will ask the victim if they are desirous of prosecution,” he said, “However they answer [is recorded] and you still take a report.”

Reflecting on the experience,

Fitz was uncomfortable that the police placed the weight of a decision about the suspect’s future on her.

“Overall, the communication was very spotty and inefficient, and there was pressure for me to press charges when I was visibly uncomfortable with this question,” she said.

However, she noted that “the whole process took two days, which is incredibly fast and incredibly lucky.”

According to The Claremont Colleges Services spokesperson Laura Muna-Landa, property crime increased in the Claremont community and throughout Southern California in 2021 after a dip in 2020.

Fitz said that she is aware of

a rise in crime but that she doesn’t feel unsafe on campus.

Habaibeh echoed a similar sentiment, but noted that the burglary in her residence hall affected her behavior. “While I could [previously] leave [my] personal belongings unattended for some time, to go to the bathroom or run a quick errand … I can’t do that anymore,” she said.

“Campus Safety encourages students, faculty and staff to continue securing doors when entering private facilities and locking dorms and offices when leaving,” Muna-Landa said in an email. “Everyone is encouraged to be aware of their surroundings and notify Campus Safety immediately of unusual or suspicious activity on campus.”

SARAh FLEMMING • ThE STUDENT LIFE

UKRAINE: ‘History is happening all around us’ continued from page 1 finishing her remaining senior requirements remotely. Now, she is unsure of when she will next see her family, as they view the current conditions as unsafe for her to return.

Kurochkina wakes up every morning and messages one of her closest friends from Ukraine.

Although her friend was able to catch one of the last flights out of Ukraine before the border closed, her family still remains in the country.

“We [Russians] all have friends who are Ukrainian. We all have some some family members who are Ukrainian, some of us who have teachers who are Ukrainian, and to see Ukraine being bombed by my own country, it’s just devastating,” she said.

Lyven, an international student who calls Kyiv home, had just visited friends and family there over winter break.

She shared Latimer’s surprise about the current scale of the invasion, even recalling being frustrated that US news coverage exaggerated the extent of the conflict in the fall.

“Nobody really expected that this would escalate so quickly,” she said.

Pomona Russian literature professor Robyn Jensen agreed that even experts were surprised by the sudden escalation. There were no indications that Russia was domestically preparing for war, such as campaigns rallying public support, she pointed out; the war seemed “obviously not a proportional response” to grievances like NATO expansion that were aired beforehand.

“Many others who work on Russia, who work on Ukraine, who live in Russia [or] live in Ukraine [or] had ties to the region didn’t think it would come to this,” she said.

When possibility ultimately turned to reality, though, Latimer and Lyven both felt the personal toll.

“It was really hard to sleep the first few nights [because I was] just worrying. The time difference is especially challenging [when] worrying about family members,” Latimer said.

Latimer’s mother, father and sister live in the U.S. far from the rest of his family, which further contributed to “a sense of hopelessness,” he said.

Lyven’s separation from her family has also deeply affected her.

“I feel ashamed that I’m not there. I wish I could be there with my family, but at the same time I’m grateful that I’m safe here,” she said.

Lyven described being in a constant state of anxiety, from which she could only distract herself during classes and practice with her varsity tennis teammates.

“I’m just constantly anxious about what’s gonna happen next and how my family is going to be, and constantly checking in on my family and friends, whether they’re safe or whether anything is changing,” she said. “I feel very uneasy about what is happening.

It’s not fun. It’s very scary.”

Since Feb. 24, 5C community members and organizations have

expressed their support for those affected by the invasion.

On Feb. 27, Pomona’s Russian program issued a statement condemning the Russian government’s aggression against Ukraine.

“We stand in solidarity with the people of Ukraine, as well as with the people in Russia and around the world who protest Putin’s criminal war,” the faculty wrote. “We also wish to express our solidarity with students at the Claremont Colleges who are from the region or have ties to it. We share your pain, and we pledge to be a source of support during this time.”

Pitzer College’s Office of Study Abroad and International Programs announced in a Thursday email that a candlelight vigil would be held on Pitzer College’s campus on Monday for the purpose of standing “against EVERY war, with a focus on Ukraine due to recent events.”

Lyven said that the U.S.’ general support for Ukraine was “very comforting,” but both she and Latimer noted difficulties brought on by the 5C campus environment.

The large amount of social media content about the invasion being posted “really amplified what’s happening” and made Lyven “even more nervous,” she said.

Latimer felt that students discussing the invasion sometimes came off as unempathetic or unwilling to learn more.

“People are talking about it without understanding how little they know … or seemingly not trying to learn more about it when posed with a suggestion of a different way to look at [the invasion] or something else you could be thinking about,” he said. “To me it feels like a very isolationist, non-global, non-empathetic perspective. I would argue that this stems from American elitism, some of which inherently permeates an upper class institution in America.”

Pomona politics professor Mietek Boduszynski hosted a Q&A on campus March 1 about the in-

vasion. As a former U.S. diplomat, he emphasized the role that balance had to play in how the US and European countries approached the war.

“Diplomacy is all about balancing — that’s one thing I’ve learned as a diplomat. That’s why certain options for punishing Russia you know, until now have been off the table,” he said.

Russians have staged anti-war demonstrations throughout the last week.

“Ukraine, a place where many [Russian] people have friends and have family, there’s a sense of the kind of shared culture and history and [the war] feels quite senseless to people,” Jensen said.

Kurochkina said she is worried for her high school friends who are likely to protest the war in the streets of Moscow and have, in the past, been jailed for up to a month for protesting.

“A lot of people are still coming out and protesting,” she said. “But it’s not the same as protesting in the Western world. It’s scary and people feel very helpless.”

Students with ties to the conflict have turned to each other for a shared sense of understanding and community.

Lyven has reconnected with friends from Ukraine who now attend college in the U.S. She has also found support from friends on campus who have reached out to her about the situation, bringing her cookies or telling her she is in their prayers.

Educating oneself on the history of Ukraine and the possible effects of the invasion is vital for students, she said.

“The news is new and strange and confusing. And it feels like history is happening all around us. And it is. But it’s also that we’re in a place where we have the luxury to really develop our own understanding of the world through the events that we get to experience or hear about or read about,” Latimer said.

For more on 5C connections to the Ukraine conflict, visit tsl.news.

NANAKO NODA • ThE STUDENT LIFE

KIRBY KIMBALL • ThE STUDENT LIFE

Top: “I’m hoping that more spaces will be created in the coming days where we can care for each other because I think that’s priority number one on our campus,” said Dave Ruiz PO ‘24.

Bottom: On Feb. 24, Russia launched a full-scale military invasion of Ukraine, targeting civilians and residential buildings as well as the Ukrainian military.

PAGE 4

Arts & Culture

ShELF LIFE

An ode to the Honnold Mudd graphic novel collection KATE JONES On a slow Tuesday afternoon, while wandering Honnold Mudd Library and desperately procrastinating an essay, I selected “You & A Bike & A Road” by Eleanor Davis from the library’s graphic novel collection. The second floor was practically empty, save me and two other dubiously-studious students seated socially-acceptable distances away from each other. In “You & A Bike & A Road,” I expected to find a distraction — something pretty, maybe, but not impactful. Fifty minutes later, I was sitting in the corner of the library, trying to suppress my tears so as to not disturb the students around me.

“You & A Bike & A Road” tells the story of Davis’ attempt to bike from her parents’ home in Tucson, Arizona, to her home in Athens, Georgia. It’s a crushingly long bike ride — when I looked it up, Google Maps informed me that it’s 1892 miles in total — but for Davis, it’s worth it. (“I was having trouble with wanting to not be alive,” she writes in the very beginning of the book.

“But I feel good when I’m bicycling.”) And, with this premise, the reader follows Davis on her journey of recovery, of perseverance.

The story is presented like a diary, sketched out fluidly and casually in pencil and ink. Though her characters are all a little blob-like, ghostly and half-formed, she manages to convey incredible emotion.

Biking alone is a lonely thing, an act with an incredible physical toll on the body. It’s an impressive feat, but what is more impressive is what Davis pays attention to beyond the bike ride. Ants crawling along the blades of grass by her feet, the cold and brutal omnipresence of border patrol officers, the ebb and flow of pain in her knees and her body and just some of the things she catalogs in this book. Davis finds beauty and solace in the world outside herself, drawing these things so the reader can experience them, too.

These moments of attention and appreciation in the face of physical and emotional pain build up, they magnify each other. “You & A Bike & A Road” is a triumph. Davis takes the brutal and relentless challenges of life, and turns them into art.

Fellow bikers wave at Davis on her path, a passer-by allows her to stay with his family until her knees heal. I was amazed at the empathy of these strangers. Davis breaks down on the phone with her husband, fearing that she won’t make it. I was amazed at the unconditional support provided by loved ones.

Davis crests a hill, panting, and finds herself facing the smooth line of the horizon. I was amazed at the sheer expanse of the desert, the sky, the world.

Towards the end of the book, there’s an illustration of Davis’ outstretched hands, about to touch her husband’s face as they’re reunited. Towards the end of the book, I was weeping on the floor of Mudd 2.

This semester I’ve begun a love affair with Honnold Mudd.

Not for its academic resources, no; I know frustratingly little about how to navigate its online databases and to be entirely honest, the continuous multi-tier stacks of nonfiction on the Mudd side frighten me.

No, I’m in love with Honnold Mudd Library for a single row of shelves tucked away on the second floor. Here, in a library composed of white walls, fluorescent lights and primary color-blocked furniture, is a lush ecosystem of indie comics and Marvel classics. It’s not an exaggeration when I say that the Honnold Mudd graphic novel collection is saving my semester.

I’ll admit it: I often end up in the library when I’m bored, homesick or lonely. While this semester, these emotions have arisen all too often, I’ve found that the library’s graphic novel collection is their antidote.

There, I find reminders of home in the graphic novels I’ve left behind, such as Jillian Tamaki’s “Boundless” and Shaun Tan’s “Tales from Outer Suburbia.” I find endless interest in the form of books that I’ve always meant to read, like Drawn & Quarterly’s absolutely massive 25th anniversary collection and “What It Is” by Lynda Barry. And, on that slow, sunny Tuesday afternoon, “You & A Bike & A Road” momentarily healed my loneliness. It is a reminder to slow down, to pay attention, to wonder at our capacity for empathy.

It asserts that, even in sadness, we can create and share beautiful things.

If you’re struggling with loneliness, boredom, homesickness or overwhelm, I urge you to stop by the Honnold Mudd graphic novel collection. “You & A Bike & A Road” will be there, if you want to check it out.

Kate Jones PO ’24 is from Seattle, Washington. Her favorite comic of all time is SuperMutant Magic Academy, by Jillian Tamaki.

JADYN LEE • ThE STUDENT LIFE

MArch 4, 2022

‘Passing’ film screening and Q&A deepen conversations about race, identity and desire

cOUrTESY: NETFLIX

On Feb. 24, the Pomona College English and Media Studies Departments hosted a screening of the 2021 film “Passing,” accompanied by a discussion with Pomona English professor cherene Sherrard-Johnson and Pomona theater and dance professor carolyn ratteray.

DIYA MEHTA One of the first things that you notice about “Passing” is the film’s silence. The first few beats of the film are eerily quiet, a far departure from the ever-present soundscape of many modern movies.

This persists throughout, the silence as much a part of the film as its sets, costumes and characters. This stylistic choice foregrounds the movie with a sense of inescapable tension, as its characters grapple with pertinent questions of race, identity and desire.

On Feb. 24, Pomona College’s departments of English and media studies hosted a screening of the film “Passing,” which was written and directed by Rebecca Hall based on Nessa Larson’s 1929 novel of the same name.

“Passing” follows Claire Kendry (Ruth Negga) and Irene Redfield (Tessa Thompson), who are navigating life in 1920s New York City as Black women. While Irene is firmly entrenched in Harlem’s Black community, Claire is passing as white, married to her white husband, John Kendry (Alexander Skarsgård) and existing in white-only spaces. Thus, Claire’s life is a dangerous dance, in which she has to successfully present the facade of whiteness for survival.

This unravels, however, when Claire and Irene, who are childhood friends, reconnect. As Claire tries to rejoin the Black community, a series of events unfolds that

destabilizes the very foundation of these two women’s lives, as internal and external forces conspire to change their worlds irreversibly.

The film was followed by an enlightening discussion with Pomona English professor Cherene Sherrard-Johnson and theater and dance professor Carolyn Ratteray, helping the audience examine how the technical elements of filmmaking and acting enhanced the story.

Both professors talked about how the film centered the Black family, positioning Blackness as aspirational — unusual for stories like this one.

“It was just so refreshing to have a story about passing from a Black person’s perspective, where Blackness was the goal of what they were trying to get back, versus centering and celebrating the white space,” Ratteray said. “I can’t believe I had never heard of Nella Larson before. It’s such a shame what stories are not centered in dominant culture. Because if we had as many stories about folks trying to get back into Blackness, there would probably be a different understanding around the unfortunate tragedy of internalized racism.”

They also examined several technical aspects of the film, including its black and white cinematography.

“I think it was an excellent choice. It puts us in the world; it puts us in the time,” Ratteray said. “It also smooths out the skin tones of the actresses, and if the film wasn’t in black and white, we wouldn’t have the

ability to suspend our disbelief that these actresses could pass.”

Another point of discussion emerged around the queer undertones of the film, as the relationship between Claire and Irene is constantly fraught with a sense of desire, whether this be construed as romantic or not.

“In the time that Larson was writing, there was not a developed, sophisticated language around Black female sexuality — or around female sexuality at all. So, in some ways, this story is trying to give voice to what that could look like. And whether or not Irene has a desire to be Claire, a desire to actually inhabit her body or a romantic desire, is unclear. And I definitely think it can be either,” SherrardJohnson said.

The film navigates issues that often remain unexplored, speaking to the importance of the original novel in pushing cultural conversations forward.

Hall’s willingness to bring this to screen in the modern day speaks to the enduring relevance of these issues, which should be addressed in the contemporary context. Some of the film’s pioneering storytelling comes from the setting and time period, which gives visibility to a part of the Black experience that often does not make it to the silver screen.

“How rare is it to see a period piece, with Black subjects, that’s not on a plantation, right?”

Sherrard-Johnson said. “But here’s one, and it’s not a comedy.

It’s very quiet. And there’s such a focus on intimacy, of showing the interiority of these characters and their lives.”

shaila Andrabi builds a home for south Asians in Claremont VIDUSSHI HINGAD How do you build a home away from home? For Shaila Andrabi, all it takes is a cup of chai, the best banana bread in the world and a whole lot of gupshup (talking).

Andrabi has been responsible for making 91711 into a zip code that many international students can associate with home by creating a space that is safe, comfortable and full of camaraderie.

Andrabi moved to Claremont from Pakistan in 1988 along with her husband, Professor Tahir Andrabi, the Stedman-Sumner Professor of Economics at Pomona College. She recalls the move as something that really changed her.

“I remember arriving at Ontario airport in the August of 1988, and I remember driving by the houses,” Andrabi said. “Everybody was in their homes. Basically, nobody was outside. It was a mystery to me. It was a huge cultural shock.”

Andrabi felt like she was one of the few South Asians in Claremont at that time, which set her apart.

She remarked that whenever she wore clothes such as salwar kurtas, she would receive a lot of attention. However, she does believe that moving to California has been essential for her personal growth.

“All the big events of my life have been here: from getting my driver’s license, to all my pregnancies,” she said. “It has given me a lot of perspective.”

Nonetheless, Andrabi felt homesick, such as during the fes-

cOUrTESY: ShAILA ANDrABI

After moving to the U.S. in the ’80s from Pakistan, Shaila Andrabi found a link to home through the 5cs’ international community. during their Feb. 11 show.

tive times of Ramadan. It was difficult for her to part from her cultural lifestyle — and that’s when she started attending the Hindi-Urdu table at Oldenborg Dining Hall.

“I felt lonely,” she said. “The Hindi-Urdu table was at Oldenborg on Thursday, and I remember it was the only outing of my week. I would go dressed, [and] that was my opportunity to wear my salwar kameez without being judged, and that’s how I started meeting students.”

Andrabi has been responsible for making Claremont a homely environment for many students

from South Asian backgrounds.

From advocating for international students to celebrating their achievements, Andrabi has created a family in this Claremont bubble.

“I couldn’t connect with a lot of other immigrants, but I could definitely connect with the students,” Andrabi said.

5C students are inspired by the atmosphere that she has created. Mohsin Butt PO ’23 appreciated “her ability for recreating the cultural environment that we might not have been able to experience if she weren’t here.”

Andrabi fosters values of uni-

ty and camaraderie. Not only has she created a neutral space where students from conflicting nations can peacefully gather, but she encourages interfaith dialogue.

“I think one of the biggest things she did was be the glue for a community of people that didn’t originally know how to interact with each other,” Sehr Taneja PO ’17, a close student of Andrabi’s, said. “When you come from India and Pakistan, it feels like you grew up in charged environments. [Andrabi] became this glue that was binding everyone together by ensuring that there are interfaith relations that can also be cross-border relations and that we’re not influenced by the political stances of these nations.”

Andrabi consistently rose above the duties of just a mentor by creating relationships and being involved in the lives of her students. From watching piyaare desis performances to attending festivals to organizing poetry nights at her house, she offers generosity and encouragement.

More than anything, however, she is emotionally available for her students.

“I remember that [my graduation] happened to be Mother’s Day,” Taneja said. “I always thought it was really special because my mother came, and I remember thinking to myself that I was spending Mother’s Day with both of my mothers: one who brought me up and one who gave me a home when I was far away,

and helped me become a new person.”

Andrabi remembers and celebrates all of her students, current and former. One student that has remained especially close to her heart is Naveen Sangji PO ’05.

“Naveen was an extremely smart student,” she said. “I remember she came when the 9/11 attack happened and chose to wear a headscarf, and when she arrived, I decided to take her grocery shopping. We were standing in line and I was just wearing jeans and a T-shirt, but Naveen was wearing a headscarf … People were very angry at that time and she was only 19 years old, and so it just crushed me to see how people were treating her, so I wanted to be there for her.”

Andrabi recently started working as a chaplain at the McAlister Center and hopes to continue providing support and comfort to the South Asian students of Claremont. She continues to impart the values that she has practiced for the last 34 years.

Andrabi successfully continues to foster a community with the acknowledgment that we live in a big world. But beyond the borders, hatred, distress and focus, Andrabi encourages people to focus their energy on building connections: it’s a small world after all.

“She just taught me everything about generosity and about being strong and living with a purpose,” Taneja said, “And of course, how to be there for each other.”

MArch 4, 2022 ThE 5 TO ThE 10

Arts & Culture

PAGE 5

No car? No, problem — a student-friendly guide to Downtown LA

CASSIDY BENSKO Los Angeles is a vast city of endless cultural and entertainment options limited only by your personal stamina — and whether or not you have a car. Decades of urban sprawl, suburbanization, highway expansion and neglect of public transport have made cars a necessity for life in LA, so much so that images of bumper-to-bumper traffic are conjured alongside the Hollywood sign and palm trees when one thinks about life in Southern California.

As almost any other suburbanite could tell you, this sprawl has transformed cars from a mere means of transportation to a teenager’s first taste of freedom and autonomy. Growing up in the suburbs of LA, the day I got my driver’s license was an absolute revelation. It was as if the world opened up to me for the very first time when I got behind the wheel.

Before that holy day, however, I became acquainted with the Metrolink and spent my weekends exploring the parts of LA less demanding of individual cars, the most accessible of which was downtown. So here’s a car-less 5C student’s guide to some of my favorite spots in the area. Please note that this guide barely even scratches the surface of one of the most historic districts in all of LA, but I hope it provides a starting point to getting acquainted with the City of Angels.

Transportation and Union Station First things first, you’ll need to download the Metrolink app.

Here, you’ll find a user-friendly interface that has the schedules and tickets you’ll need. Once you select “buy tickets,” input “Claremont” as the origin station and “LA Union Station” as the destination; a round trip ticket at the student rate will cost $10.50. If you’re unfamiliar with public transport, fear not! Claremont to Union Station is a direct line, so all you have to do is get on the correct train at the Claremont station on College Avenue — just a block from Pomona College’s southern border — and in an hour you’ll be in the heart of LA. Once arriving at Union, take your time to appreciate the station itself. Constructed in 1939, Union is a Mission Revival and Art Deco style architectural prize known as “the last of the great train stations”

SEOhYEON LEE • ThE STUDENT LIFE

by the station’s stewards. If transportation history is your thing, you can find a temporary pop-up installation called “Riding LA” inside the station.

Olavera Street Your definitive first stop is Olavera Street, a five-minute walk from the entrance of Union Station and commonly referred to as “the birthplace of Los Angeles.”

Olavera boasts an open-air Mexican marketplace that recreates a romantic ‘Old Los Angeles’ with a block-long narrow, tree-shaded, brick-lined market with old structures, painted stalls, street vendors, cafes, restaurants and gift shops.” This iconic street is also home to the oldest home in LA, the Avila Adobe, which was constructed in 1818 — nearly 70 years before the founding of Pomona College. The surrounding city block is bountiful with cultural history, with the LA Plaza de Cultura y Artes, Chinese American Museum, Museum of Social Justice and Italian Amer-

ican Museum of Los Angeles within walking distance — and all with free admission.

Also within walking distance is Phillipe’s the Original, a historic diner engaged in a nearly century-long feud with Cole’s P.E. Buffet over competing claims about who invented the French dip sandwich.

Grand Park, Performing Arts and Contemporary Art Using LA’s towering City Hall building as your landmark, you’ll make the eight-minute walk to the lower end of Grand Park.

Sandwiched between Spring Street and Grand Ave, Grand Park is a beautiful green space, home to two mini community libraries and a prominent gathering place for protests.

If you walk to the upper end of the park toward Grand Ave, you’ll find a plethora of performance spaces and museums: namely, the infamous Walt Disney Concert Hall, Centre Theatre Group and Dorothy Chandler Pa-

vilion. The Centre Theatre Group operates a program called “FreePlay,” which offers free tickets for first preview performances at the Mark Taper Forum, Ahmanson and Kirk Douglas Theatre to people under 25 years old.

Right next to the Walt Disney Concert Hall, you’ll find my favorite cheese-grater-looking building: The Broad. The Broad is an incredible contemporary art museum with free general admission and Warhol, Barbara Kruger, Roy Lichenstein, Takashi Murakami and Jean-Michel Basquiat exhibits on view. Across the street from The Broad is the Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA Grand), which also offers free general admission and a number of free, curator-led tours.

Grand Central Market Last but certainly not least is my favorite spot: Grand Central Market. After a six-minute walk from MOCA — stopping at the iconic Angel’s Flight on the way — Grand Central is a vibrant

indoor market with more than 40 food vendors. After opening its doors for the first time in 1917, Grand Central has become a “microcosm of the historic immigrant communities that have shaped Los Angeles and a mosaic of the creativity and vision of the people who call this city home,” according to the market’s website. Take in the dense, bustling market, and make sure to weigh all your options before choosing where to eat.

From here you’re only a 20-minute walk — or a much shorter Lime or Bird Scooter ride — back to Union Station. Even though we didn’t even get into the Arts District, Little Tokyo or the Fashion or Flower Districts, Downtown is my favorite part of LA, and I hope it becomes yours.

Most importantly, do not miss your train back to campus!

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.

Pomona College’s SageMUN emphasizes creativity, relevance of Model UN work

cOUrTESY: SAGE MUN

SageMUN V was held at Pomona college this past weekend and welcomed students from across the 5cs.

INDIA CLAUDY Pomona College Model United Nations hosted its fifth SageMUN Conference last weekend.

Hosting about 40 students from the 5Cs, the conference brought together a close-knit team of delegates devoted to solving global affairs issues.

Apart from a scrimmage with the University of Southern California during the first semester, SageMUN was the club’s first event of the 2021-2022 academic year. In a typical year, SageMUN would welcome students from other schools beyond the Claremont Colleges; however, due to

COVID-19, PCMUN opted to restrict this year’s conference to only students who attend one of the 5Cs. The 2022 SageMUN Team was made up of 26 students who fell under the leadership of the Secretariat Team, an elected team who headed up the planning and execution of the conference.

The club, comprised of over 30 members, meets weekly, and its governing body meets once more each week on top of this meeting. Preparations for SageMUN had been on the club’s agenda since December. Creating and chairing the

conference’s committees, the SageMUN staff planned the situations for the attending delegates. This system allowed for students who didn’t do Model U.N. in high school to gain exposure. “[SageMUN] is also a really great opportunity to get first years and sophomores involved who don’t necessarily have the experience to run for an [Executive] board position yet,” Alexandra Rivasplata SC ’22, the Chief of Staff of the conference, said. “It’s this natural progression where you get involved in SageMUN, and then you gain that experience of being able to

do logistics, and outreach, and media and things of that sort.

And then you’re able to run for labor positions, because you’re able to tie all those things together.”

The conference featured three distinct committees, the first of which was the General Assembly: Social, Humanitarian and Cultural Committee.

This committee focused on the illicit drug trade in Latin America, asking delegates to “explore various ways to resolve this issue, all the while bearing in mind the humanitarian mission of this committee,” according to the SageMUN website.

The second committee was the Specialized Agency: International Court of Justice, dealing with the true historical case of Kulbhushan Jadhav, an Indian man arrested in Pakistan on terrorism charges. Asking its participants to act in accordance with International Law, this committee taught delegates about the importance of adjudicating legal disputes and advisory proceedings.

Most Model U.N. conferences do not usually include these kinds of true historical cases. Bryce Kelly PO ’23, one of two directors of the Crisis Committee, said the Specialized Agency committee set SageMUN apart. “[Criminal Court] is something that’s unique to [SageMUN] because the stuff that you do in that kind of trial isn’t the same as what you do in a domestic American trial,” he said. “There’s the history that’s involved in it, there’s kind of the international diplomacy aspect of it. It’s niche, but it’s also unique.”

SageMUN also found distinctiveness in its third committee, the Crisis Committee: The High Council. Kelly was responsible for planning this portion of the conference, which enjoys a bit more creativity than the other two committees.

“Normally, when you think Model U.N.,” Kelly said, “you think that there’s a person sitting in front with a gavel who bangs it, calls on people to speak and write directives and everything. Crisis is different.

There’s more of a roleplaying element to it. You’re not representing a country, you are a

person, and you’re navigating through some sort of event … In this case, every conspiracy theory in the world was true.”

Interrogating the idea of a “Deep State” or shadow government, this committee assigned its delegates the roles of real people like Princess Diana and Ted Cruz as the Zodiac Killer. Kelly wrote up a 20-page background for this 11-person committee, cataloging the shadow government and other influencing factors.

Beyond the experience Kelly gained with organizing a committee, Model U.N. has also taught him leadership skills, confidence while public speaking, the ability to bluff and how to work off his opponents.

“Sometimes in a committee,” Kelly said, “you will be plopped down in a room with a bunch of people who can only be described as sharks, and you have to learn how to swim.”

The conference was also unique in that it allowed delegates who were not already affiliated with PCMUN to attend.

This allowed for a wider range of 5C students to get a sense of the club and was promising for the future of the program.

“I had several people tell me at the end of the conference [that] they want to try out in the fall,” Rivasplata said. “So it’s really great, where [the conference] is almost like an open house,” Simulating global affairs issues, Model U.N. found an especially apt resonance to real events this past weekend. Originally planning to have the Crisis Committee surround the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the SageMUN Team shifted their topic selection with the current crisis in Ukraine. This concurrence of events reminded the SageMUN team of their work’s greater relevance and applications. “[Model U.N.] is supposed to make you relate more closely to real life issues,” Rivasplata said. “It’s supposed to make you research things and learn about things you’re ignoring … You can’t just check Twitter for your preparation for a committee …

What you’re supposed to get out of Model U.N. is more sensitivity and [understanding of] importance and less ignorance — as opposed to where you’re just in it to win a reward.”

Arts & Culture

PAGE 6 MOMENTS TO SAVOr

The perfect match(a) EMILY KIM

In middle school, I was content with living a matcha-free life.

I knew that the adults around me liked to drink a cup of matcha tea in the mornings, but the greenness deterred me. “What if it tastes like grass?” I always thought. It probably didn’t help that a friend also told me that it tasted like alfalfa hay.

However, during this season of life I was also lucky enough to be surrounded by college students from my church who treated me like their little sister. One day, one college student wanted to take me out for dessert and she wanted it to be a surprise. We drove to a Japanese grocery store called Mitsuwa near my house, and I remember looking up at her curiously. Although I had been to Mitsuwa before, I had never gone for dessert, so I asked my friend if we were actually getting dessert inside the store. “The best soft serve is right here,” she replied, grinning.

We went inside and she led me past the aisles of colorful rice crackers and soda candies to an unassuming bakery in the corner. My friend then pointed to a slightly crumpled paper behind the cashier, which, sure enough, listed out the soft serve flavors: matcha, vanilla and swirl. “I get the matcha every time,” she said.

“It’s the hidden gem here.”

I wasn’t sure what to do. I had never had matcha soft serve before, so naturally I was apprehensive at the thought of a green dessert that might taste like alfalfa hay. But I admired my older friend — so much so that I wanted to be like her in every way. If she liked this matcha soft serve, I wanted to as well.

“I’ll get the matcha too,” I declared. I was all in. I didn’t even elect for the swirl, which would have given me a little vanilla safety net. My friend nodded excitedly in approval, but as I watched the cashier fill my cup, I fidgeted anxiously. What had I done? “I should have just played it safe with vanilla,” I chastised myself.

Regardless, we grabbed our soft serve and sat down to eat. When I took my first bite, I was blown away. The matcha flavor was deep and earthy, and the soft serve was sweet — but not too sweet. I kept eating, realizing that I was not getting overpowered by the sweetness as I had with virtually all other desserts (which often made me pause in between bites).

“Do you like it?” my friend asked. I nodded earnestly. “It’s different but so good!” I replied. This experience marked a shift in my

middle school palate;: with my new love for matcha (and thinking that I was cool like the students at UC Irvine) came my new appreciation for sweets that were not too sweet.

I kept eating and I noticed that my friend was looking at me intently. She asked me if I had “found” anything yet, and then suddenly, my spoon hit something hard. I looked back up at her, puzzled. “I didn’t add any toppings,” I said.

“Try it,” she nudged. “What do you think it is?” I took another spoonful of the soft serve and this time noticed two squares peeking out under the icy goodness.

They were crunchy and sweet. I looked back up at her. “Cereal?”

“Cinnamon Toast Crunch!” my friend declared. “What a combination, don’t you think?”

I chuckled. This was truly a full-circle dessert experience.

It expanded my middle school palate with supposedly sophisticated college-student-loving matcha, then brought me back to a nostalgic childhood cereal. And my friend was right. Though unexpected, the combination of the two worked incredibly well.

The beautiful thing about food is that our palates can evolve as we discover new flavors, but there is always a nostalgia that food brings as well.

Matcha soft serve with Cinnamon Toast Crunch is a reflection of how I am growing up — how with age I can appreciate earthy flavors and find beauty in the greenest of green desserts. It is also a reflection of how I still have my childhood tastebuds with me, and how those things can exist in harmony with each other, sometimes even creating the most serendipitous combinations.

So, maybe there is a new food that you have particularly enjoyed in this season of life. With that item in mind, I challenge you to dive into your past and search for a childhood favorite as well.

Maybe it’s a plant-based milk latte and a frosted cookie. Maybe it’s veggies prepared a certain way, eaten with boxed mac and cheese. Whatever it is, the combination may surprise you, simultaneously reflecting your maturing palate while still celebrating the flavors of your childhood.

There is truly nothing better.

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

SArAh FLEMMING • ThE STUDENT LIFE

MArch 4, 2022

rEGULArLY SchEDULED PrOGrAMMING

How watching ‘saturday Night live’ compilations made me love the show again

LUcIA MArQUEZ-UPPMAN • ThE STUDENT LIFE

CLAIRE DUMONT A few weeks ago, I was scrolling through the endless videos in my YouTube recommendations when I saw a video called “snl moments i think about approximately 5 times a week” and decided to check it out. After the five minutes of the first video ended, I immediately clicked on the next one: “snl season 47 moments to watch when you’re not where time is.”

Since then, I have spent most of my free moments watching whatever “SNL” compilations pop up on my recommended page — when I’m brushing my teeth, getting ready, cleaning my room and even writing this column.

There is something about the way the videos are edited to just have the funniest jokes of the sketches, without any context, that makes them so much funnier than the show is by itself.

I have spent so much time watching the compilations that one-liners from the sketches have infiltrated my daily conversations with friends and family. I sound like a modern version of Sam Weir from “Freaks and Geeks,” talking solely in “SNL” references.

However, beyond just making me laugh, these compilations have also reignited my love for the show.

I was first exposed to “SNL” when I was in elementary school. Even though I couldn’t understand a majority of the jokes — especially The Lonely Island digital shorts — I knew that I loved watching the show when my parents put it on. I started watching during the seasons with Andy Samberg, Kristen Wiig, Fred Armisen and Bill Hader, and I remember my favorite characters coming on during Seth Mey-

ers’ Weekend Update: ‘Stefon’ and ‘Garth and Kat.’ In the years since those childhood Sunday mornings spent watching the episodes from the night before, I stopped watching as much “SNL.” If there happened to be a really funny sketch, it would make its way to me on social media. When a celebrity I liked was hosting or was the musical guest, I would watch on Sunday mornings on YouTube, stopping the sketches I didn’t find funny or just watching the monologue.

In the era of YouTube, watching “SNL” has almost completely changed. The sketches have an additional life on the internet when the recordings of sketches are uploaded a few hours after the end of the show.

Even the sketches Cut For Time — filmed during the dress rehearsal but not performed live on Saturday nights — are still able to have a life online, as fans discover them. In the compilations, Cut For Time sketches are still included, even though they weren’t able to have a moment during the live show.

Recently, the conversation surrounding “SNL” has mainly focused on whether the show is still as funny as it used to be.

Some of these conversations are valid, bringing up points about how the show relies too much on political content or doesn’t give enough time to its funniest sketches. Other conversations can mainly be connected back to the common idea that everyone thinks the funniest time to watch “SNL” was when they first started watching. On Twitter, the conversations around “SNL” episodes and sketches are split between older generations remarking that the show hasn’t been funny for years, and younger generations praising the genius of the sketches.

Before watching the compilations, I had also grown to agree

with the idea that “SNL” was no longer funny, with the exception of the last few seasons. Through the compilations, though, I have gained a new appreciation for the show and the creativity that goes into each week — “SNL” is funny again. “SNL” came back from a break last weekend, and after watching the compilations and having the show on my mind, I was genuinely excited to watch.

While it might just be the amount of compilations I’ve been watching giving me a more positive view of the show, I also credit it to the recent additions made in the writer’s room. When I look up the sketches I found especially funny — the ones I couldn’t stop thinking about from a compilation — usually they were written by some of my favorite cast members: Bowen Yang, Ego Nwodim, Heidi Gardner or Aidy Bryant. Season 47 also added Sarah Sherman (famous for roasting Colin Jost on Weekend Update) as one of the new cast members, and Martin Herlihy, Ben Marshall and John Higgins (also known as Please Don’t Destroy) joined the writing staff, adding a new kind of comedy to the show.

When I’m watching the “SNL” compilations, I feel the same joy I felt when I was kid, watching the sketches over my parents’ shoulder on Sunday mornings.

For the first time in a long time, I am excited about watching it live each week, in part because of the compilations and the apparent change in the comedy. Watching compilations or videos of sketches in my free moments has made my days infinitely better, and I suggest you do the same if you’re looking for a good laugh.

Claire DuMont SC ’23 is one of TSL’s TV columnists. She has been watching the sketches, “Inside SoCal: Is Art Gangster?,” “Rami Wants a Treat” and “Mattress Store” on repeat. She is very excited for Oscar Isaac to host this weekend.

5C Black student organizations continue uplifting student experiences KENNY LE Unyielding activism, fervent support and joyous events are hallmarks of Black student organizations at the 5Cs. Throughout the 2021-22 school year, Black student leaders have passionately steered their groups though COVID-19 pandemic hurdles, motivated to continue their existing traditions and innovate new ones.

In part one of this two-part story, students from Pitzer College and Scripps College reflect on their personal journeys leading their organizations.

Pitzer College - The Black Student Union Now president of the organization, Paris Primm PZ ’22 looks back fondly at her four years in leadership for Pitzer College’s Black Student Union. The connections she made have significantly improved her college experience, emphasizing the importance of community. “[The experience] definitely would have been way, way worse had I not been a part of [BSU’s] community,” Primm said. “If it wasn’t for our Pitzer BSU, but also the whole 5C Black community, I don’t think I could’ve done Pitzer.”

Adapting to COVID-19 restrictions, BSU has had to put a pause on some initiatives. For example, Primm could not host an event bringing local high school Black student organization members onto Pitzer’s campus. Personally, Primm also struggled with worklife balance issues, especially with periods of Zoom schooling.

But through these obstacles, BSU has still successfully put on fun events.

“We did a [Superheroes ver-

cOUrTESY: PITZEr cOLLEGE ThE BLAcK STUDENT UNION

Paris Primm PZ ’22, president of the Pitzer college Black Student Union, said the BSU has been a crucial part of her experience at Pitzer.

sus Villains] collab party with [Pitzer’s Latinx Student Union].

That was one of my favorites,” Primm said. “ [A] classic, classic, Pitzer event is when we do collabs with Pomona’s BSU… It was really nice to do [Pomona BSU pool parties] again.”

Looking forward, Primm is excited about career-focused projects — workshops in collaboration with Pitzer Career Services have been in the works.

She also hopes BSU will connect resources, like Pitzer’s academic coach and mental health coach,

to BSU students. “[We’re] definitely trying to find specific times for BSU to use and learn about certain on-campus resources,” Primm said.

Primm still feels Pitzer can better support Black students.

She thinks institutional progression has been loaded primarily onto students, for good and for ill.

“It’s like a double-edged sword at Pitzer. Students have a lot of power… but when it comes to the advancement of

the Black student experience, that shouldn’t have to start with the students,” Primm said.

“Responses to Black students should be proactive, not reactionary.”

Scripps College - Watu Weusi Sydney Catherine Jackson SC ’23 reminiscences on her initial exposure to Scripps. Before enrolling at Scripps, her first look at Watu Weusi was from a Scripps programming event for underrepresented students.

Thereafter, her virtual leader-

ship experience as a sophomore motivated her to continue, even with COVID-19 struggles.

“We had a lot less members come into meetings because of Zoom fatigue,” Jackson said. “I don’t think [our membership] is the same as it was pre-Covid, but it’s come back enough where I’m satisfied.”

A repeated theme is the importance of maintaining community among the different campus’ Black student organizations.

“In addition to Watu, we promote all the other BSU clubs across the 5Cs. When [other people] haven’t been as involved they lose touch… [Watu] has helped me stay tapped in,” Jackson said.

During finals season, Watu held a relaxation event, handing out face masks and stress toys.

Jackson places a large emphasis on mental health support, acknowledging collaborative efforts from groups — like the multi-ethnic group BLEND and the Scripps Community of Resources and Empowerment — to plan mental health programming. However, Jackson believes Scripps should better support mental well-being improvement efforts.

“We’re a little bit tired of doing it ourselves,” Jackson said.

“We’re happy to do that, but having a little bit more help from administration would be much appreciated. It would take a little bit off of our shoulders.”

Jackson also recognizes how the unique intersection of race and gender dynamics inform Watu Weusi’s activities.

“Some of our issues are more centered around the Black women, Black female experience.

Rather than opening up, we would rather have those conversations around our own subcommunity.”

OpiniOns

March 4, 2022

PaGE 7

I am of Ukrainian heritage, and I’m proud of it VALERIE BRAYLOVSKIY When people ask where I’m from, it’s a complicated question that usually causes some anxiety.

I am American, having lived here my entire life. So I usually begin with, “I’m American,” and follow with, “My parents are from the former Soviet Union.” Usually, they say something like, “Oh, so you’re Russian?” and I tell them, “My dad is from Ukraine and my mom is from Belarus.”

They proceed to give me a friendly “cool!” and ask if I can say something in Russian. It makes sense why many people assume I am Russian. My first language was Russian and it is a dominant language among my family; I eat Russian food and participate in many cultural traditions and holidays. But I am also Ukrainian and Belarussian and am proud to represent these countries through my heritage.

My parents lived in these countries until they were 19 years old.

They immigrated to the United States as refugees fleeing antisemitism, seeking a place where their educational and professional opportunities weren’t restricted because of their identities. I am only here because my grandparents decided to leave everything they knew to give their children and future grandchildren a chance.

The history of Ukraine is complex, going back to the first Slavic state in the Middle Ages, Kievan Rus, which both Ukraine and Russia trace much of their culture to.

The first independent Ukrainian state emerged after the Russian Revolution and lasted until around 1921, when most of modern Ukraine was integrated into

VaLErIE BraYLOVSKIY • ThE STUDENT LIFE

Much of Ukraine is now under attack by russian forces; shown here is Sumskaya Street, one of the main streets in Ukraine’s second-largest city of Kharkiv, currently on the frontlines of the russian invasion.

the newly formed Soviet Union.

In the decades before the collapse of the U.S.S.R., Ukraine endured extreme devastation, including a man-made famine known as the Holodomor caused by Stalin’s forced collectivization of agriculture, during which five million people died. Ukraine became a battleground between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union during World War II, where an estimated 5-7 million Ukrainians were killed, including 1.5 million Ukrainian Jews, with thousands more being displaced.

Growing up, my parents lived in a world where their countries weren’t independent but existed as part of the Soviet Union. Shortly before they both immigrated (my mom in September 1991 and my dad in January 1992), Belarus and Ukraine became independent. Most people do not know this history, or how more recent conflicts have contributed to the

Jasper’s Crossword: Back it up

current war.

In 2014, a series of mass protests broke out in Kyiv’s Independence Square over the pro-Russian government’s withdrawal from an association agreement with the EU. These protests, known as Euromaidan, saw the deaths of over 100 people and ultimately led to the overthrow of the highly authoritarian president, Viktor Yanukovych, and the formation of a relatively democratic government in his place.

In response to Ukraine’s new orientation towards NATO and the West, Vladimir Putin annexed the Crimean peninsula to Russia, and instigated an uprising by pro-Russian separatists in two provinces of Ukraine’s largely Russian-speaking east, prompting the ongoing War in Donbas.

This past week has been very painful. I have witnessed the Russian invasion of Ukraine shift from a hypothetical, far-fetched

Maybe do this one in pencil <3 - Jasper ACROSS 1. Broadcast space 8. “Let’s goooo!”

11. Acquired 14. Wicked Cinderella parent 15. Female deer 16. Artist Yoko 17. *Water filtration technology 18. More finicky 20. Licorice-ish flavor 21. “haha money printer go ___” 22. Tie 23. ____-pedi 24. *Started with the final product 27. Sibling’s punishment 29. “Be there in a sec!”

30. *Real estate-related loan 33. Gets yellower, as a banana 36. Baseballer Gehrig 37. 9-1-1 responder, for short 38. She/___/38-down 39. Mathematician Lovelace 40. Like plywood planes 42. *Business acquisition strategy 44. Under the weather 45. Got smaller 46. *Mind game technique 49. Member of the feds 53. Loathe 54. Tax agcy.

55. Make amends 56. Emerge (from) 58. Word that describes the starred entries, in more ways than one 60. Bass accessory 61. Thurman in “Super Pumped” 62. Complaint after an airball 63. Carly ___ Jepsen 64. Jasper or jade 65. With a stale odor DOWN 1. Black tea variety 2. “Put ___ a Love Song” (Alicia Keys feat. Beyoncé) 3. Amber, after a while 4. Showing dominance, in a way 5. Phineas and Ferb song that starts “I can do it, I can run” 6. ___ Def

7. Angsty and sensitive 8. Like the pricey version of HBO Max 9. “_____ Welcome” (Moana tune) 10. “Absolutely!”

11. Fatiguing 12. State after a leadoff single 13. Rich dessert 19. Give too little 21. Top of a glass 24. Buildings with often-suspect washing machines 25. Achievement for John Legend 26. Crease-resistant 28. Verdi opera based on Shakespeare 30. ___ Tree Lawn (Scripps walk) 31. Oobleck 32. Medium of Nixon’s downfall 33. Get going, as an engine 34. Keep-quiet doc.

35. Plonked down 38. See 38-across 41. Pompeo on Grey’s Anatomy 42. Actor and comic Darby 43. Heart-monitoring procedure 45. Let out some anguish 46. “Got it, folks?”

47. It comes after beta,in Greek 48. “Another card!”

50. Late Egyptian president Mohamed 51. Actor Elgort 52. Very, very attached 55. Car rental company 57. It’s “Get Ready for Kindergarten” Mo. 58. Grand Canyon overlook 59. Australia’s largest native bird LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS

Guest columnist Valerie Braylovskiy PO ’25 is from San Francisco, CA. She loves poetry, long hikes and going to the beach.

DIVErSITY & INcLUSION

Continuing our efforts to transform TSL’s newsroom ANURADHA KRISHNAN & KENNY LE

JaSPEr DaVIDOFF • ThE STUDENT LIFE

possibility to a bitter reality. People are dying and buildings are burning, including in Ukraine’s largest two cities of Kyiv and Kharkiv. It is an unreal experience to watch a place you are connected to fight to survive. I think about my dad, who grew up in Kharkiv, and all of the memories he associates with his first home.

He spent weekends going to the local movie theater with friends and rooting for FC Metalist Kharkiv at soccer games. Before going to college in San Francisco, he played one year of college basketball at Kharkiv Polytechnic University.

He has been glued to the news and his phone for the past week, anticipating updates from his friends who are currently in bomb shelters with minimal supplies and food. One friend has taken refuge in a bomb shelter in his apartment after his house was occupied by the Russian military,

while another has left Kharkiv for a small village in the middle of Ukraine.

I feel helpless. All I do is refresh the news and ask my dad for any updates on our friends. I feel incredibly privileged to be in a country and institution where I do not have to worry about my safety.

Simultaneously, I feel isolated and secluded from what is happening in Ukraine, somewhat living an alternate reality. Every morning, I wake up and run through my mental checklist of what I have to do: laundry, statistics homework and Spanish class. In Ukraine, my childhood friend, who is around my age, hides in a bomb shelter, separated from her family. It is difficult not to view daily life and my to-do list as trivial and meaningless when so much more is at stake.

I know life and my obligations cannot be put on hold, but I feel even more alienated being in an environment where not many people are talking about this war.

I urge people who are not familiar with what is happening to educate themselves. Read the news, listen to a podcast, protest, donate. It doesn’t take a lot of time. Ask your Ukrainian and Russian friends how they’re doing, and how their families are doing. I know we live in a world where tragedy and violence feel perpetual. I know we live in a world where the news cycle feels endless and exhausting. And yet, war and death cannot become normalized. We cannot pretend we are separate from it.

TSL aims to represent a diversity of communities within our staff and our coverage.

But doing that effectively begins with an understanding of who’s been comfortable in our newsroom now and in the past — and who hasn’t felt as welcome. Our presence in the predominantly white space of the Claremont Colleges and as a media organization in a field with longstanding structural barriers means it’s incumbent on us to create a newspaper that reflects our values.

This year, our focus is on enabling people of the many backgrounds at the 5Cs to thrive at TSL. As this semester’s diversity & inclusion editors, we’re working to reflect our entire community both in our coverage and with our own staff.

While the D&I desk has only been a part of TSL for one prior semester, our ultimate goal is to make our team represent the breadth of our Claremont Colleges community. We’re committed to being transparent with our readers as we make our way there. As part of that commitment, each semester we are publishing the composition of our newsroom staff.

Of 116 staffers, 80 responded to a voluntary survey, roughly a quarter of whom are on TSL’s senior staff. This survey collected demographic data in addition to qualitative feedback on what TSL can do to support their staffers and the 7C community.

The racial makeup of TSL’s staff is somewhat representative of the 5C community with a majority, 48 percent, identifying as white. The remaining respondents’ racial composition was 26 percent Asian, 5 percent Latino/a or non-white Hispanic, 5 percent Black or African American and 1.3 percent American Indigenous or Alaskan native.

Compared to last semester’s survey, we have a higher proportion of white, Latino/a or Hispanic, and American Indian or Alaskan Native staffers and a smaller proportion of Asian staffers. However, the proportion of Asian students at TSL remains higher than the number at each of the 5Cs, which stands at roughly 20 percent.

A large majority of respondents identify as women, while ten percent identify as men and 6.3 percent identify as nonbinary. Overall, 43.8 percent of TSL’s staff identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community.

While TSL covers news at all of the Claremont Colleges, our staff is not equally representative of the schools. Most staffers come from Pomona College and Scripps College, while Pitzer College, Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College make up ten, six and two and a half

percent of our staff, respectively. No current staffers are associated with Claremont Graduate University or Keck Graduate Institute.

About 16 percent of our staff are international students and 10 percent are first generation or low-income students. Additionally, 40 percent of respondents receive financial aid from their schools.

These additional data will help us understand the best routes to build TSL into a more diverse, more welcoming and more accommodating space for all students.

We hope to improve the racial, socioeconomic and gender diversity of our staff with increased recruiting at the end of this semester. We recognize that maintaining diversity in the newsroom and providing inclusive content is imperative for providing better representation of our community and accurate, well-reported content.

We hope to highlight the fact that no experience is needed to join TSL. We want to lower any accessibility barriers that international students, first generation and low-income students, LGBTQ+ students or anyone else may encounter in joining our staff. We appeal directly to these students who may not have had the opportunity to practice journalism before coming to the Claremont Colleges.

The training and career support we provide are important parts of our equity efforts.

To build community among our staffers and the greater Claremont community, we plan on holding more events in addition

to highlighting guest pieces and input from student groups across the campuses. We will also be forming internal affinity groups for people to build community, get to know one another and seek mentorship and advice. These social groups are open to any staff members from every desk at TSL who identify with them.

In taking our first steps towards spotlighting more diverse content, we’re also launching a new blog, “Affinity,” which will serve as a hub for TSL’s stories surrounding identity, belonging and space. Recognizing that our historical coverage hasn’t always represented the full breadth of identity and meaningful pursuits at the 7Cs, we’re also aiming to fill the gap with more purposeful work in the present — one example being the news section’s substantial project on legacies of Black activism in Claremont last week, coinciding with Black History Month.

We want to listen to what our readers want to see and implement the changes that continue to be necessary. With increased representation of marginalized voices and by incorporating diversity and inclusion into our existing training and editing workflows, we hope that building trust within our staff and with the 7C community at large will result in a TSL that’s better able to reflect all of us and push us to be the best we can be.

Anuradha Krishnan PO ’24 and Kenny Le PZ ’25 are TSL’s diversity and inclusion editors. The statistics presented in this article represent the respondents and do not account for selection bias.

caELaN rEEVES • ThE STUDENT LIFE

OpiniOns

PaGE 8

March 4, 2022

Distance can actually make the heart grow fonder ANNA TOLKIEN We’ve all heard the horror stories about distant relationships: You’ll be cheated on, you won’t get to spend any quality time together and it always ends in disaster. Well, I can tell you from my experience that these aren’t necessarily the case, and you shouldn’t assume distance will automatically cause a breakup.

My boyfriend Nick and I met in my senior year of high school. It was a short-lived, romantic whirlwind that ended in heartbreak and teenage angst. Then, as COVID-19 hit, we became digital best friends, talking every day on Snapchat, watching movies on Netflix and subconsciously building a solid foundation for our relationship. As the COVID-19 restrictions slowly loosened and we started seeing each other more, I became increasingly attached and wanted to spend every minute with him.

While I loved spending all my time with him, I realized that I was so focused on my relationship that I began to lose my independence.

In the excitement of being in love, I stopped painting, reading, watching movies for myself and even driving. I started to feel anxious and lonely when we were separated — what we call separation anx-

aNDrEa ZhENG • ThE STUDENT LIFE

iety.

Finally, as summer came to a close, so began the dreaded separation. The feeling of excitement about starting college was met with a pit in my stomach about losing him in this period of transition and our relationship becoming rocky as he started school an hour away from me in Los Angeles. While this isn’t an across the country type of long-distance, with the pressures of school, driving times and other barriers, we end up not seeing each other incredibly often and it was also a major transition from living together to living in different cities.

Talk with the intention to listen SHAY SURESH I like to consider myself a socially perceptive person. A significant part of that comes from learning from my mistakes. Over the years, I’ve observed myself and others in conversation and noted the things that could have gone differently.

I recognize that this might seem harsh, but I have always tried to never let pride become a barrier to my self-awareness. Throughout the plethora of discussions I’ve had with peers, family and teachers, I’ve discerned the factor that remains most crucial to a mutually satisfying dialogue: talking with the intention to listen.

No one tells you how easy it is to talk about yourself. After all, we want to share that gripping story from last weekend or tell you about our most recent life update. It’s challenging to actively listen when what we want to share trumps what others want to contribute. But, to be transparent, it’s so frustrating to put effort into a discussion in which someone else is merely using you as a sounding board. Conversations are two-sided, and actively listening indicates that I can respond with the context and knowledge of the speaker’s feelings. If I’m just there as an outlet for someone’s monologues, I feel unfulfilled. With conversations, what you put in is what you get.

Active listening is multifaceted: from one angle, you can derive so much about someone from verbal exchanges, and from another, the way you interact with someone says so much about who you are.

When you speak with the intent to listen, I can guarantee you that the other person will be more perceptive and open to dialogue. We’ve all been the listener and the speaker, and thus we should all know by now that when you are cognizant of the other person and their input, they will return that respect. Listening is not only a reality of our existence, it’s an ability. It demonstrates your empathy, your genuine curiosity, your interest in someone else’s thoughts.

Cultivating our active listening skills will prove crucial in conversations throughout life. Whether nurturing connections with new friends, creating relationships with professors or maintaining a healthy balance within the company of family, active listening enables us to be more intimately engaged and involved in the lives of others. When we afford people our undivided attention, there’s a natural inclination to build and uphold relationships that we know will be fruitful for both parties.

What does inattentive listening look like? We’ve all done it, so it might be more conspicuous than we think. It might be thinking about the next thing we’re going to say, the next point we’re itching

to make, while someone else is speaking. Maybe someone has shared something and you neglected to ask questions, affirm their thoughts or offer advice.

Instead, your mind may have wandered and you’re onto the next topic before the last one was resolved.

Your most productive, balanced and rewarding relationships are most likely reinforced by active listening. One aspect of active listening is asking questions. Not questions that revolve around you or serve as a means to validate your thoughts, but questions that induce an answer free of bias. They’re questions that encourage someone to think and offer a different perspective; they should provoke someone to share something about themselves that you might not already know. Show your care and concern for their answer, your real interest in what you might learn from them. The most wonderful thing about relationships is what we understand about ourselves and others through thoughtful and meaningful discussion.

Something else we can do to actively listen is to let the other person know you’re paying attention to your manner of reaction. Holding eye contact is key; roving eyes hint at a roaming mind. Try not to make assumptions or interrupt. Wait until they are done talking to offer input. Acting prematurely can imply that you’re not thinking through what they’re sharing.

I might not have all the answers, but I do know that by incorporating this advice into my conversations, I’ve undoubtedly strengthened my relationships.

Make active listening a part of your everyday life by giving the person you’re speaking to the same courtesy they’d offer you.

Embrace being graceful in your exchanges and thoughtful in your responses.

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

GErrIT PUNT • ThE STUDENT LIFE

Editorial Board

This “hybrid distance” has still taught me a lot about relationships, trust, and the myths of distance dating.

Nevertheless, it’s been seven months since we each moved and a year and a half since we started dating, and we are stronger than ever. Distance allowed me to make new friends on my own, reconnect with hobbies I enjoy like creative writing, acting, and exercise and allowed him to grow on his own and settle into a new school. Of course, there have been fights, ups-and-downs and periods where I wanted nothing more than to hang up the phone

and walk across the hall and have him on the other side of the dorm hallway. But this distance taught us patience and trust, and we have learned to value the time we spend together.

Because we only get to see each other on some weekends, we carve out time to watch movies together online, talk on the phone, text and write letters to each other.

And when we are together in person, we put down the cellphones, take a break from the distractions and focus on each other. It allows us to be more present when we are together and to respect the other person’s boundaries and alone time when we are apart.

From talking to peers, I’ve come to notice that fear around long-distance relationships tends to be about faithfulness. You don’t cheat because you are apart.

You cheat because you feel unwanted, you become bored or you genuinely fall for someone else. Distance doesn’t cause these problems; rather, it amplifies them. If you are able to have clear, thoughtful communication and set up boundaries, then you both should be able to see yourselves as being on the same page.

Finally, having your partner far away from you doesn’t necessarily translate into a feeling

of loss, but rather it can reaffirm your commitment to them. You don’t have to feel sad all the time that your partner isn’t with you.

Of course, there are parties I go to where I look around and wish he was there dancing with me. There are times when I see couples at the Hub working together when I wish he was there to do the same with me, that things could just be easy.

But you shouldn’t give up just because you have to work a bit harder to stay connected.

You need to do the mental work to allow yourself to enjoy moments you’re apart, to learn to lean on your friends and your other support systems when you miss them.

Also, it’s okay to sit with those feelings of missing your partner. They can stand as a testament to how much you love them and how deep your feelings are.

Don’t give up on long distance, and don’t write it off for being too messy. If you go about it in a way that’s respectful, honest and committed, then it can be a rewarding, wonderful experience. I am so thankful to have found my person, and I would never give up on him just because we’re apart.

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

The 5Cs are part of Claremont’s housing crisis. Let’s be part of the solution GWEN TUCKER To many 5C students, and indeed throughout the Los Angeles area, Claremont has the reputation of a uniformly upper-middle class, professional and politically progressive community. Colloquially referred to as “The City of Trees and PhDs,” it has gained a reputation that makes it synonymous with white, well-to-do academics. But Claremont is not the utopia it is often chalked up to be.

A significant portion of Claremont residents are low-income, and the city’s wealthier residents and neighborhoods — many of whom consistently vote for liberal causes — also have a history of opposing the development of new affordable housing to support them, opting instead to maintain Claremont’s neighborhood character. The progressive opposition to affordable housing is inherently detrimental, creating a prominent housing crisis in Claremont and the state of California as a whole.

In California, in order to rent an average two-bedroom apartment at market price, a household must earn over $80,000 a year annually, which is more than three times the statewide minimum wage. Individuals and households who qualify as “extremely low-income” — meaning they make less than 30 percent of the average median income (AMI) per year — are hit hardest by this housing crisis. According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, California currently lacks nearly 100,000 homes that qualify as affordable for extremely low-income renters, meaning many people will end up unhoused. The biggest cities in California are obviously the most expensive, but recent studies have found that, as residents flee those cities for less expensive surrounding areas, those areas face massive price increases as well. In fact, between 2010 and 2020, San Bernardino County — which Claremont borders — saw a nearly 94 percent increase in average home value.

Claremont has followed a similar trend. Sales information from the California Association of Realtors reflects that housing prices in Claremont have increased by about 26 percent since 2016. Current data from the 2022 Housing Element shows that more than 30 percent of Claremont’s population can be classified as low-income – making less than 80 percent of the average median income – meaning approximately 11,500 individuals.

And yet, Claremont only has 539 subsidized units of afford-

GaBY caMachO • ThE STUDENT LIFE

The claremont colleges have a role to play in alleviating claremont’s housing affordability problems, writes Gwen Tucker Sc ‘25.

able housing, many of which are not meant for more than one person. The Housing Element found that Claremont will need nearly 2,000 additional units of affordable housing in the next ten years to keep up with the city’s growing population.

The Claremont Colleges have played a significant role in Claremont’s affordable housing crisis.

In the 1960s, the 5Cs – primarily Claremont McKenna College – expanded into and gentrified Arbol Verde, a community made up of primarily Mexican-American immigrants. CMC was able to easily acquire ownership of housing tracts, taking advantage of the fact that members of the Arbol Verde community couldn’t legally purchase land until the mid-20th century. After buying homes in the neighborhood and ultimately evicting long-time residents to expand its campus, the college effectively owned 80 percent of homes in Arbol Verde by the end of the 1980s.

Using their new housing stock, Claremont McKenna offered subsidized renting to professors, originally offering a rate of 20 percent below market value. This practice continues in some capacity today, with Pomona College setting aside a number of rentals specifically for faculty. While this practice does help to increase housing affordability for some — those already eligible to work at these elite institutions — it ultimately depletes the housing stock for other community members.

The housing crisis in Claremont and surrounding Southern California communities requires a multitude of solutions. The city must work to change zoning laws that only prohibit single-family homes, allow more medium- and high-density development, partner with local residents to increase the presence of accessory dwelling units (ADUs), increase the development of subsidized affordable

apartments, pass rent stabilization laws and much more. But all of these solutions require money, which is hard to find in a small city budget – especially with the effects of Proposition 13, which has limited the ability to raise money through property taxes.

That’s where the 5Cs come in.

The colleges are by far the largest and wealthiest owners of land in the city, and their endowments grant them a unique ability to address the housing crisis. The Claremont Colleges can partner with the City of Claremont to create an affordable housing trust, providing money for subsidized housing or even zero-interest loans for new developments.

It is impossible to go back in time and correct their actions, but the colleges have a responsibility to address their impact today.

Of course, none of these important solutions will happen on their own. It is up to community members — including students from the 5Cs — to organize to increase affordable housing presence and subsidization in Claremont. If you are interested in learning more and in joining this fight, consider attending the Inclusive Claremont introductory meeting this Monday at 6 p.m. on Zoom. Inclusive Claremont is working to build a strong coalition of Claremont community members – both college students and non-college students – advocating for increased affordable housing in the city. During the meeting, you’ll hear from local leaders in the fight for housing, and be a part of strategizing to build student power. As Claremont Colleges students, we can’t think of ourselves as separate from the wider Claremont community.

We must be part of the fight for an inclusive, accessible and affordable city for all.

Gwen Tucker SC ’25 is from Evanston, Illinois. She is currently organizing 5C students for local housing justice and waiting for Taylor Swift to release her next album.

THE STUDENT LIFE

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

Senior Staff JAMES KARSTEN, Production Editor GRACE SAUERS, Production Editor MARCELLA CANNATTI, News Designer KLARA JACOBS, Arts and Culture Designer GIULIA BELLON, Opinions Designer JOSIE DE ANDA, Sports Designer LONDON LORDOS, Copy Chief ANNA PREWITT, Copy Chief

HUXLEYANN HUEFNER, Photo Editor NANAKO NODA, Photo Editor BELLA PETTENGILL, Graphics Editor JENNA MCMURTRY, News Editor SIENA SWIFT, News Editor SAMSON ZHANG, News Associate MENA BOVA, Arts & Culture Editor ZOEY LOFGREN, Arts & Culture Editor

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.

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

SportS

March 4, 2022

PaGE 9

Athenas reign over Cal Lutheran in opening season series to begin SCIAC competition JUSTIN GUO & ELI WEISS With a 7-5 lead heading into the sixth inning, the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Athenas seemed to be in control of the match at Cal Lutheran in their SCIAC season opener Friday, Feb. 25.

But the Regals flipped a switch by converting 6 RBI singles in the bottom half of the frame, developing a 4-run lead heading into the seventh. The Athenas eventually fell short of a comeback and ended up suffering an 11-9 loss to open conference play.

A chance at revenge, however, came quickly in a doubleheader at home the following afternoon.

Courtesy of defensive gems thrown by starting pitchers and an offensive explosion from CMS hitters, the Athenas dethroned the Regals by scores of 5-2 and 7-1 to take their first SCIAC series win.

Over the weekend, pitchers Heather Shipley CM ’23 and Jade Johnson CM ’24 dominated on the mound, each throwing complete game wins while combining for seven strikeouts. On the offensive side, CMS featured a balanced attack with numerous players earning RBIs. In the first game of the doubleheader, the Athenas struggled to generate hits on the offensive end. After Cal Lutheran jumped out to a 2-0 lead in a pitcher’s duel game, CMS hitters struggled to get women on base, enduring a three-hit shutout through five innings.

Moving into the bottom of the sixth inning, however, the Athenas came out swinging and strung together a series of runs to stage their comeback in the match.

Leadoff hitter Emma Suh CM ’25 began the charge with a double down the left field line and

into the corner porch, ultimately scoring off a sac fly RBI from Ellie Novagradac CM ’24. With two gone in the frame, Destiny Garcia SC ’24 produced a clutch RBI triple to keep the rally going.

Garcia later scored with an errant throw from the Cal Lutheran shortstop, while Lauren Richards CM ’22 produced a single to put two women on. Soon after, Paige Zimmerman CM ’25 followed up Garcia’s two out RBI hit with one of her own, blasting a single in short center field grass to take the lead 3-2.

With a slow windup from the Cal Lutheran pitcher, Zimmermann immediately stole second base and placed runners at second and third. Kristin LeBlanc CM ’23 then smoked a 2 RBI double down the right field line to score both runners on the basepaths, signifying the end of a 4-run two out rally. Shipley finished off the top of the seventh

facing only four Regal hitters to finish the game.

Following this decisive win, the Athenas continued to express their dominance on both sides of the ball in an even more impressive showing in the second match.

Contrary to the game before, CMS came out strong and produced runs early. After Johnson threw a clean top of the first inning, the Athenas found themselves in another two-out opportunity at the plate in the bottom half.

With runners on first and second for CMS following two singles from Ananya Koneti CM ’22 and Garcia, Ari Livi CM ’23 placed an RBI single in short right field to score Koneti, breaking the stalemate early in the match.

Two innings later, however, the Regals responded with a solo home run, the only costly mis-

take Johnson had all afternoon.

However, the Athenas picked her up on the offensive end by responding with two runs of their own. After Novagradac walked and Garcia produced her second single of the match, Richards smoked a two-out, 2 RBI double to take a 3-1 lead.

Continuing the rally in the bottom of the fourth inning, the Athenas tacked on three more runs following costly wild pitches and fielding errors from the Regal defense.

With CMS cruising on the defensive end, Ashleigh Adkins SC ’24 effectively put the nail in the coffin by adding on an RBI single in the bottom of the sixth inning, with the final score at 7-1.

Moving forward, the Athenas look ahead to the National Fastpitch Coaches Association’s Leadoff classic this upcoming weekend, in sight of lengthening their winning streak on the road.

CLASSES OFFERED ONLINE & IN-PERSON THREE- AND SIX-WEEK COURSES TAUGHT BY HMC FACULTY $3,500 (3-CREDIT COURSE)

View program details, courses and registration information at hmc.edu/summer-session22

GET AHEAD. IGNITE YOUR INTELLECTUAL CURIOSITY.

Sports Calendar P-P

CMS

Friday, Mar. 4

Friday, Mar. 4

Women’s Tennis vs. Kenyon @ Nicholasville, KY ITa Indoors

Men’s Tennis vs. Pacific Coast Doubles @ La Jolla, ca

Men’s Basketball vs. Northwestern (Minn.) @ Elmhurst NCAA Tournament, first round

Softball vs. Linfield vs. St. John Fisher @ columbus, Ga NFca Leadoff classic

Women’s Water Polo vs. redlands convergence Tournament

Women’s Tennis vs. carnegie Mellon @ at centre college ITa Indoor Nationals

Softball @ Emory vs. Piedmont @ Leadoff classic

Women’s Water Polo vs. Siena vs. La Salle claremont convergence

Women’s Water Polo vs. Uc San Diego

Baseball @ chapman

Saturday, Mar. 5

Saturday, Mar. 5

Men’s & Women’s Track & Field cT/OXY/cLU @ Pasadena, ca

Men’s & Women’s Track and Field ScIac Multi-Dual #1 @ La Verne

Women’s Tennis Pomona-Pitzer PomonaPitzer ITa Indoors vs. ITa Indoors @ Nicholasville, KY

Men’s Tennis vs. Pacific Coast Doubles @ La Jolla, ca

Women’s Lacrosse @ colorado col.

Softball vs. Va. Wesleyan @ columbus, Ga. NFca Leadoff classic Women’s Water Polo vs. concordia (cal.) convergence Tournament Softball vs. Berry @ Leadoff classic Women’s Water Polo vs. Azusa Pacific convergence Tournament Sunday, Mar. 6 Women’s Tennis vs. ITa Indoors @ Nicholasville, KY Softball vs. chris. Newport vs. coe @ Leadoff classic Women’s Lacrosse vs. rIT @ colorado college

Women’s Tennis claremont-Mudd-Scripps @ ITa National Indoors (Danville, Ky.) @ centre college Baseball vs. chapman Women’s Water Polo vs. Azusa Pacific vs. connecticut college claremont convergence Softball vs. Transylvania vs. Eastern conn. St. @ columbus, Ga NFca Leadoff classic Women’s Lacrosse vs. redlands Men’s Tennis vs. Villanova @ La Jolla, ca Sunday Mar. 6 Women’s Tennis @ ITa National Indoors (Danville, Ky.) ITa National Indoors (Danville, Ky.) @ centre college Softball vs. Illinois Wesleyan vs. christopher Newport @ columbus, Ga NFca Leadoff classic

Athletes of the Week Pomona-Pitzer Sydney Landauer PZ ’25 Women’s Lacrosse Portland, OR With Pomona-Pitzer Women’s Lacrosse improving their record to 3-0 on the season following their 26-3 win against Whittier, rookie attacker Sydney Landauer led the rout against the Poets by putting up five goals and an assist, shooting on a very efficient 83.3% clip. Already serving a significant role in a stacked Sagehen roster, Landauer already has recorded 12 goals and 6 assists on the season, proving crucial in the 21-6 win versus Redlands as well. In that game, she knocked in two goals and three assists. Looking to keep their winning streak going to begin the season, the Sagehens will next travel on the road to face Colorado College tomorrow morning.

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Dara Schoolcraft CM ’25 Women’s Water Polo Seattle, WA Over the weekend, Dara Schoolcraft CM ’25 had an impressive series of games for the Athenas but especially shined in the 22-1 rout against Chapman. Earning a team-high six points, Schoolcraft played exceedingly well on offense through both scoring and assisting the ball, notching three each during the game. She now has seven goals on the season already as a defensive specialist in the pool, getting it done on both ends for the Athenas in the early going. CMS will next face Siena and La Salle in the Claremont Convergence Tournament this afternoon.

SportS

PaGE 10

March 4, 2022

BBALL: Hens overcame a late Panther rally to take SCIAC trophy 76-71

aBBEY LIaO • ThE STUDENT LIFE

Left: Victorious Hens celebrate with head coach Charles Katsiaficas.

Top right: Peyton Mullarkey PZ ’25 moves the ball down the court.

Bottom right: Matthew Eberle PO ’22 prepares to take a shot.

continued from page 1 slashing through the paint and hitting perimeter shots, while Pete Boyle PO ’25 contributed five of his 15 within this short spurt.

After a Ty Bergman PO ’25 assist for a Mora three-pointer to beat the first half buzzer, this capped a 22-10 scoring run and grew the Sagehen lead to 13

points — up 48-35.

Following the halftime break, P-P continued this momentum through the early moments of the second half, building their lead to 20. However, with a sudden scoring onslaught from the Panthers and an 0-for-9 dry spell for the Sagehens soon after, Chapman climbed back into the game and narrowed the game to 59 P-P - 55 Chapman.

While the Panthers threatened to take the lead, the Sagehens continued to maintain a one-basket lead coming down the stretch. With every Chapman bucket being answered by clutch shots from Eberle, Bergman and Joe Cookson PO ’25, tensions continued to brew between the two crowds.

With 13 seconds left in the game and P-P up by one point,

Eberle committed a costly turnover after a faulty pass from Peyton Mullarkey PZ ’25. As a Chapman forward lunged forward to finish an easy layup, the forward jumped up and swatted the ball away in the final seconds, effectively ending the game after pairs of free throws from Mora and Boyle, 76-71.

Following the champion-

ship’s conclusion, Eberle received SCIAC’s postseason most valuable player nod, having averaged 21.7 points, 5.3 rebounds and 2.0 assists per game in the tournament.

Having punched their ticket to the DIII national tournament, the Hens will face off against Northwestern-St. Paul in the first round of competition this afternoon.

Long before Title IX ensured equal access, women made their own place in 5C athletic spaces HANNAH WEAVER To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Title IX’s passing, as well as Women’s History Month, TSL is covering the conditions before and after the law changed the experience of women athletes at the 5Cs. For the majority of the 5Cs’ history, women haven’t had the same athletic opportunities as men. Despite this, many pre-Title IX pioneers forged their own way, often without institutional support.

Students spearheaded intramural, club teams for female athletes Prior to Title IX’s 1972 mandate that federally-funded athletic programs offer an equal number of women’s and men’s teams, there were no female varsity teams at any of the 5Cs. There were, however, some club and intramural teams for women.

One of the earliest examples can be traced back to 1903, when Pomona College established the first collegiate women’s basketball team in Southern California. In a rare deviation from standard procedures at the time, the women’s basketball team was formed three years before the men’s. The women competed against local high schools until 1909, after which they played their first collegiate match against the University of Southern California, losing 17-3.

Progress in women’s athletics crawled along slowly thereafter, picking up pace in 1919, when the Pomona student body voted to grant athletic letters to women.

Through the 1920s, women’s participation in athletics increased, including at Scripps College, which was the only other member of the Claremont Colleges at the time.

A TSL article from Oct. 31, 1928 headlined “Women plan swim meet in December” documented this growing participation.

“Women on the campus have shown more interest in swimming as a sport this year than for almost any year previous to this,” TSL reported.

Another article from Oct. 18 that same year, headlined “Scripps tennis and archery teams meet” described the self-managed nature of women’s sports at the time.

“The heads of sports for the two teams, in archery and tennis have been elected and are planning the program for this semester,” the story said. “These girls will arrange all tournament plays and all things moving in the line of competition.

The addition to twenty five more girls for each team means greater opportunity in the whole athletic program for the year.”

A Feb. 12, 1929 TSL article announced the advent of the women’s tennis season. The teams were formed after tryouts and divided by class year, in preparation for inter-class matches and a Pomona vs.

Scripps tournament.

More informal ways for female students to get involved in sports In the late twenties, Pomona brought in professionals to lead workshops for women in activities such as dance and golf.

56 women signed up for dance classes taught by a professional named Miss Van Gelder, according to an Oct. 10, 1928 TSL article.

“Miss Van Gelder has had the advantage of a great deal of training in dance expression,” the article said. “She calls the work she is giving ‘creative dancing’ in order to distinguish it from the hackeyed ideas of ‘interpretative’ and a ‘natural’ dancing. She defines dancing as the outpouring of emotion recreated in movement and governed by laws of technique with sin, the added quality of the expression of the individuality of the performer.

“At any rate, the girls enjoy going thru (sic) limbering motions with music and dressed in gaily colored tunics,” the piece added.

Another athletic opportunity for female students was a 4-lesson golf course, announced to the student body in a Oct. 28, 1928 TSL article. The classes were led by a professional from Mountain Meadows Country club.

“Attention all ye feminine mashie wielders — Regular golf classes start today,” the article announced.

Ruth “Bump” Andersson, skier extraordinaire The 1944 edition of Scripps’

yearbook, La Semeuse, documented the foundation of a new organization whose goal was to increase female athletic opportunities.

“Drawing more girls out for sports than have been seen on the Scripps athletic field for many a lerm, the Scripps Athletic Association has inaugurated a new system of sports participation this year. The main aim of the new program is to prepare the girls to pursue [their activities] on a [recreational] basis.”

One student who took advantage of this new system was Ruth “Bump” Andersson SC ’44.

“Her main interests are Texas and skiing. She loves to whip off on spur of the moment ski expeditions to Sun Valley, Yosemite or Baldy (if and when there’s snow),” her yearbook biography read.

“As president of the Ski Club, she has done a great deal to make the sport more popular than ever.”

Helene Mayer, the best female fencer of all time … and Scripps graduate In the decades that followed, several standout female athletes attended both Pomona and Scripps.

Helene Mayer SC ’34 is perhaps one of the most accomplished athletes to have ever attended the 5Cs. An exchange student from Germany, she attended Scripps for two years and graduated with a social work certificate.

Before coming to Scripps, she had already won gold in fencing

at the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. At the following summer Olympic games in Los Angeles in 1932, she returned to compete, two hours after learning that her boyfriend had died. Despite this, she still ended up finishing fifth.

While at Scripps, Mayer took classes and led fencing classes for her peers, according to Scripps College’s photo archives.

After graduating from Scripps, her story got a lot more complicated. Despite being Jewish, Mayer was invited to compete for Nazi Germany at the 1936 Summer Olympics. She accepted, and because of this, she is a controversial historical figure. Some saw her decision as selfish and saw her as a traitor, while others believed she was trying to protect her family from the repercussions of refusing.

Golf superstar Betty Hicks PO ’47 took flight in the golf world After Mayer took center-stage at the Claremont Colleges in the 1930s, another world-class female athlete came to study in Claremont — Betty Hicks PO ’47.

At the young age of 18, only two years after she first picked up a golfing club, Hicks won her first tournament.

While at Pomona, she competed in many tournaments and helped create the Women’s Professional Golf Association, which later dissolved but was nonetheless an important step in establishing

women’s professional golf.

In the span of 10 years, Hicks had been named the Associated Press Woman Athlete of the Year, served in the Coast Guard during World War II and taught golf across the country.

She later went on to become a flight instructor, adding to her already impressively varied list of accomplishments.

Barriers to entry in a pre-Title IX world While some women were able to find a place for themselves in sports, this opportunity was not afforded to all. Many of the athletic activities were expensive and students did not receive financial support from their respective academic institutions.

Although Bump Andersson and some of her peers were able to go on ski trips with Ski Club, they ended up having to exclude some students due to cost barriers.

“It is extremely unfortunate that there was not enough snow on the nearby mountains for those who had neither the time nor the money to make more extensive trips,” the 1944 La Semeuse yearbook said in the Ski Club section.

It’s also worth noting that those female athletes who were able to participate in sports were overwhelmingly white. In the years before 1972, both Scripps and Pomona had very few students of color in attendance. Thus, sports remained an activity reserved for primarily white, wealthy men.

cOUrTESY: ELLa STrONG DENISON LIBrarY

Top left: helene Mayer Sc ‘34 demonstrates a lunge while teaching a fencing class.

Bottom left: The Pomona college 1903 women’s basketball team poses in front of holmes hall. right: carey rockey Sc ‘42 jumps her horse over a fence.