Vol. CXXXIII, No. 18

VOL. CXXXIII NO. 18

FRIDAY, ApRIl 1, 2022

CLAREMONT, CA

CMC mistakenly offers admitted students $40,000 scholarships JASPER DAVIDOFF When 306 of this year’s firstyear applicants to Claremont McKenna College opened their admissions letters on March 24, they got the good news they were hoping for — and even more.

“Because of your impressive qualifications, CMC is also pleased to offer you the prestigious Podlich Scholar Award,” the letters said, according to screenshots shared with TSL. “This merit-based scholarship from CMC provides $10,000 per year for four years of study for a total award of $40,000. This distinction offers you the opportunity to be part of a select, exceptional group of students with distinctive engagement and leadership.”

But most of the students who thought they were being celebrated for their exceptional talents and academic achievements would quickly discover they had celebrated too soon. The acceptance was real, but the award notification had been a mistake, the admissions department told them by email the next day.

“We were made aware of an error in our letter of admission regarding the Podlich Scholarship.

A paragraph was included indicating you were awarded a Podlich Scholarship for $10,000 and a summer grant of $5,000,” the March 25 email said, signed by the office of admissions. “I regret to inform you that this was a mistake, and you did not receive the scholarship.”

Only eight admitted students were actually intended to receive the award, CMC spokesperson Gilien Silsby told TSL in an email.

She said the other offers went out because of a “computer code error.”

The financial aid letters students received were accurate, the office said, and those receiving aid were still eligible for the $5,000 in summer funding offered after their first year.

Admitted students told TSL after the incident that it felt embarrassing and, in some cases, made it seem less tenable to attend CMC. TSL is keeping them partially anonymous for their privacy, and because some are still negotiating financial aid packages after the

retraction.

“It was a blow to my pride to have a scholarship rescinded like that,” a student who asked to go by their initials, H.S., said in a message. “For students that have CMC as a dream school and are in a less stable financial situation, I can’t imagine how devastating the retraction was.”

For some, the error wasn’t entirely unforeseeable.

A student named Maddy said she applied to major in literature and history, but the award paragraph denoted it was intended for students studying “economics (including economics-accounting), government and philosophy, politics and economics (PPE).”

“I was a bit confused when I got the award because none of the majors I selected actually matched the awards,” she said in a message.

One international student said he noticed something was wrong when the scholarship didn’t appear on his financial aid award.

“CMC is definitely my top choice, but the financial difference of not having the scholarship is significant for an international student,” he said in an email.

For H.S., the award meant a lot, after a string of waitlists and rejections.

“I was so ecstatic because I had only received one other scholarship … It was not even a question that CMC became my first choice come May 1st,” they said.

After the retraction, they’re no longer committing to CMC, having also received admission to another school they preferred.

Maddy is still considering attending, although she said the episode made her concerned about “communication from the school.”

Silsby said CMC is calling affected students and their families to apologize personally.

“Most students, while disappointed, have been understanding and are appreciative of our outreach,” she said.

ANNA CHOI • THE STUDENT lIFE

Originating from 1600s Kyoto, Japan, Kabuki theater is a classical Japanese performance style that unites song, dance and acting to tell stories.

Kabuki theater project continues centuries-old legacy of Japanese cultural art VIDUSSHI HINGAD If all the world’s a stage, then a stage should be the world — a world full of heritage keeping history alive. This weekend, KabukiMa is working toward this goal with its production of “Gohiki Kanjincho” (“Great Favorite Subscription List”), a fully staged English-language production of one of Kabuki’s most beloved plays.

Based at Pomona College, KabukiMa aims to “cultivate an understanding and appreciation of Japanese theatre in the West,” according to its website.

On the mainstage at Pomona College’s Seaver Theatre, students will perform “Gohiki Kanjincho” at 8 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and 2 p.m. on Sunday. An academic symposium on Japanese theater and performance will also accompany the performances.

Both the conference and the production are free and accessible to the public.

Japanese Kabuki theater is a classical Japanese performance style that combines song, dance and acting to create a cultural spectacle of theater. Looking beyond the exaggerated and dynamic movements of this theatrical

The Wabash Report: 5 years later MARCELLA TODD & ELINA LINGAPPA Five years ago, in March 2017, TSL published the leaked Wabash Report, a 2015 investigation that exposed the severity of Harvey Mudd College’s curriculum and workload. Students quoted in the report spoke about sacrificing sleep, hobbies, hygiene and religious practices in order to manage their classes.

“The Mudd curriculum was brutal when I was there. You’re really thrown into the deep end very quickly,” Felipe Baja HM ’19 said.

“First year I was probably sleeping every other day. I even cut down on my eating time just to have more time for work.”

Baja said that throughout his four years, he spent anywhere between 40 to 60 hours a week on homework and studying alone, not including the time spent in class.

The Wabash Report leak resulted in protests by Harvey Mudd students, classes canceled for two days and demands for increased mental health support. A 2018 study at Mudd reaffirmed the overwhelming workload. Curriculum

lIAM BROOKS • THE STUDENT lIFE

Students protest outside the R. Michael Shanahan Center for Teaching and learning following the release of the Wabash Report in 2017.

changes began in 2020 but were slowed by COVID-19.

So how are Harvey Mudd students doing five years on? It depends who you ask.

Some current students told TSL of the same need for intensive time budgeting that was reported in 2015.

“I basically live life by my calendar. I think it’s a little sad that I have to schedule my friend’s birthday tomorrow. I need to remember to go to dinner with her and not accidentally promise someone else that I’ll work on computer science [homework],” Kip Lim HM ’22 said.

Lim estimated they currently do around 30 hours of work outside of class.

Lim said that while the workload can be too much, the structure makes sense given the college’s goals.

“It’s a very structured curriculum that has many requirements to fill and it very much aligns with their mission to be a well rounded, liberal arts college, but it really

See WABASH on page 2

performance lies a message of how generations carry the knowledge of the past.

While studying theater in Asia on a Guggenheim Fellowship in the early 1960s, the late Pomona professor Leonard Pronko learned about the Japanese art of Kabuki. In 1970, he became the first non-Japanese person to be accepted into the National Theatre of Japan to study kabuki. Over the years, he directed more than 40 Kabuki-related events, ranging from classic plays to innovative compositions, taking his passion for the art back to Pomona College.

Continuing his legacy, Pronko’s former student Mark Diaz PO ’22 is directing theater troupe KabukiMa’s new play, “Gohiiki Kanjincho.”

“The way that Kabuki theater is taught is that there is the master actor or artist who has learned it a certain way, and they’ve perfected it. And they pass on that exact style, that exact form, [to] their students,” Diaz said. “That student learns it exactly as the master’s done, they trained in that way for [a long time], and once they themselves feel like they’re kind of at the level that their master is, [they think], ‘Now how do I start bringing myself into this role?’”

The story of “Gohiiki Kanjincho” follows Benkei and Yoshitsune, the mythical heroes of Japan, as they face off Togashi and Saitoji at the Ataka Barrier.

“The play is about deception, sacrifice and cunning, and there’s a lot of humor and fun going on,” Diaz said.

Cast member Danny Guo PO ’25 admires the multifaceted expectations and hybrid forms of this theatrical art.

“It’s a very intriguing experience because it’s my first time seeing any kind of show that combines the theater aspect, musical aspect, the dance aspect — all of them together,” Guo said. “And you sort of see these kind of forms merging in a hybrid form.”

Kabuki theater has multiple parallels to other types of total theaters and is often compared to Shakespearean theater. It encourages an awareness of acting that contrasts with the method acting system proposed by Stanislavski.

Classic Kabuki performances combine well-known stories with music, extravagant costumes, strong makeup, sensual connotations, humorous interruptions, acrobatics and stylized movement, particularly dance and mie postures (pronounced mee-yay).

See KABUKI on page 3

5Cs add restrictions as COVID cases rise ANUSHE ENGINEER The rise in COVID-19 cases across the 5Cs following students’ return from spring break is leading 5C administrators to respond with several pertinent changes, some effective immediately.

The Harvey Mudd College classes of 2020 and 2021 are set to return to campus this weekend for their respective commencement ceremonies, but current Mudd and 5C students have been asked not to attend the events in order to contain the spread.

Har vey Mudd President Maria Klawe emailed the Mudd community Thursday afternoon with the announcement, adding that the president ’s cabinet “feel[s] strongly that we should not cancel the ceremonies, despite the sharp uptick in positive cases.”

“We know many of you have friends who will be on campus celebrating, but we need to

ensure we are able to finish the semester successfully in person, including allowing our current seniors the opportunity to complete their required obligations regarding their clinic and thesis projects so they may graduate in May,” the email said.

Visitors to campus — an expected 1,600 graduates and families — will be asked to provide proof of vaccination, as well as a booster, if eligible, when they arrive, or provide a negative COVID-19 test taken within 72 hours of arriving on campus. Yellow wristbands will be given to identify those individuals who provided proof of vaccination or a negative test.

All visitors will also be expected to remain masked unless actively eating or drinking but will be allowed to briefly remove their masks when taking photographs. There is an exception for those speaking or presenting at the ceremonies.

Beginning next week, Mudd

See COVID on page 2

SAMSON ZHANG • THE STUDENT lIFE

PRESENTING: TSL’s Joke issu you will laugh! you will cry! you will appreciate the image of Chad to the left - get to know your author!

check out pages 5-8 for some general malarkey and roasting of your colleges The student newspaper of the Claremont Colleges since 1889

featuring work from: Cecil’s Widow CHAD Dead Koi at HarVey Mudd

e!

INDEX: News 1 | Arts & Culture 3 | JOKES! 5 | Opinions 9 | Sports 11

News

pAGE 2

COVID: Motley opening pushed

In memoriam: Ronald Lopez sr., pioneer of the 5Cs’ Chicano studies Program

Continued from page 1 students will be asked to test twice weekly for COVID-19, an increase from the regular requirement of testing once a week.

Students on campus are also expected to wear masks while indoors and strongly encouraged to wear medical-grade masks while outdoors.

Klawe also asked that nonMudd st udents refrain from eating at Mudd’s Hoch-Shanahan Dining Commons to allow dining services to “focus on the needs of our current students and guests.”

Cross-campus dining at the 5Cs resumed Feb. 26 after a two-year hiatus. Mudd has only allowed students from the other campuses to dine at Mudd for brunch over the weekends, although Mudd students are allowed to eat at the other colleges throughout the week at the respective allocated times.

Although cross-campus dining is still permitted, Pitzer College’s McConnell Dining Hall closed indoor dining earlier this week in response to the case increase, reverting to take-out only.

Pomona College — which uncovered 28 cases this week, as of Thursday — said it would respond with increased to-go meal options and more outdoor seating, while the Motley Coffeehouse leadership team at Scripps College pushed the cafe’s grand opening from April 1 to April 8, saying they expect a large crowd for the event. The Motley will still, however, begin serving its much-awaited signature drinks on Monday.

“While we anticipated a spike in cases, the numbers at this point are a bit larger than we expected,” a Thursday update from Pomona’s COVID-19 Planning and Response Group said.

Despite the climbing number of cases, Claremont McKenna College lifted its indoor mask requirement, now expecting its students to only wear a mask in indoor classrooms but not in residence halls or its own dining hall.

ApRIl 1, 2022

AVA FRANCIS-HALL & MAXINE DAVEY Ronald Lopez Sr., who played a key role in creating the 5C program in Chicano/a Latino/a Studies, died in Sacramento March 10.

He was 83.

Lopez helped establish what was then called the Mexican American Studies Center in 1969, in what would become the second program of its type in the country.

He served as the executive director of the center for four years and helped oversee the department’s renaming to Chicano Studies Center.

Throughout his life, Lopez was committed to working in Mexican American communities and organizations. An avid organizer during the 1960s Chicano movement, Lopez’s zeal for organizing was only rivaled by his passion for connecting with students.

His philosophy of creating mutually beneficial working relationships between the work of the center and local communities set an important precedent for the community outreach work that 5C students undertake today.

Born in Santa Paula Aug. 19, 1938, Lopez graduated from Villanova Prep High School in Ojai, CA, according to a family obituary. After graduating, Lopez found work in different areas, from engineering to volunteering.

While attending Ventura College, Lopez met and married Lola Taylor and had two sons, Ronald and Antonio. The couple would go on to attend San Fernando Valley State College together, where Lopez obtained his Bachelor of Arts in 1967. He later received his Master of Arts in History at UCLA as a Danforth Foundational Fellow.

During his time at UCLA, Lopez established the Institute in American Cultures as a member of the Chancellor’s Task Force on Urban Crisis. He would also be an active figure in the emerging Chicano movement. As an early member of United Mexican American Student — one of many

student organizations that coordinated the East L.A. walkouts in 1968 — Lopez was at the forefront of bringing about radical change for the local Chicano community.

In April 1969, Lopez attended a Chicano movement conference at UC Santa Barbara, which would become one of the most pivotal episodes in the history of the Chicano movement. The conference brought about the inception of “Plan de Santa Barbara,” a document calling for the creation of Chicano studies programs throughout the California university system. Lopez both contributed to and signed the manifesto.

Invigorated by the early stirrings of the Chicano movement in the late 1960s, Claremont students drew on inspiration from their peers in LA to call for the creation of the department prior to Lopez’s arrival as its founding director.

Leading up to Lopez’s time in Claremont, students had already successfully pressured college administration to admit more students of color from surrounding areas while becoming active advocates in the United Farm Workers campaign led by César Chávez. By 1968, students were participating in the grape boycotts and forming picket lines at local markets.

In the spring of 1969, the 5Cs only offered two courses in Chicano studies, “The Mexican American in Modern Society” and “Contemporary Politics of the Southwest,” offered at Pitzer College.

Almost a month after the “Plan de Santa Barbara” was written by the Chicano Coordinating Council on Higher Education, a four day conference was held by Claremont Colleges students and faculty titled “The Chicano Movement, the Challenge of Urgency.” Shortly thereafter in the fall of 1969, the Mexican American Studies Center officially opened after the hard earned efforts of students who fought for its creation. Lopez left his position at UCLA to start at the new Mexican American Studies Center as its founding executive director in the fall of 1969.

The center expanded the course

COURTESY: lOpEZ FAMIlY

Family and colleagues remember Ronald lopez Sr., who played a key role in creating the 5C program in Chicano/a latino/a Studies.

offerings from eight in its first year to an average of 30 in following years. Of these new offerings, Lopez taught a course in United States history and another course in Mexican American history. He also led the creation of a summer bridge program that prepared first generation students for college life and academics.

Rita Dearborn, the first secretary of the Chicano Studies Center, formed a connection with Lopez in the early years of the Center.

“Working with Ron was an absolute joy as he was not only intelligent beyond compare but was blessed with an incomparable sense of humor,” Dearborn said via email.

Dearborn also noted that Lopez had strong connections with the students he worked with.

“During this time there were no counselors of color and he was frequently sought out by students as a friend and counselor,” she said.

Tomas Summers Sandoval, an associate professor of history and

Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies, said Lopez was a “charismatic fighter” who created a model of mutually beneficial college and community partnerships that the Intercollegiate Department of Chicano Studies still practices.

“All of us who work inside …

[Chicana/o-Latina/o Studies] owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude,” he said. “We are inheritors of all their work and the stewards of it.”

After leaving the Claremont Colleges, Lopez would continue to hold a wide range of roles, from serving as director of the Venice Drug Coalition to becoming a restaurateur. By the early 1980s, Lopez returned to teaching history at several Los Angeles community colleges. He retired in 2007 and moved to Sacramento to be near his family.

Lopez is survived by three sons and three granddaughters, along with many other family members.

A graveside service was held March 28 at the Pierce Brother Cemetery in Santa Paula.

WABASH: ‘you always have to be doing work’ Continued from page 1 pushes the students, sometimes a little too much,” they said.

Yvonne Ban HM ’17 said that despite the academic challenges, she had a good experience at Mudd overall: “I think I grew a lot as a person.” But she said that the leak of the Wabash Report allowed many students to realize they were not the only ones struggling at Mudd and that there was a wider issue.

“People realized [that] more than one person has this problem — that indicates that it’s a systemic problem.

That [it’s] an institutional problem. It’s a structural problem. People were upset that it was leaked, as opposed to released, because that kind of implies that those results were never meant to be released,” Ban said.

“If those results weren’t meant to be released, it appears that you’re still covering up the fact that there’s a structural problem with people not being able to handle the workload,” Ban added.

Artemis HM ’24, who asked to be identified by their first name for privacy reasons, told TSL that they were hospitalized this semester after suffering extreme burnout due to their workload. “[There is] this culture of feeling that you always have to be doing work,” Artemis said. “At 16 credits, it felt like I was just constantly doing work … I felt like every time that I wasn’t eating, I was doing homework or studying.”

Terrance James Diaz HM ’17 de-

scribed a similar culture during his time at Mudd.

“I remember being so overburdened with the workload and its emotional/mental toll that I sometimes wasn’t able to reply to family/friends outside of Mudd. I remember one time my sister had to call the school because she was worried something had happened to me,” Diaz said via message.

“Friends would sometimes worry the same thing. Time, to me, became a precious commodity. If I even had just a 30 minute gap between classes, I needed to use it wisely for stuff like catching up on sleep or eating.”

Artemis said they felt like they had to prioritize school over everything else, including hobbies, talking to friends from home and socializing on-campus.

“I’ve definitely sacrificed a lot of my social life. I feel like a lot of my time socializing with friends is just instead staying in a room together to study. And that’s the main way we socialize,” they said.

“I’ve stopped doing stuff, I used to play piano, I don’t play piano anymore. So I definitely dropped a lot of that and I’ve definitely gone off the grid.”

Diaz described a similar feeling.

“It got to the point where if I got sick, I was worried about wasting my time. You’re always thinking about what the next thing to do is, and that kinda thing taking up your mental/emotional space can get incredibly toxic,” he said. “Post-grad to me was all about finally having

lUCIA MARQUEZ-UppMAN • THE STUDENT lIFE

the time to enjoy the movies, shows, video games, etc. that came out while I was at Mudd but never had the time to enjoy.”

Especially because some faculty in the report were quoted attributing the rise in diversity at Mudd to a decline in academic standards, Ban described the report as a lightning rod for the “helplessness that everyone was feeling” after the election of Donald Trump in 2016.

The rhetoric, which insinuated that people from marginalized identities were not up to the task of class rigor, ignited a larger conversation about discimination and diversity at Mudd.

“Many marginalized students feel tokenized by the school in that it

uses us to attract more students and build the image of the school, but does not commit to fully supporting us,” students wrote in a statement during the 2017 protests.

Diaz said that he felt the difference in his experience at Mudd as a first-generation, low income student of color. Specifically, Diaz said that having to work multiple jobs limited his free time immensely.

“I also don’t think having more ‘time’ would necessarily solve all my problems,” Diaz said. “There was this perpetual feeling of being behind your peers … My high school barely had an AP program.

I was never even exposed to a CS class until Mudd. So for some problem sets and concepts, it didn’t

matter whether I spent 3 hours vs 8 hours on them.”

During President Maria Klawe’s time at HMC, the school has seen a tangible shift in diversity, which the president has spotlighted as one of her priorities. The newly admitted class of 2026 is its most diverse to date, with over 60 percent of admits being students of color.

But Diaz said he never felt fully supported institutionally.

“I always felt like most of my struggles as a student were my own problems and a result of my own shortcomings. It wasn’t until my later years that I started to change that outlook and felt that Mudd has a responsibility as an institution to support all of its students equitably, especially when students like myself are disproportionately affected by its demanding curriculum,” he said.

“In any case, while there were lots of resources offered at Mudd, I never really felt like those resources fit me.”

Diaz added that the Wabash Report was deeply validating for him and his experiences at Mudd.

The school has seen a particularly noticeable shift in gender and racial diversity, which a 2019 study done by the college recognized as significant but still inadequate.

Paul Steinberg, a professor of political science and environmental policy at Harvey Mudd, echoed the sentiment, acknowledging that the college has come a long way but still has work to do.

For the full article, visit tsl.news.

So... what is tenure? TSl explains faculty hiring — part 1 What is tenure?

The American Association of University professors, which devised the modern concept of tenure in the 1940s, defines academic tenure as an indefinite appointment in an academic position that can only be terminated under extraordinary circumstances. professors that secure tenure gain near-lifetime job security at their institution. They could lose their job only for egregious instances such as faking data in research or a relationship with a student, according to Shelva paulse, pitzer’s assistant dean of faculty for academic affairs.

How do professors get it?

Receiving tenure can be an exhaustive process that usually takes at least six years once on track and involves several academic reviews along the way.

The tenure review process is slightly different at each of the 5Cs, with reviews at different times and different committee names. Assistant professors are generally evaluated after their first three years – after which, if all goes well, they get a contract renewal for four additional years. After their sixth year, they are evaluated again, which is when a faculty committee decides whether or not to grant tenure.

MARIANA DURAN & REIA LI

What if tenure isn’t in the cards?

Why do my evaluations matter?

Some professors are hired on a non-tenure track. They are often referred to as visiting, contingent, lecturers or adjunct faculty and usually have short-term contracts lasting 1-3 years.

As they undergo their academic reviews, a committee evaluates how well each tenure candidate meets the colleges’ criteria, which involves their performance in teaching, research and service.

professors are hired into non-tenure track positions for a variety of reasons. When a tenured or tenure-track professor takes a sabbatical, a visiting professor will sometimes teach their classes while they’re gone. Because of budget constraints, some departments have a limited number of tenure-track positions, and thus hire visiting faculty to teach the rest of their courses.

Student evaluations, which are required at the end of each semester, are “the primary source of information on teaching,” and are “absolutely critical.”

What’s the future of tenure?

Some faculty argue whether they serve as accurate reflections of a professor’s merit, especially when social biases around gender and race come into play.

Fewer and fewer faculty across the country are actually getting the coveted designation as time progresses. Data from the AAUp reveals that the proportion of tenured faculty nationwide has been falling since the 1970s. Currently, about one third of faculty at four-year institutions hold tenured or tenure track positions.

At pomona, more than 70 percent of faculty are either tenured or on the tenure track. pitzer is “actually expanding the tenure track faculty over the next couple of years,” paulse said.

For more answers to your tenure and hiring questions, visit tsl.news. If you’re a 5C faculty or staff member and want to help TSL add transparency to the hiring process, visit go.tsl.news/survey.

April 1, 2022

Arts & Culture

FrAME rATiNG

liTErArY WANDEriNGS

‘Don’t Look Up’ is a disaster of astronomical proportions GERRIT PUNT There was a lot happening in December 2021. Betty White died, the world was about to enter its third year with a global pandemic and a little movie called “Don’t Look Up” gripped the collective consciousness of the American people. Except for me, who only got around to watching it a cool three months late.

Proclaiming itself to be a scathing satire on the state of the world and starring literally every famous person alive, Adam McKay’s Oscar-nominated apocalyptic comedy had a lot going for it. It was bold. It was relevant. It was indisputably ambitious.

It was also really bad.

It was so bad that, for my second column in a row, I feel compelled to use the Oscars as an excuse to talk about a movie that came out ages ago. I may not be timely, but I certainly am predictable.

The premise of the movie is, admittedly, a fun one. Two astronomers (Jennifer Lawrence and Leonardo DiCaprio) discover that a massive comet will destroy the Earth in six months if it isn’t stopped in time, but despite the indisputable evidence of inevitable annihilation, America doesn’t really seem to care. The government is ineffective, the corporations are greedy and the populace is apathetic, making the fate of the planet scarily uncertain.

If you think this synopsis sounds eerily similar to some real life events, you’d be correct. The comet is, of course, an ampedup analogue to climate change.

Adam McKay isn’t exactly subtle.

The attempts in “Don’t Look Up” to highlight the lunacy of climate denial, anti-intellectualism and the politicization of science are noble, even if they are

ham-handed — but good intentions do not equal a good movie.

The film is a clunky, smug, frustrating mess. “Don’t Look Up” stumbles awkwardly and obnoxiously through the entirety of its two and a half hour runtime.

The pacing is atrocious. Plot points repeat themselves redundantly, seemingly major but ultimately unimportant characters are introduced far too late into the film (I’m looking at you, skater boy Timothée Chalamet) and scenes drag on far, far longer than they need to. The whole thing feels like a rough draft in desperate need of cleaning up.

Ariana Grande performs an entire, uninterrupted three and a half minute song in this movie.

It’s exactly as out of place as it sounds.

The editing is similarly painful. The already unwieldy scenes of “Don’t Look Up” are made even unwieldier through the film’s use of nauseatingly frenetic cuts, gimmicky camera tricks and copious amounts of B-roll.

I am honestly scared to think about what the stock footage budget for this movie must have been.

All of this would be at least a tiny bit forgivable if the movie was funny. Unfortunately, “Don’t Look Up” really only succeeds at being irritating.

In one especially eye-roll-inducing scene, DiCaprio announces the imminent catastrophe on live television, only to be instantly overshadowed by the latest celebrity breakup. It’s so lacking in self-awareness it hurts. How out of touch do you have to be to pay Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence $55 million to be in a film that blames climate change on cartoonishly vacuous millennials caring too much about celebri-

COUrTESY: NiKO TAVErNiSE/NETFliX

Jennifer lawrence and leonard DiCaprio star in “Don’t look Up” as two astronomers who discover a comet primed to destroy the Earth.

ties?

“Don’t Look Up” seems to desperately want to be seen as clever and enlightening, but more than anything, it ends up feeling remarkably shallow and self-indulgent. You know your comedy movie is bad when most of the Letterboxd reviews are funnier than the film itself.

The movie wants to make you frustrated with the state of the world, but it only really made me frustrated with McKay’s filmmaking. His message is so intensely overshadowed by the film’s sheer unlikeability that I can’t imagine it doing anything for the world other than perhaps providing climate deniers with fodder.

The most frustrating facet of this movie is the fact that it could have been good. The premise was neat. The cast was stellar. It’s a colossal shame that what could have been a witty and insightful look at climate denial was reduced to the 145 minute long film equivalent of an angry tweet.

The discussion around this movie has been, understandably, contentious. The harsh reviews this film has garnered have been met by even harsher counter-reviews.

McKay himself said on Twitter that “if you don’t have at least a small ember of anxiety about the climate collapsing (or the US teetering) I’m not sure Don’t Look Up makes any sense,” snarkily insinuating that those with genuine critiques for his film simply don’t understand or care about the weight of climate change.

As self-important and obviously untrue as that statement is, I suppose this should be said, for Mr. McKay’s sake: It is perfectly acceptable for one to align themselves with a movie’s moral position while acknowledging that that movie is, sadly, a catastrophic failure.

“Don’t Look Up” is a poorly executed film with a genuinely good message, but that doesn’t mean you have to like it. Widespread climate denial is a very real problem, and finding fault in this deeply flawed movie does not mean you disagree with that.

Adam, if you’re somehow reading this random college newspaper column, let me assure you, I’m just as bummed as you are that your movie isn’t any good.

Film columnist Gerrit Punt PO ’24 takes solace knowing that, in the event a comet does find itself hurtling towards Earth, it will, at the very least, destroy all traces of this awful movie.

The weirdest book I’ve ever read — it’s lit

GErriT pUNT • THE STUDENT liFE

RYAN LILLESTRAND Someone once asked me, “What is the weirdest book you have ever read?” My mind immediately jumped into action, culling through an assortment of odd books from over the years.

Possibly, “Ducks, Newburyport?” After all, it is an absolute doorstop of a novel that tells a story over 1000 pages in one nearly continuous, wild run-on sentence. It’s certainly in my top three.

Finally, though, I landed on Kevin Wilson’s “Nothing to See Here,” a sneakily normal-seeming novel with one noteworthy twist. The book is centered around a young woman named Lillian who is asked by a friend whom she hasn’t been in touch with since high school, Madison, to be a nanny for her two children. The two women were roommates in boarding school, but their lives have diverged: one to a drifting life with little discernible direction, the other to an outwardly perfect life of luxury.

Lillian agrees to visit the house, and the job seems straightforward at first — effectively just babysitting two siblings full-time.

Then, sitting in the living room, one last little detail is divulged: the children spontaneously catch fire.

Their inexplicable combustion causes no harm to themselves but understandably wreaks havoc on the surrounding area. And so, Wilson takes an initially unremarkable storyline and turns it on its head.

“Nothing to See Here” came to me at an interesting time. I was preparing myself — mentally, physically, emotionally — for a three-month dive into Tolstoy’s “War and Peace.” This little book about children randomly catching on fire seemed like an appropriately light-hearted primer.

It proved to be much, much more.

Despite the wacky premise, Wilson tells a story that manages to be both hilarious and

12th century Sufi poem ‘The Conference of the Birds’ reimagined with spirited performance at Scripps College RYA JETHA “The Conference of the Birds” defies the conventions of a traditional oratorio — the conductor sings, the soloists dance and the choir doubles as an orchestra. Based on a 12th century Sufi poem, the performance debuted at the Garrison Theater on March 27 and 28.

The performance is an adaptation of Sholeh Wolpé’s 2017 translation of Attar of Nishapur’s famous poem “Mantiq al-tayr,” or “The Conference of the Birds.”

Wolpé, an award-winning poet and translator of Iranian origin, collaborated with director and choreographer André Megerdichian and composer Fahad Siadat to adapt her book into a performance.

“Even though the book was published in 2017 ... I knew I was not yet done with this powerful text,” Wolpé wrote in the program notes. “It had changed my life in a profound way, and I wanted to bring it to as many people as possible.”

Wolpé is not the only person transformed by Attar’s work.

Rumi, often called “the most popular poet in the United States,” considered Attar a master of Sufi mystic poetry and a major influence on his work. According to legend, Attar held Rumi in his arms and predicted his greatness as Rumi’s family fled from Mongol invasions in the 12th century.

“The Conference of the Birds,” widely considered one of Attar’s greatest works, is an allegorical story about the soul’s search for purpose and purification. Using embedded narratives, a common feature of medieval Islamic writing, the poem describes the journey of birds seeking their king, Simurgh. They fly through the Seven Valleys, described through nearly 5,000 couplets of poetry.

The performance transformed the poem into seven movements.

Dressed simply in creams and beiges, the choir members and soloists came together on stage as birds on a spiritual mission. The only silent bird was professional

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Joslyn Sarshad sings as Hoopoe, the wisest of the birds and the lead vocal role, during the March 27 performance of “The Conference of the Birds.”

dancer Catalina Jackson-Urueña, who joined the singers in movement and had her own modern solo routines choreographed by Megerdichian. Siadat, the composer and conductor, chimed in as the narrator of the story.

“The form we’re trying to achieve is putting all these elements of theater on the same playing field — the movement, the music and the words — they all have equal weight,” Siadat said in a post-event panel. “All together, hopefully they create something bigger than the sum of its parts.”

Audience member Sophia Chanin PO ’23, who is working on an independent project about poetry and movement, found it “enchanting to see how dance, voice and poetry can not only coexist but interact.”

“As a student at the 5Cs, it is exciting that we have opportunities to see beautiful art and learn from it,” Chanin said.

Siadat and Megerdichian have long worked on projects exploring the intersection of artistic and spiritual practice.

They founded The Resonance Collective a decade ago in Los Angeles to approach the arts as a sacred and mystical experi-

ence. The Resonance Collective produced “The Conference of the Birds” as part of its mission to create interdisciplinary, theatrical narratives based on spiritual transformation.

Other local LA groups collaborated with The Resonance Collective on “The Conference of the Birds,” including HEX Ensemble and The Contemporary Choral Collective of Los Angeles . Associate Professor of Music at Scripps College Anne Harley, a longtime partner in the project, was slated to play Hoopoe, the wisest of the birds and the lead vocal role. Due to a family emergency during rehearsals, her understudy Joslyn Sarshad performed the role on Sunday.

“I’m very, very happy with how it turned out, and I’m very happy that each of the artists [Wolpé, Siadat and Megerdichian] are able to spend time with students,” Harley said in an interview.

This semester, Wolpé, Siadat and Megerdichian are O’Brien Distinguished Visiting Professors at Scripps College, a position given to scholars whose expertise in liberal and fine arts fields can complement the Scripps curriculum.

“They’re all really good communicators, which makes them really good teachers,” Harley said. “It’s not always that you have a good artist who is also a good communicator. But we are very fortunate.”

Siadat and Megerdichian worked with students in Scripps professor Kevin Williamson’s Advanced Contemporary Dance Techniques class to create a pre-show event. In the Garrison Theater courtyard, the students’ performance explored the themes of flight, flocking, disruption and journey. Over three rehearsals, Siadat and Megerdichian collaborated with the students to develop movements and vocals tailored to the performance site at Garrison.

“It seemed a natural progression to invite audiences to witness a pre-show happening with a large cast, serving as another metaphor for the journey of the birds,” Williamson said via email. “It was a rich and rewarding experience for students to co-develop new ideas with the creators.”

In early March, Shaila Andrabi, coordinator of Muslim life at the 5Cs, hosted Wolpé for an evening of poetry at her house. Hailing from Singapore, Pakistan, India and the US, students gathered to listen to Wolpé’s poetry and discuss Sufi literature.

“It was an interfaith, intercollegiate, international and domestic gathering of all colors,” Andrabi said.

Wolpé is excited to be sharing “The Conference of the Birds” with so many groups.

“In the epilogue of the book, Attar, the poet, says that one day this work, like perfume, is going to be scattered around the world, and here we are!” Wolpé told the audience at Garrison.

“The Conference of the Birds” will move to the Broad Stage in Santa Monica for performances on June 18 and 19.

thought-provoking. The book was laugh-out-loud funny and deeply emotional, traversing the line between the two with a masterfully light touch.

One moment Lillian is testing various fire-retardant methods in case of a sudden outburst, and the next, she must essentially be a single parent to the two children.

Lillian, who has taken care of no one but herself for her whole life until this point, is now entrusted with the care of two young children. The kids have been repeatedly moved around and swept under the rug to preserve their father’s career from the scandalous discovery of his fiery children.

It is ultimately a story about the complexity of family life and the ups and downs of parenthood wrapped carefully in a charmingly absurd bundle.

A lot of books are far more realistic. Both fiction or nonfiction, they exhibit landscapes, people and events that are real (or, at least, perfectly feasible). They tell us about the world and how it really is. They give us a certain kind of knowledge.

Every once in a while, we need a truly outlandish book to remind us that, at least on the page, anything is possible. Dragons hoard gold in mountain caves, boys get lost at sea with tigers and, in a certain house in Tennessee, children catch on fire.

Books like these take us on wild adventures and teach us a different kinds of knowledge — not about how the world is but about how we are. They don’t trade in concrete facts but rather in beliefs, emotions and relationships. They mine stories from the social fabric of our lives, from some patch of the human experience.

“Nothing to See Here” is one such book. Even though it took only two days to read (it is quite short), I was left in silence in my chair, the book closed in my hands, thinking about life and being in the world and what truly matters.

Ryan Lillestrand PZ ’23 is a book columnist for TSL. He is endlessly thankful for the Book Room and $1 books.

KABUKI: Play enthralls actors Continued from page 1 The principal draw of this kind of theater is its cultural richness that compliments its aesthetics, according to Youssef El Mosalami PO ’24, the narrator of the show.

“It’s an incredible show. [It] has so much historical nuance,” El Mosalami said. “There’s honestly so much beauty in each of the costume pieces that we’ve had. There’s so much beauty in each of the lines and translations. This beauty is the history.”

The cast echoes this excitement.

Patrick Lewis PO ’23, who plays a villain, is excited to participate in a world theater.

“This performance is a hyper-stylised art form with a rich cultural history that’s been developed over hundreds of years, and you should come and immerse yourself and enrich yourself in this world of theater,” Lewis said.

This two-day hybrid international conference features panels and discussions with 18 renowned Japanese artists and scholars and a lecture demonstration on the onnagata by members of the Japanese Dance Troupe Kansuma-kai.

“We haven’t had an international theater conference like this in 20 years,” Diaz said.

Actor Erin Davidson SC ’25 noted the play is unique from all the other productions in which she has participated.

“It’s been like a long time in the making because we auditioned back in late November! It’s great to see everything come together.” Davidson said. “This experience has been larger than life. It’s unlike any theater experience that you’ve ever had before.”

This might be the last Kabuki show in Claremont, as Diaz was one of the last prodigies of Pronko.

Diaz will continue his study of this theatrical art as a passion project, which has been made possible as he has received the Watson fellowship. With this tribute to Pronko’s work, the entire cast celebrates the remembrance of the past as a marker of knowledge.

“The whole mission is to bring attention to a theatrical legacy, which has been a part of Claremont history for so long,” Diaz said.

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Arts & Culture Sontag Shakespeare Festival presents an ode to Shakespeare fests of yore

April 1, 2022

MENA BOVA The 16th century world may feel leagues away from modern life, but Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” shows that the two may not be as different as they seem — crushes, love, drinking and pranks are features of both college life and the play.

Building on this idea, the Sontag Greek Theatre Shakespeare Festival was an afternoon full of sun, fun and the Bard, developed around a student production of “Twelfth Night.”

The event took place Saturday at Pomona College’s Greek Theatre and featured two parts: lively festivities at 3 p.m., then, “Twelfth Night” at 4 p.m.

The festival was the joint senior thesis of Roei Cohen PO ’22 and Owen Halstad PO ’22, who are both theater majors. Friends and collaborators since their first year, the two first explored doing more traditional senior theses — such as acting in a Pomona theater department show — but found themselves wanting to do more. “[We thought that] putting up our own festival … would be a much more meaningful culmination of the work that we’ve both done on these campuses for the past four years now,” Cohen said. “[It’s] just a much more interesting challenge in terms [of] we get to build community, … we get to invest in the growth of people other than ourselves.”

As a result, the two decided on doing a production of “Twelfth Night” with an accompanying festival before the show.

“The festival, we thought, [would be] a really great opportunity to reframe people’s relationship with Shakespeare [and make] it more closely in line with how it was originally consumed,” Halstad said.

Students performed “Twelfth Night” at the Sontag Greek Theater Shakespeare Festival on March 26.

“People would go and get drunk, and tickets cost the equivalent of five pounds now.”

In this spirit, the festival had many activities for students to partake in — from face painting to food and drink to a dunk tank with Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr. The festival also included character summaries of the show to help familiarize students with the play before watching it.

“I had attended maybe one or two [Shakespeare productions] in the past, so it was a fun new experience for me,” festival attendee Serena David SC ’24 said. “This was probably more enjoyable because it was a student production, and there were a lot of other students watching … so it was really fun to go and support them.”

Those involved with the play believe the cheerful spirit of the festival reflected the community spirit infused in the production from the beginning.

“It was communal and friendly, which kind of reflects the process in that it was just about bringing everyone in and integrating everyone into every step of the process,”

Party With A Purpose’s carnival to support Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles INDIA CLAUDY It’s common knowledge: Don’t spend more on carnival game tickets than that prized teddy bear would cost. On Friday, though, students should ignore this advice.

From 2 p.m. to 6 p.m., 5C Party With A Purpose (PWAP) will hold their second annual fundraiser for the Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles (CHLA). The carnival, held on Pomona College’s Walker Beach, will be complete with food, games, music, prizes and even a mechanical bull.

PWAP is a 5C club that partners with the Children’s Miracle Network to raise funds for local children’s hospitals and raise awareness about disparities in children’s healthcare.

Throughout the year, PWAP has held many different events on 5C campuses to raise money for the cause, from poker nights to bake sales at sporting events. Members of the organization also conduct more individual fundraisers, such as hosting surf lessons or running 5-kilometer races in the name of helping the children at the CHLA. Recognizing a lack of philanthropy-focused clubs at the 5Cs, PWAP hopes to encourage other clubs to support a cause while bolstering their own.

“In Claremont, philanthropy isn’t the biggest focus for clubs in general,” PWAP Executive Director Sathya Siddapureddy PO ’24 said. “So we’re hoping to build that [awareness], not just for CHLA, but just in general for any other clubs that are trying to do work like [we do].”

Friday’s carnival will be PWAP’s largest event yet this year, serving as a commemoration of the club’s successful fundraising to date.

“We’re celebrating the year of fundraising, and we’re also making it a fundraising event itself,” Siddapureddy said.

The money raised at the event will go towards surgeries and hospital stays for families who may not be able to afford it otherwise. CHLA is a “safety net” hospital, meaning that it does not turn down patients based on financial or immigration status. To help connect the event to the cause, while the festivities go on, junior ambassadors from CHLA will speak about their experiences receiving treatment at the hospital and benefitting from the Miracle Network in the past.

“I’m really excited to see our junior ambassadors speak, having

been working with them, in real life and not over Zoom,” Kaitlyn O’Connor PZ ’25, PWAP’s hospital liaison, said.

O’Connor and David Gorman PO ’24, PWAP’s external director, will also speak during the event to further inform attendees of the cause and encourage donations.

In addition to carnival-based attractions, the event’s lineup features a variety of student performers, including the Dance Team, musical groups the After School Specials and Josie on the Rocks and a handful of individual performers as well.

Game booths at the event will accept both cash and Venmo payment to make the donation process easy and accessible for those willing to try their hand at the carnival activities. Other attractions include food stands — some free and some available by donation — and there will be no entry fee for the event.

PWAP has already raised just under $10,000 this year through its variety of events and programming; they hope to hit the $15,000 mark after Friday with the draw of a large carnival complete with all kinds of amusements.

“I think [making the fundraisers fun] is the goal, just get that positive attitude around our club,” Gorman said. “Because after the pandemic, it was a restart.

And so we’re just trying to build a brand on campus, and this is the first stepping stone to try and grow for the near future.”

Following PWAP’s success in raising money this year, the organization hopes to also focus more on raising awareness of the CHLA and their work in the future. They look to the carnival as a step in the right direction.

“We can do a better job of integrating that awareness building,” Siddapureddy said. “And I think the great thing about this main event is we’ll have junior ambassadors … willing and happy to share [their experiences] with everybody. It will be a great opportunity to help build that cause-connection aspect.”

The carnival allows attendees to have a good time while doing good.

“It should be really fun, and you [would be] helping out patients and families at the Children’s Hospital,” Siddapureddy said, “so it’s a win-win situation.”

COUrTESY: DEBSTEr88/WiKiMEDiA COMMONS

Sebastian Barnhill PZ ’25, who played Count Orsino, said. “Creating that kind of community event feel before having everyone sit down silently as an audience made it so that it kind of felt like we all knew each other, and then that drove audience reactions, because it was a very reactive audience.”

From the onset of the production process, Cohen and Halstad worked to make the play as collaborative as possible by consistently consulting every member of the 11 person cast. For Barnhill, this principle was evident from the first day of the casting process and helped shape his positive experience with the show. “[Cohen and Halstad] asked us, ‘what are the types of roles that you do not want to play?’” he said. “[It] was great, especially for those of us like me, who tend to get typecast, so I could explore new things.”

In addition to focusing on the execution of the show itself, the rehearsal process for the show also included cast bonding moments, such as a “She’s the Man” movie night and a group trip over spring

break.

“It’s just very remarkable how well Roei and Owen were able to bring us together and bring this very different group of people into a space and get us feeling comfortable together,” Barnhill said. “And then not just feeling comfortable, but loving each other.”

As the date of the festival drew nearer, the cast did everything in their efforts to promote the festival, from making business cards to knocking door-to-door at people’s dorms encouraging them to see the show.

“Perhaps the culmination of surprise [is] when you’re knocking door to door at Mudd, and a Mudder opens the door and [is] just like, ‘Are you the Shakespeare people? We know, we’re coming,’” Halstad said. “That’s when we were like ‘Okay, so clearly we have done something sort of out of the ordinary.’”

The cast’s marketing techniques worked: the day of the festival was sunny and bright and saw hundreds of attendees, including not just 5C students but also members of the local Claremont community

HUXlEYANN HUEFNEr • THE STUDENT liFE

and even some family and friends who had flown in. Cohen and Halstad view the overwhelming response to the show as a manifestation of the cast’s care and effort.

“Everyone in the ensemble, by the end of the process, was ready to give their souls to make this work,” Halstad said. “I think that the response we got … is a response affirming that all the actors that were going door-to-door cared so much about [the play] and were able to communicate that so earnestly.”

Ultimately, those involved with the production feel that it represented some of the most unique and special features of performing in a college environment.

“We both very much feel like this is a thing that you only really get to do in college,’” Cohen said. “It just feels really special and such a wonderful culmination of the growth of all those people [from] over the course of the four years that we’ve spent here.”

Editor’s note: TSL managing editor Caelan Reeves CM ’24, a member of the “Twelfth Night” cast, was not involved in editing this article and did not review it before publication.

SElECTED AMBiENT WOrKS

Celebrating queer musicians and love songs

lUCiA MArQUEZ-UppMAN • THE STUDENT liFE

NICHOLAS BLACK Music truly is the universal language of mankind — at least according to a study conducted

by Harvard. Cliché as it may be, many of us have felt the power of music and its ability to help us relate to one another, whether that be in feelings of love, loss, joy or despair. Music can capture unique human experiences and package them up nicely in the beauty of a song.

Thus, there is a significant need for queer representation in the music industry. Beyond just checking off a diversity box, these artists are capable of creating art that will speak to those who hold marginalized identities on a deeper level.

Being able to identify with the artists that we listen to fosters a more authentic and heartfelt connection with them and their art.

Of course, no slew of artists can entirely capture the queer experience.

Nevertheless, I believe it is immensely important to make sure that we pay homage to artists who enrich our lives with music that we can identify with. With that, I would like to reflect upon five queer artists who have enriched my life, as well as my favorite love song that they have ever written.

Starting off, we have Car Seat Headrest, a queer artist who unapologetically explores themes of discovering one’s sexuality and engaging in new romantic and sexual experiences. The band’s founder and principal songwriter, Will Toledo, is openly gay, often interacting with fans in unconventional formats, such as Tumblr, and outlining the reallife experiences behind his lyrics in an effort to foster even more connectivity.

In the intoxicating, meandering and exciting thirteen-minute track “Beach Life-in-Death,” Toledo explores themes ranging from fears of coming out to love that is so intense it cannot be buried, even if the feelings aren’t

reciprocated. Beyond the pure joy induced while traversing this song as a listener, the vulnerability expressed by Toledo is truly comforting, especially for those of us who have experienced many of these feelings ourselves.

Staying in the alternative genre, one that has been historically friendly to queer artists, Angel Olsen is a singer and songwriter that has become known for walking the line between bare soundscapes and highly grandiose, orchestral arrangements. Angel’s style draws a slight contrast to that of Toledo; her experiences are obscured in complex lyricism and beautiful melodies.

On “Lark,” Angel Olsen utilizes “different angles [to view] the same kind of love” in a cinematic and cathartic way, reflecting on her differences with the person she loves and, ultimately, their incapability. Sonically, the track consumes listeners, making it that much more satisfying when you come to notice the lyrics as well, which paint an immersive and riveting story.

Arlo Parks is a breakout artist in the alternative scene, scoring nominations for both “Best New Artist” and “Best Alternative Music Album” from the Recording Academy and opening for another one of my favorite queer artists, Clairo, throughout her “Sling” tour. Pitchfork characterizes her art as constantly inducing feelings of comfort, delivering rich stories and fostering true immersion through elements such as the mention of people by name.

Arlo Parks describes her relationship with a close friend on “Eugene,” a track that drips of love and jealousy, as she reckons with romantic feelings for a woman with another partner named Eugene. Somber as it may be, Parks paints such a gorgeous image of her connection with this individual that listeners cannot help but be endeared.

Looking to Orville Peck, we find a queer artist in a space that has historically been hostile to those who hold marginalized identities.

Country music is often associated with conservative values and

thus, queer representation in this genre is abysmal. Yet, Orville Peck has broken into this space, openly singing about his same-sex relationships, and doing so through songs that return to the genre’s roots, with rich country twangs and restrained production.

“Nothing Fades Like The Light,” a gorgeous slow-burning outro to his debut album, reveals feelings of finding comfort in one’s partner, especially at night, when they no longer have to fear the reactions of those who surround them. In an ideal world, such feelings would not be necessary, but that doesn’t stop Peck from capturing his authentic anxieties and desires in this track.

Lastly, we have the artist who is perhaps one of the most influential queer artists of our time, and one of my personal favorites: Frank Ocean.

Beyond just exploring typical themes of love and loss in his songs, Frank Ocean often taps into feelings of unrequited love, one that is especially common throughout the queer experience, and a major theme of his highly-acclaimed debut album, “Channel Orange.”

On wistful, endearing tracks like “Forrest Gump,” he explores the first man whom he fell in love with. The song includes obvious references to the 1994 film “Forrest Gump,” a movie that documents both the sweet and sour moments between Forrest and his lover. This dynamic parallels Ocean’s confused feelings toward this individual, though in the end, it can be read no other way than as a proclamation of love.

These artists have helped me reckon with my own experiences in romance and sex, as I’m able to relate to others in periods of happiness, love, sorrow and healing in a medium that can be as fulfilling and beautiful as music. I hope that others will be able to gain new artists who truly speak to them through these artist profiles, as I know how grateful I am for having discovered them.

Nicholas Black PO ’24 is from Rochester, New York. Follow him on Spotify @nickb1ack, where he has published a playlist of 25 queer love songs, including those mentioned in the piece.

OpiniOns

April 1, 2022

Nostalgia can be good for you, if done right

What national media coverage gets wrong about “cancel culture” on campus GWEN TUCKER

lUCiA MArQUEZ-UppMAN • THE STUDENT liFE

ALEXANDER CHAO Ever since coming to college in the US during the pandemic, I’ve been longing for the past more frequently. I pine for the days where I biked with my friends along the riverside park in the sweltering, humid air of Taiwan summers.

Even the quarantine memories of lounging on the couch watching anime with my dogs became precious to me. We all know this bittersweet feeling of nostalgia too well, especially during recent turbulent times.

But some might wonder if it is a mistake to get stuck in the past.

How much reminiscing is too much, and is the reason we reminisce about the past to escape from the present?

Luckily, the answer to the last question is no. Research shows that memories associated with negative emotions fade more quickly than those associated with positive emotions. It’s known as fading affect bias, which makes nostalgia an effective coping mechanism for rough stages in life.

Thinking back on past moments in your life can help you develop a third-person perspective, and step back from the details of your present to consider how this period might fit into the larger trajectory of your life. A 2015 study found that this creation of distance, what is known as “temporal distancing,” enhances our ability to cope with negative events by helping us realize their impermanence within the bigger picture and increase optimism, inspiration and feelings of purpose in life. Temporal distancing has also been shown to counteract loneliness and boredom, reduce anxiety and depression, support self-reflection and improve decision-making and emotion regulation, among other benefits.

Nostalgia can, to some extent, even help people that deal with trauma: Florence Saint-Jean, a trauma specialist and the executive director of Global Trauma Research, has been using nostalgia as one of her techniques with her clients to cope with difficult times, encouraging them to practice exercises to create and go to their list of mental “safe places” filled with joyful past

memories like a fun vacation or happy childhood moments that made us feel loved.

In fact, “an entire field of research in nostalgia studies is being developed” to research the benefits that nostalgia brings.

Psychology professor Tim Wildeschut insightfully suggests that we should begin thinking about how happy “memories are a psychological immune response that is triggered when you experience little bumps in the road.”

You may be thinking that you get the idea now: romanticizing the past can be healthy, but how much nostalgia is too much? Deciding to sit in your room all day remembering happy memories of home when feeling homesick does not seem like a good solution. Also, what if your mind tends to, for example, remember and cherish rare happy moments in past abusive relationships?

Valentina Stoycheva, a clinical psychologist, recognizes this and points to the importance of self-awareness when navigating the ways in which nostalgia manifests and is used as a coping mechanism. To her, nostalgia is just like many other tools: it is inherently neither good nor bad and just depends on how it is used. “If it’s keeping us anchored in the past and avoiding the future, that’s a problem,” she told The New York Times “because avoidance is actually one of the main things that maintains a trauma reaction.” Even if trauma is not involved, “you can’t have a better tomorrow if you are thinking about yesterday all the time,” as the great inventor Charles Kettering once said.

So the next time you are thinking of happy past memories, remember to ask yourself: Why am I doing this? Why am I craving or longing for this thing in particular, and what do I hope to get out of it?

Alexander Chao PO ’25 is from Taipei, Taiwan. He enjoys reading about nutrition, watching anime and road cycling.

College campuses are perpetually on the front lines of popular media debate about the presence of so-called “cancel culture”. On March 7, Emma Camp, a senior at the University of Virginia, published a guest editorial in The New York Times claiming that she and her peers have experienced “self-censorship,” often abstaining from sharing their true political opinions out of fear of backlash.

And recently, Yale Law School students have been under fire — particularly from The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal — for their choice to protest a controversial speaker at a “free speech” event. This media coverage is especially disappointing, as it represents a fundamental misunderstanding about the purpose of higher education: to be challenged, and to learn to stand up for what you believe in.

The debate around cancel culture is so complicated because the term means such different things to different people.

The term has come to be used primarily by conservative media outlets and personalities, who paint it as the actions of a social media-based mob of “woke liberal snowflakes.” Anyone who is called out for their actions — put “at risk” of taking accountability or facing consequences — is seen as being “canceled” or deplatformed. This is despite the fact that many individuals who have allegedly been “canceled”– such as J.K. Rowling, Louis C.K., and others — retain a significant public platform.

This framing of cancel culture is especially problematic because it discounts the experiences of many individuals and activists, usually people with left-wing politics, who have genuinely faced material consequences for their views.

On college campuses more specifically, cancel culture has come to be portrayed in the media as two things: pervasive self-censorship, and attacks on free speech. The first side is represented by Camp’s op-ed.

She draws on statistics from a 2021 survey by College Pulse that reported that 48 percent of college students felt uncomfortable expressing their views in class, and claims this is because of the intense public shaming students constantly face for addressing views outside of the political norms. But she isn’t able to provide much evidence for how serious these consequences really are.

Camp describes expressing an unpopular opinion in a feminist theory class, which resulted in “the room [feeling] tense”. She also quotes a politi-

Dear 5Cs — please reconsider moshing ANNA TOLKIEN After a long week of midterms and never-ending papers, it’s understandable that students want to blow off steam and party. But partying shouldn’t mean getting thrown to the ground, feeling claustrophobic and unable to breathe and getting hurled from one person to another. Unfortunately, this has been my experience in mosh pits.

Before I go on, I can imagine what some of you are thinking. Don’t be a buzzkill, mosh pits are fun and wild and I’m just being paranoid. Okay, I hear you. I know that many find mosh pits to be a wild, kinetic experience filled with dancing in disorderly freedom. But you can’t argue they are safe. I also would say that many of you defending mosh pits aren’t 5’1” like me and don’t know the fear of being trapped in the center of a crowd, unable to speak and shoved into someone else’s body being thrown from one person to another.

Moshing is a mixed bag. While some may find a feeling of amazement in dancing in the crowd, others report a feeling of overwhelming terror. One of their biggest concerns is the risk of being separated from their friend groups. In the normal party context, if you are separated, you can use your phone to contact your friends, scan the crowd and leave if you don’t feel safe. In mosh pits, you can barely move your arms, let alone get your phone to call your friends and look for a safe space to leave. This is an unnerving and unacceptable situation to have at 5C parties.

In general, there are inherent problems that come with moshing. Since the crowd turns in on itself, you become shoved right up next to strangers. For many, this removes personal space, and then in turn removes bodily autonomy — creating an avenue for unwanted touching or grabbing. Also, if you’re short, you’re unable to get out of the crowd or advocate for yourself, which is an unnerving feeling. I remember being thrown into one person and then shoved into another,

JADYN lEE • THE STUDENT liFE

desperately trying not to fall on the ground or grab onto someone’s jacket so at least I’d stop being hurled around like a football.

The disregard for consent is another problematic aspect of the mosh pit culture. As people are put right up next to each other, it creates a hyper-charged environment for unwanted touching and grabbing and undermines a sense of accountability among those trapped in this party-moshing vortex.

Claremont McKenna College has previously taken a stance against crowding and moshing, for instance using a megaphone at the Monte Carlo party to break up the crowd around the champagne line or shutting the music off when parties became engulfed in the mosh pits. But these measures do not address underlying issues behind moshing.

When the college works to keep students in tight boundaries in the name of COVID-19 safety — to check IDs and maintain the on-campus germ bubble — it often ends up creating a pressure cooker for moshing and chaos.

Not only do people tend to successfully sneak in their friends despite the presence of fences, but shoving people up close often overcrowds parties and increases the risk of COVID-19 transmission. The increased health and

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safety risk from moshing seems more concerning than the idea of an off-campus guest sneaking in in the absence of barriers.

There has to be a way for us to find a balance between hosting fun parties and keeping them safe. I’m not trying to be a party pooper, or say that moshing can never happen at the Claremont Colleges. Rather, I’m advocating for a way to host parties that addresses this moshing problem rather than employing gates and barriers merely to increase safety risk. There has already been a reported incident of a student passing out from the moshing, and I myself have felt unsafe many times. If someone is leaving parties terrified, even with bruises all over their body from being thrown in the mosh pit, that doesn’t seem synonymous with a “fun college experience.”

If you and your friends go into a mosh pit at a party, make sure to hold your friends’ hands, check on everyone’s safety and stay in the group to prevent accidental separation. Keep yourself and others accountable so that parties remain a fun environment, not an unsafe one.

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

cally conservative student at University of Virginia, who describes feeling anxiety around sharing his views. In claiming that tense classrooms and anxiety-ridden conversations are inherently negative things, Camp completely mischaracterizes the nature of the issue.

First, she devalues the legitimate consequences students have faced for expressing unpopular views. For some, their opinions don’t just result in them feeling uncomfortable in class, but in being subjected to physical violence and doxxing.

Second, she sees discomfort around sharing beliefs as an inherently negative thing. As former student activist Zeeshan Aleem argued in MSNBC, “I learned that meaningful dissent necessarily entails confrontation and discomfort — but that there is dignity and strength to be found in stealing oneself in the face of overwhelming disagreement”. For many, college is a time to be meaningfully challenged in your beliefs, which results in growth, learning from others, and overall greater conviction towards fighting for what you believe in. While Camp claims that she wants “more classrooms full of energetic debate”, her immediate dismissal of anything that causes discomfort is inherently in opposition to any thoughtful discourse.

The second recent piece in the college campus cancel culture debate concerns alleged attacks on free speech. Just a few days after the publication of Camp’s op-ed, popular media covered a student protest at Yale University’s law school. On March 10, the Yale Federalist Society hosted an event on free speech and civil liberties, featuring a discussion between panelists from both progressive and conservative organizations.

The conservative panelist was

Kristen Waggoner, a lawyer with Alliance Defending Freedom who has argued in front of the Supreme Court against LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive freedom.

Naturally, students showed up to protest Waggoner, someone who has attempted to, and succeeded in, taking away rights from many marginalized Americans. To me, this seems exactly what the First Amendment protects: the right to free speech and assembly. But coverage in the Wall Street Journal disagrees. A March 20 op-ed referred to the group of students as a “political mob”, and advocated for depriving them of future clerkships with the Supreme Court and Courts of Appeals. This is the real cancel culture. Claiming that students who stand up for what they believe in — human rights — should be rejected from future jobs is a real, material consequence (while Waggoner faced nothing of the sort). Again, this represents a fundamental misunderstanding of free speech in higher education: college is a time for students to learn to stand up for their beliefs, not to be silent to make others feel more comfortable about their own bigotry.

Students on college campuses around the country, including the 5Cs, have a responsibility to dispel these false and harmful narratives about cancel culture. We must continue to engage in open discussion, challenging others and being challenged, accepting discomfort as an expected and even important outcome. We must stand up for what we believe in through protests and direct action, ignoring the rightwing commentators who claim to be victims of “cancel culture” even as they engage in it themselves.

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

liAM BrOOKS • THE STUDENT liFE

Will Buckstaff CM ’20 takes a selfie with the crowd protesting conservative political commentator Heather Mac Donald’s talk at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum at Claremont McKenna College April 6, 2017.

EDiTOriAl BOArD

Oops! Still 2013 The CDC warned about a new coronavirus. We streamed the latest Taylor Swift and Ariana Grande. Will Smith infuriated pop culture critics.

Those are three things that happened in 2013. Here’s one more: almost nine years ago this month, “78 percent of Pomona’s student body voted in favor of an ASPC Senate resolution in support of divesting its endowment funds from fossil fuel conglomerates,” TSL reported.

You’ll understand if we’re confused what year it is. This week, 88 percent of Pomona College’s student body voted for a similar resolution, along with an additional 96 percent in favor of asking the school’s trustees simply to disclose the amount of the endowment invested in fossil fuels.

So flash back to nine years ago, when this newspaper’s editorial board at the time warned that “the vote poses little impetus for the school to enact change and gives little to no actual pressure to force a Board of Trustees vote in favor of divestment.”

What happened next?

About five months after that vote, Pomona’s trustees decided not to divest, based on a warning from its financial consultants that withdrawing from comingled or separately managed funds could result in millions of dollars’ worth of decreased investment performance.

Seven months after that, Pitzer College’s trustees unanimously came to the opposite conclusion, pulling “more than 99 percent” of its then$125 million endowment out of fossil fuel funds.

Ten months went by. The Divest Pomona organization presented yet again to Pomona’s trustees. We could go on. But here are some other things that have happened since April 2013: Increasingly uncontrollable wildfires across our state killed dozens of people, incinerating towns and forests. Four of the most destructive hurricanes in history devastated the Atlantic coast. Just a month ago, the latest United Nations IPCC report warned that our failure to all but end fossil fuel production and consumption in the coming decades will lead to catastrophic effects on hunger, water scarcity, extreme weather and extinction.

The Claremont Colleges’ central missions, to create the next generation of scholars and leaders, are incompatible with a future in which those young adults do not inherit a world they can study and lead. No amount of financial gain can offset the economic, ecological and moral loss that will occur if we fail to act.

We knew that nine years ago. Thanks to the inaction of the officials and trustees that have continued to serve even as generations of students have come and gone, we’re nine years behind now.

Harvard has managed to set aside its financial concerns. So have the University of California and the California State University system. The higher education sector’s momentum will make a bigger and bigger difference as it grows, and at this point, it is embarrassing for these institutions not to have the courage to join their peers.

The new student demand in this year’s referendum, to seek disclosure in addition to divestment, is a helpful step. It shows that transparent dialog is needed on this issue — specifically, that the actual people who govern Pomona, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College need to answer for the decisions they have made by authorizing investments year after year.

But we are asking the same question we asked in 2013: What, tangibly, will this round of student activists do to see the change manifest?

Impending disaster apparently isn’t enough for our trustees. Something else will have to work.

TSL’s editorial board is comprised of its editor-in-chief and two managing editors, and does not necessarily represent the views of other TSL staff members.

OpiniOns Isolated students are being shut out of the 5C learning community

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ANNIKA WHITE Pitzer College has never seen a school year like this before. Since reuniting on campus last fall, students, faculty and staff alike have practiced patience with one another as we cope with the growing pains of adjusting to on-campus life amid COVID-19.

Upon receiving a positive test, students are notified and accompanied to the Claremont Collegiate Apartments to isolate in accordance with LA County’s official quarantine guidelines. But while isolation is an important element of the 5Cs’ plan to keep us safe, Pitzer is losing sight of what it is keeping us safe for.

By popular demand, it is important for students to physically stay at school in order to receive the best educational experience possible. The secondary option is class via Zoom under demanding circumstances, like quarantine.

However, a number of Pitzer students have been unable to access class via Zoom during their isolations.

Pitzer, along with the rest of the 5Cs, has a “Quarantine & Isolation Plan for Students” on their school page. Under the page titled “While in Isolation Housing,” the meal delivery system is explained, mental health resources are provided, and isolation guidelines are laid out, but there is no mention of Pitzer’s expectations around class attendance or classwork.

Pitzer students, among them Tyler Beck PZ ’25, Becca Hockman PZ ’25 and Ruth Zolla PZ ’25, have been forced to advocate for access to their education. After beginning their quarantines, Beck, Hockman and Zolla began reaching out to their professors for accommodations.

Beck, who was quarantined in

February, said in an interview that he was granted access to two out of his four classes during his eleven days of quarantine. Consistent with testimonies from other students, Beck was met with varying levels of support from his professors, ranging from a professor who Zoomed him into class and provided the video recording, to a professor who did not provide any access to class material yet tested Beck on class lectures when he returned to in-person class.

Beck said he “fell really far behind” because he “didn’t feel super supported.” He said he was fifteen readings behind in just one class that he didn’t have access to over his quarantine, while he feels “up to date” in the classes in which he was able to attend on Zoom.

Hockman, who was also quarantined at the beginning of February, described the support she felt from her teachers as sympathetic to her health but not her learning. Hockman wasn’t granted access to any of her four classes at Pitzer, Pomona College or Scripps College; she did not attend school for two weeks. In response to her request for Zoom links, Hockman was faced with silence. In her words, “there were no alternatives for missing class.”

Nearly a month later, Hockman says that she has “just caught up” in her classes while accepting that she “will never fully be caught up in the course reading and the material that [she] missed.” “The anxiety of getting back into the swing of things is just not easing for me,” she added.

Zolla was quarantined twice, once in October 2021 and once this past February. She found her quarantine experiences very different. The first time around Zol-

la had no access to any of her classes, although she was “expected to do everything [she] had to do.” This more recent time, Zolla was granted access to all five of her classes at Pitzer, Scripps and Claremont McKenna College.

Student experiences must be presented to the school so that they can address the issue. Beck felt “left behind,” Hockman was frustrated with the “little to no communication” and Zolla described her professors as possessing a “lack of compassion” and “unwillingness to be flexible.” At the end of the day, students are being asked to take on the school’s job of holding 5C professors accountable.

There is a clear lack of coherence across the 5Cs regarding access to online class for quarantining students. The 5Cs need to come together and create a standard for students to expect and rely on during these unsettling times.

Pitzer could start by amending its quarantine and isolation plans to create a clear vision of what is expected of students and teachers. Furthermore, Pitzer should invest the necessary time and money into setting up the proper technology to accommodate quarantined students, particularly for those whose classes are held in outdoor classrooms where joining through Zoom might be more difficult.

This responsibility has been falling on vulnerable students for too long. It is time for Pitzer and the 5Cs to support our quarantined peers.

Annika White PZ ’25 is from Southport, Connecticut. She enjoys hiking, journaling, and making playlists on Spotify.

SEOHYEON lEE • THE STUDENT liFE

April 1, 2022

Jasper’s Crossword: stupendous puzzle

JASpEr DAViDOFF • THE STUDENT liFE

ACROSS 1. Golden Arches drink menu 7. “Oh, also,” over text 10. Brittney Griner’s league 14. Bechdel known for Fun Home 15. Comedian Margaret 16. Boot’s bottom 17. Getting dressed, for graduation 18. *The 30th president 20. *Snoop Dogg, legally 22. App’s customer 23. “Haha!”

24. Hawaiian wreath 26. *DJ known for “We Found Love” 30. Bus driver’s request 34. Poem of praise 35. French friend 36. Artist Yoko 38. Prepared to 39. Pair with a red wagon ... or the names attached to this puzzle’s starred clues 44. “I’m paying.”

45. Basket-making class?

46. Catch 47. Pseudonym preceder 48. Throws a wrench into 53. *Author of “Leviathan” 57. “No darn way!”

58. Game that requires you to speak its name before you win 59. “I Knew I Smelled ____!”

(Certain TikTok musical number) 61. *Role for Cynthia in Sex and the City 64. The Iron Lady 68. Cleans with a sponge 69. “Me too.”

70. Lyricist Gershwin 71. Show that features Lucious and Cookie 72. Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn 73. Pester 74. End of a three-day waiting period?

8. Archaic “you” 9. The sound of a joke going over someone’s head 10. Computer fan’s hum 11. Stark patriarch in Game of Thrones 12. Break out the puppy-dog eyes 13. The ‘A’ in I.P.A. 19. DeLaria on Orange is the New Black 21. The Yellow, Red or Black 25. Superhero whose catchphrase starts with “I am” 27. Eldest Stark brother in Game of Thrones 28. Inactive 29. Church jurisdictions 31. Subject of a Plato allegory 32. “That’s all I wanna know!”

33. Conclude 37. Reaction to having figured out a crossword theme 38. “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!” group 39. Canada Goose product 40. ____-Morpork (Discworld setting) 41. “Hahaha!”

42. Cries of regret 43. Strained kind of milk 49. “Pow!” 50. Puts pedal to the medal 51. Sit through 52. Dr. Bronner or Burt, professionally 54. Chess endings 55. Character’s path 56. BioNTech CEO Uğur 60. Byte size 62. 2018 Cuarón film on Netflix 63. Drive and Zoom, for example 64. Agcy. that checks what you checked (and what you didn’t) 65. AI antagonist in 2001: A Space Odyssey 66. Bass speaker 67. Newspaper, disdainfully LAST WEEK’S ANSWERS

DOWN 1. Washington Monument’s material 2. Something you shouldn’t drink to ward off COVID 3. Mythical city hunted in National Treasure: Book of Secrets 4. The largest continent 5. Enamored (of) 6. Completely submerging 7. Secretly loop into an email

‘Basic’ music can be a powerful tool of feminist dissent ELIZA POWERS It comes out of nowhere: one second you’re having a perfectly pleasant conversation with a man from Pomona College, and then, the inevitable. “My music taste is really underground.” And when you ask for artist names, he responds, “you’ve probably never heard of them.”

The obscurer, the better. Music isn’t just a personal preference, it’s a complicated metric system for intellectual superiority. Being in the one percent of Spotify monthly listeners of the most “underground” artist you can find elevates your status.

The less commodified, the better.

And the music to avoid? Call it mainstream, bubblegum pop, “basic” — whatever you label it, music by and for women should be avoided at all costs. God forbid your favorite artist would ever wear a sparkly outfit and have back-up dancers on a world tour. If she’s on TikTok? Forget it.

Labeling music as “basic” masks coded misogyny. For a girl, the weaponization of the term “basic” is deployed to devalue her identity by targeting the media she embraces.

“Basic” is a lifetime sentence girls are far too familiar with. Exca-

vate the graveyard of “basic” and you’ll find the bones of once-beloved girlhood markers: Ugg boots, Starbucks frappuccinos, flip phones, a pink Nintendo 3DS, white high-top Converse, Lokai bracelets, EOS lip balm. The pattern is archaic and often recycled — once a piece of pop culture, an article of clothing, a boyband or even a video game is recognized as “basic”, we rush to shed the association as quickly as possible.

Yet despite a patronizing campaign against it, “basic music” persists as intelligent, talented and ultimately empowering. “Basic music” is a powerful signifier of the resilience of women dominating the music industry.

Female artists have faced immeasurable obstacles for as long as the industry has been around.

From Kanye West grabbing the mic from Taylor Swift at the 2009 VMAs as she accepted the award for “Best Female Video”, vitriolic slut-shaming directed at Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion after the release of the “WAP” music video, Britney Spears’ conservatorship to Kesha’s legal battle with her emotionally abusive producer, the music industry consistently maintains obstacles for female artists.

The media isn’t much help, ei-

Editorial Board

ther. Billie Eilish weighs too much; Olivia Rodrigo weighs too little.

Selena Gomez is a talentless dud riding the coattails of childhood Disney channel fame. Miley’s just a lost cause. And any girl who blows up on TikTok for singing or songwriting? Definitely a secret industry plant.

From emotionally abusive producers to restrictive record labels, a frenzied, drama-hungry public and media reporting propagated with double standards between male and female artists, there’s nothing easy about becoming a huge female name in the music industry.

Yet in a culture intent on isolating and devaluing girls, “basic music” is triumphantly persistent.

“Basic music” normalizes, even celebrates, the painful throes of girlhood: Lana Del Rey’s haunted lyrics of coked-up flings with sugar daddies articulate the nostalgia and despair of a pre-algebra heartbreak; Taylor Swift’s “Back to December” memorializes girlhood’s melancholic regret; Olivia Rodrigo’s lyrics, “where’s my fucking teenage dream”, encapsulate the gritty injustice of teenaged expectations.

“Basic music” is a celebration of community. Whether scream-

ing every lyric of Taylor Swift’s ten-minute version of “All Too Well” in a room full of girls, making a new friend in a party bathroom under the beat of Selena Gomez’ “Love You Like a Love Song”, or blasting “Happier Than Ever” as the streetlights glide over you in a car full of girls heading to In-N-Out, “basic music” reinforces communal experience.

“Basic music” is a warm invitation into the sovereignty of girlhood. This music is inherently political: body-positive anthems confront an overwhelming diet culture; sexually-empowering songs challenge a culture saturated with slut-shaming; breakup hits provide healing through community.

Embracing “basic music” is a reclamation of power. Screaming Taylor Swift’s “I’ll get older, but your lovers stay my age” is a powerful challenge to our culturally-endorsed age gaps between older men and younger women.

Carrie Underwood’s angry, triumphant hit “Before He Cheats” challenges the passivity of adulterous victimization. So many girls can relate to Billie Eilish’s lyrics “you scared me to death, but I’m wasting my breath / ’cause you only listen to your fucking friends”.

The next time you’re scared to add Britney Spears’ “Toxic” to the queue during a hangout for fear of being labeled “basic,” do it. And at the Grammys this Sunday, I’ll be rooting for the “basic music.”

Eliza Powers PO ’25 is from New Orleans, Louisiana. She loves reality TV, Phoebe Bridgers and searching for the perfect avocado toast recipe.

COUrTESY: WAlT DiSNEY TElEViSiON ViA FliCKr

Calling music “basic” often masks misogynistic undertones, writes Eliza Powers PO ‘25.

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. Single 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

April 1, 2022

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P-P women’s swim and dive clinches top five at DIII championship ALEX NASONI Pomona-Pitzer’s women’s swim and dive team made history at this year’s NCAA Division III championships with a fifth place finish, their best standing in over thirty years. The glory was equally meaningful for head coach John-Paul Gowdy, who had yet to coach a team to a top-five finish in his career.

Coming into the four action-packed days in Indianapolis, Gowdy was cautiously optimistic.

“We’ve learned not to expect anything,” he said. “We knew that the women’s team especially had the potential to finish [well] but, like with any sporting event, a lot goes into a finish like that … so you don’t want to assume.”

However, he felt the team was in a good place, which he attributes to their successful performance.

“When you have a good team environment, you tend to bounce back from the little setbacks you have along the way and at the end of the meet we get the kind of result that we’re super, super proud of,” Gowdy said.

Despite a tense atmosphere in the pool, the Sagehens immediately shined on the first day with impressive swims from All-Americans Avery Turney PO ’25 and Alexandra Turvey PO ’24 in the 50 meter freestyle.

After both advanced to the final, Turney clocked in at exactly 23.00 seconds for a new personal best and sixth place finish overall, while her teammate finished eighth at 23.19.

Following these individual swims, Turney, Turvey and teammates Abbey Liao PZ ’24 and Alex Gill PO ’23 put on a stellar performance in the 200 medley relay, finishing fifth overall and

earning All-American honors.

The second day was highlighted by Ruby Epstein PO ’22, who became the first-ever female P-P diver to compete at the championship, and the women’s team collecting an impressive four All-American honors overall in a single day.

The third day continued in similar fashion with more All-American honors and leading into an exciting final day of competition. Turney dropped 0.4 seconds in her final 100 freestyle swim to finish as national runner-up, while Turvey finished fourth in the event just behind her teammate.

The championship wrapped up with a nail-biting 400 freestyle relay. With the Sagehens needing to secure one position above University of Chicago to solidify fifth place, standouts Valerie Mello PZ ’25, Turney, Haley Kirtland PO ’24, and anchor-woman Turvey fought their way to a runners-up finish in the race.

The achievement gave the Sagehens a final score of 226 points and their historic fifth place championship finish.

To achieve this success at nationals, Gowdy brought up the importance of community support that helped transform all the athletes’ hard work into success in the pool.

“A lot goes into the culminating performance that you see and certainly most of the credit goes to the athletes that did it, but there’s a lot of people and effort that put them in position to be there,” he said.

Participating in the first DIII tournament since 2019, the extended break made the athletes “hungry” to get back in the pool, according to Gowdy. The silver lining of this obstacle,

however, was that many of the swimmers learned about themselves while away from the team.

“Several of our athletes matured through the pandemic in ways that really helped them as athletes,” he said.

“They learned how to listen to their body and how to work in ways that really help them be better at practices and meets … it forced them to grow up a little bit and figure things out a little bit more on their own.”

One standout aspect of the team was the astounding number of underclassmen at the competition.

This year’s team includes a lot of first-years, “because some athletes that would have been sophomores took a year off last year,” Gowdy said.

“They combined with a nice recruiting class and put their skills on display.”

Despite the smaller number of upperclassmen, the team molded together well.

“We faced the challenge of carrying over some of the important cultural team traditions that are so important to our success over the years,” Gowdy said. “Despite there being less seniors and juniors to guide them, the first-years bought in … a big reason why we had a good deal of success.

We’re proud of who we are as a team and a community.”

Looking forward, P-P women’s swim and dive has a lot of promise left in store for the future.

“We had a lot of things go well this year,” Gowdy said.

“I hope we can have another year where a lot of things go well and certainly we have it in us to [place] a little bit higher.”

Spinning and winning: Claremont Greenshirts re-disc-over team connections

HUXlEYANN HUEFNEr • THE STUDENT liFE

Ellie Dekker pZ ’23 at a Claremont Greenshirts practice Oct. 2, 2019.

ELI WEISS Informally known as the Claremont Greens, the women’s ultimate frisbee club at the Claremont Colleges is more than just a sports team — it provides a safe space for students to build social relationships.

Talia Glass PZ ’25 first discovered the sport from her sister, who had a great experience playing ultimate in college. Before finding comfortability with the sport, however, she “was terrified” of playing on the field.

“I’d barely thrown a Frisbee, but everyone was so freaking nice,” Glass said. “It could not have been a better opportunity to go into [without] having any experience.”

She discusses how imperative the Greenshirts community has been during her transition and adjustment to college life amidst a pandemic.

“Especially with COVID, it’s been really hard to meet people from other schools and actually make real connections with them,” she said.

“Classes just aren’t enough to do that. And it’s been really a silver lining for sure. Even though it’s just a couple times a week, I feel like I’ve really made some cool friends.”

One of those unique friends Glass befriended was Liza Gull HM ’24, one of the team’s handful of captains.

Growing up in the Bay Area, the sophomore leader played

competitive ultimate for a long time, even competing against the Greens once prior to her time at Mudd.

“Especially with COVID stuff, I’m very grateful for the Greenshirts to have a social and physical activity three plus times per week, to be with other people while releasing stress and energy in a very fun way,” she said. “I’ve met so many people through them and I’m able to see people that I know at other places in the 5Cs, which is really cool.”

With multiple student captains, the Greens organize exercises to build team bonds and foster a welcoming environment.

This chemistry proved vital in their tournament at Santa Clara University held Feb. 19 to 20, where the Greens came into the tournament ranked seventh out of teams participating and left as the weekend’s runner-up.

“Just a humble brag about my rookie class; we’ve got multiple lines of incredible players who have played a lot in high school and also our new players have just picked it up really quick,” Gull said.

Looking ahead, Gull is excited for what’s to come for the Greens this season.

“Greens are historically better than I think we’ve ever been,” she said. “That’s largely in part to the immense amount of rookie talent we’ve brought.”

The women hope to continue their success with upcoming sectionals against Occidental on April 16, played on their home turf in Claremont.

COUrTESY: AArON GrAY

Sports Calendar

Head coach Jean paul-Gowdy and fellow assistant coaches applaud the swim and dive teams.

P-P Friday, Feb. 4 Men’s Tennis vs. Hope int’l @ Azusa Pacific

Women’s Water polo vs. Marist @Brown @ providence, r.i.

Bruno Tournament

Baseball vs. lewis & Clark

Baseball vs. lewis & Clark

Saturday, Feb. 5 Men’s & Women’s Swimming & Diving pomona-pitzer invite

Men’s Basketball vs. Cal lutheran @ roberts pavilion

Women’s Basketball vs. Cal lutheran @ roberts pavilion Sunday, Feb. 6 Women’s Water polo @Harvard Bruno Tournament Baseball vs. George Fox Women’s Water polo vs. laSalle @ Harvard

CMS Fri Feb. 4 Baseball 2:00 pM VS George Fox Sat Feb. 5 Men’s Swimming and Diving 11:00 AM at pomona-pitzer invitational Women’s Swimming and Diving 11:00 AM

pomona-pitzer invitational

Men’s Basketball 2:00 pM Claremont-Mudd-Scripps AT Whittier

Men’s Tennis Ted Ducey Alumni Women’s Basketball 4:00 Match pM VS Claremont-Mudd- Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Scripps AT Whittier Baseball 11:00 AM VS George Fox Baseball 2:00 pM VS George Fox

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

pAGE 12

April 1, 2022

Climbing the ranks, CMS women’s water polo crushes SCIAC regular season competition

ABBEY liAO • THE STUDENT liFE

Attacker Jessi Beyer SC ‘23 fights for inside position against her defender.

ANNIKA JOHNSON In a home victory Wednesday against Caltech, the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps women’s water polo team extended their SCIAC season win streak to 8-1. The victory followed a win against Chapman March 23 in which the Athenas won 11-7 at the Allred Aquatics Center.

Cooper McKenna CM ’24 scored two goals against Chapman, one of which was made during the third quarter after an assist from Maddy Menard CM ’22 across the pool.

“The verbal communication that occurred seconds before [the goal], calling for the ball and finding open players, was the key to making this play happen,” she said. “If we continue to make these plays and play for one another, we will be a solid team going into the championship.”

It was a tighter match than the Athenas’ game against Chapman earlier in March, where

they won 22-1. Jessica Salaz SC ’22 attributed the closer game to an improvement in energy and level of play from Chapman, but she also recognized the Athenas for adapting their offense and defense to the Panthers’ one minute into the match.

“This adaptation helped to limit the number of goals Chapman was able to create during this first half of the game,” Salaz said. “We have an incredibly hard-working defensive team. Each field player works tirelessly on the defensive end in order to discourage any good looks at the goal from the opposing team.”

Salaz, a goalie, had three saves in the first half before turning over the goal to Ruth Efe CM ’22 who had three saves of her own.

Christina Kulick CM ’23 scored three goals including one in the second quarter which, alongside a goal from

Emily McElroy SC ’22, doubled the Athenas’ score to 4-1. After the Panthers scored twice backto-back, Emma Brezoczky CM ’22 responded by scoring on a 6-on-5 to bring the score to 5-3 going into the second half.

“The energy during the final goal and I think throughout most of the game was that the score was always a bit closer than we would have liked but that we were in control,” McKenna explained. “Towards the end when we were able to expand our lead a little bit, I think it helped get the energy higher and remind us of what we could do as a team.”

In the second half, Kulick kicked off the third quarter with a goal followed by goals from Mia Adsen SC ’24, McKenna and Dara Schoolcraft CM ’25 who converted on a 6-on-5.

Kulick and McKenna notched the final goals of the game, while the Athenas’ defense held off the Panthers for victory.

It’s a unique year for spring sports like women’s water polo, for which the last SCIAC championships were in 2019, when this year’s seniors were freshman. But, since the Athenas water polo team finished 5th in the conference that year, they didn’t compete at SCIACs. McElroy, Menard, Brezoczky and Salaz are among the senior Athenas on the water polo team looking toward their first and potentially final championship match.

“While it’s a little nerve wracking going into the championship … I know I have the backing of a very talented team that continually strives to be better,” Salaz said. “As this is my last year to label myself as a collegiate athlete, I am also incredibly excited to have this opportunity and happy to go into this competition with an incredibly talented team.”

The team’s juniors will be celebrating their SCIAC cham-

2022

One Six-week Session: May 23 – July 1

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pionship debut.

“I am so grateful to be back playing,” said Kulick. “I missed playing competitive sports a lot during the pandemic and being back with such a strong and supportive group of women is the best thing I could have asked for during my first full season.”

First-place Pomona-Pitzer has an undefeated SCIAC victory streak of 8-0 so far this season, while CMS is at 8-1, having lost only to the Sagehens in their 2022 SCIAC matches. The Sagehens and Athenas are 14-15 and 12-6 overall, respectively.

McKenna cited some pressure in the Athenas’ upcoming road games against Cal Lutheran and Whittier after having beaten them by 1 point each.

“It will definitely be a challenge,” McKenna said. “And of course I’m looking forward to the next time we play P-P, this time being at home and also having more confidence in ourselves to start the game off stronger.”

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