Vol. CXXXV No. 21

Out of rooms, out of answers: Pitzer’s class of 2027 left without housing

College administrations nationwide escalate responses to protests for Palestinian liberation

In the past month, more than

300 students from colleges in the United States — including Pomona College, Brown University, Columbia University, New York University, Yale University and the University of Southern California — have been arrested in demonstrations calling for the liberation of Palestine from Israel’s occupation and an end to Israel’s ongoing siege on Gaza. Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s subsequent response prompted worldwide conversa-

tions on relations between Israel and Palestine leading to a surge in protests, sit-ins and teachins, particularly on college and university campuses. At the 5Cs, students and faculty alike began to grapple with the weight of the violence and as Israel’s retaliatory siege has only escalated in the over six months since Oct. 7, collegiate activism has continued to rise.

Notably, students have increasingly called for institutions to divest from the Israeli government and Israeli-affiliated companies. Pomona Divest from

Apartheid (PDfA) released their demands in a Dec. 2 instagram post pinned on their page of over 4,000 followers.

“We demand that Pomona College divest from all weapons manufacturers and all institutions that aid the ongoing occupation of Palestine,” the post reads.

Though demonstrations and protests are not new, these past two months have seen an immense uptick in administration response, heavily through police force and legal charges against student pro-

See PROTESTS on page 2

On Wednesday, April 24 Pitzer College informed students in the class of 2027 participating in the room selection process that they had “reached capacity” for housing both on-campus residence halls and in Claremont Collegiate Apartments (CCA). Students who had not yet picked their rooms were told they would be placed on a waitlist to secure housing.

Pitzer Residence Life sent personally addressed identical emails to each of the students who were unable to select a room. In them, they apologized for the emotional distress caused and assured the students that steps were being taken to accommodate them.

“We want to start off by saying we apologize for the stress and whirlwind of emotions you may be feeling right now but do know that we are working hard to assign you to housing,” the email read.

The email also said that they anticipate “having spaces open up and/or acquiring new spaces,” however, they will be unable to know until next week.

Despite the possibility of securing housing later, many students still expressed frustration at their current situation. Noah Pershing PZ ’27, like many Pitzer students, entered the portal in a “suite group” with three other friends. He said they want to stay together,

See PITZER on page 3

CMC students approve resolution condemning April 5 student arrests

MALHOTRA

On Thursday, April 18 and Friday, April 19, students at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) voted in support of a resolution written in response to the arrest of 20 students at Pomona College. In an email sent to the CMC student body at 10:22 a.m. on Friday, the results revealed that 419 students — or 30.76 percent of the student body — participated in the vote. Of those who voted, 70.24 percent voted to approve the resolution and 29.76 percent voted to reject it. The document was authored by Rukmini Banerjee CM ’24, Kenneth Owusu CM ’24, Maya Kurkhill CM ’24, Pranav Patel CM ’26 and Elijah-Emory Muhammad CM ’26 and was passed with a 11:3 vote by the ASCMC Senate Monday, April 15.

Following the Senate vote, ASCMC Ethics and Procedural Officer Paloma Oliveri CM ’26 sent a ballot to the CMC student body at 8:02 a.m. on April 18 via ElectionBuddy, an online voting software, that closed 24 hours later.

of this resolution means that ASCMC will continue to collaborate with the authors and DOS to determine

next steps,” Oliveri said in the email. “We will be in touch shortly with further updates.” The resolution calls for the

creation of a committee to revise the 7C Demonstration Policy and for CMC to clarify its own demonstration policy

70.24 percent

Goodbye Playlist: The Seniors Leave

to “protect students’ right to freedom of speech and assembly.”

Henry Long CM ’25, a student who voted against the resolution, explained his belief that the 7C Demonstration Policy is reasonable, especially when concerning protests which are peaceful but “disruptive” to the colleges’ academic missions.

“The resolution conflated civil disobedience and protected speech,” Long said in an interview with TSL. “It also misunderstood the purpose of campus free expression. Free expression commitments are meant to promote the fearless pursuit of truth in the classroom — not to indulge megaphones and megalomania on the campus quad.”

At a CMC Student Union meeting which convened on Monday, April 22, Banerjee discussed further steps to create such a committee focused on the demonstration policy, including working with CMC Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students Diana Graves.

“DT [Diana Graves] already

See RESOLUTION on page 2

the class did not receive housing assignments during room draw.

ANSLEY WASHBURN & AARON MATSUOKA

JUNE HSU

COURTESY: ANONYMOUS

KAYA SAVElSON • THE STUDENT lIFE

of CMC students voted to pass a resolution responding to the April 5 arrests of twenty students at pomona College.

CMC votes in favor of student protest resolution

Continued from page 1

reached out to me and [Owusu] and said ‘hey, regardless of whether the resolution passes or fails, I would be interested in working together to change the demonstration policy,’” Banerjee said. “But I still think it was important we got a win for the purposes of Pomona Divest from Apartheid.” Banerjee mentioned plans to meet with Graves and Owusu in the coming weeks to discuss the selection process for the committee.

She then transitioned to the creation of a new statement which would bring attention “back to Palestine.”

“Pomona Divest from Apartheid and a lot of pro-Palestinian movements don’t want these statements to co-opt the conversation from free speech to Palestine,” she said. “What we need to do is to push the conversation back.”

Owusu clarified his and his co-authors’ intentions to move forward with the new statement upon a positive response from the student body.

“This conversation is important, especially for how administrators engage with student protest in the future,” he said in an interview with TSL. “But we do not, emphasize do not, want to take attention away from the call to divest.”

Fall 2024 pre-registration in review

From Tuesday, April 18 to Thursday, April 20, upwards of 14,000 permission to enroll requests (colloquially referred to as PERMs) were submitted by students across the Claremont Colleges as they registered for the over 2,000 courses that will be offered in the fall of 2024.

Limited course availability caused students to struggle to get into courses they want — and need — to take during pre registration last week.

One such course, Beginning Wheel Throwing (ART015), offered by Pitzer College, amassed over 100 PERMs across all offered sections before the start of registration.

According to the course’s instructor professor Timothy Berg, one reason for the class’s high number of PERMs is the popular draw to the creative process of wheel throwing.

“I understand the lure that this activity can have for people, especially when one watches someone adept at doing so,” he said in an email to TSL. “It can be magical seeing something go from an inert mass to a recognizable object in only a few moments and then to see it further transformed into a

beautifully glazed piece of functional art.”

Berg reads each of the PERMs from the dozens of students who want to add the class, also taking care to read any follow-up emails he receives. This year, Berg even created a spreadsheet to manage which students he accepted into the course.

“There are many interested students and it would be nice if I could offer more sections of this course,” Berg said. “But there are many limiting factors such as budget, space and facilities (i.e. kilns).”

Beginning Wheel Throwing is not the only creative course constrained by such limiting factors. In fact, eight out of the 10 courses with the highest PERM counts (compared to available seats) are offered by the art departments of Pitzer, Scripps and Pomona Colleges.

Mehana Collins PZ ’27, one student whose ART015 PERM was accepted, shared her enthusiasm about the course.

“I’m so excited,” she said.

“Registering for Beginning Wheel Throwing is like the biggest success of college so far.” Art courses were not the only ones to receive an influx of PERMs last week. Two courses — “Intermediate Microeconomics”

at Claremont McKenna College (CMC) and “Organic Chemistry” offered by Keck Sciences — that are required for economics and biology majors received over 150 PERMs each among all sections by the end of registration.

Despite successfully registering for ART015, Collins didn’t have the same luck with Organic Chemistry, with all sections being closed by her 2:30 p.m. registration time on April 18. She expressed frustration about how this may affect her future plans.

“I’m a chem major and I’m on the pre-med track,” she said. “If I don’t do [Organic Chemistry] right now, I can’t do either of those.”

Since registration reopened on Monday, April 22, Collins has been accepted into an Organic Chemistry lecture but remained unable to register for Organic Chemistry Lab or Calculus III, both of which are requirements for her major.

Though her course registration experience was exasperating, Collins said she takes comfort in the success of her Beginning Wheel Throwing PERM.

“Sometimes when I need a pick-me-up, I look at all of the PERMs for that class,” Collins said. “And I’m just like, I’m the one that got it.”

For some students like Elisa Booth CM ’27, course registration was a much more positive experience.

“My registration went very well considering my [4 p.m.] time,” Booth said in an email to TSL. “I am extremely excited to take literally every single one of my courses!”

Booth, a prospective environment, economics and politics major, sent seven PERMs in total. While only three of those were accepted, she was able to get into all of her top choice classes.

She attributed this success to the support she received from her advisor and first-year mentors at CMC.

“My advisor, professor Jason Keller, was especially incredibly helpful, meeting with me for multiple hours over the course of the week leading up to course [registration],” Booth said. “He even helped me create a new plan an hour before my registration time when I changed my mind last minute.”

For students still trying to get in classes, Berg offered a final piece of advice from a faculty perspective.

“My best advice is to be persistent,” Berg said. “Send a PERM, write an email, show up the first week of class to see if any room opens up.”

12th Annual Scripps College Sustainability Fair: A showcase of environmental initiatives across the Claremont campuses

On April 19, various organizations dedicated to building a greener community from Scripps College, the 5Cs and the wider Claremont area set up booths across Scripps’ Bowling Green Lawn, showcasing sustainability initiatives as part of the 12th Annual Scripps Sustainability Fair. Hosting organizations like the Motley Coffeehouse, Claremont Sustainability Consulting, Scripps Scrapps and Bon Appétit, each booth offered activities and insight into their work aiming to create a more sustainable community in Claremont and beyond. The fair also included a booth set up by Black Crow Juice Co., which offered cold pressed juice to attendees. Pomona College EcoReps was one group that participated at the fair. At their station, the EcoReps shared information about their programs, such as the Walker Flea Market, a monthly market where students can sell handmade or pre-owned products, and the Book Room, a used bookstore located in Walker Lounge. In addition, students who stopped by the EcoReps booth were offered free sustainability swag and invited to participate in an interactive activity called “Compost a Secret,” in which they wrote on nasturtium leaves picked from Sontag Rooftop Garden and placed them in a compost bucket.

According to Sydney Tai PO ’26, a co-head EcoRep, Pomona EcoReps has hosted 20 events this semester, including a Sustainable Fashion

also shared some of EcoReps’ plans outside of organizing events, including the introduction of reusable utensils.

“Beyond events, a key goal this semester was to expand on institutional initiatives,” Tai said via email. “This was the first year that we applied for the President Sustainability Fund (PSF), which allowed us to bring 2,000 pairs of reusable chopsticks to all three of Pomona’s dining halls. We have also begun collecting plastic and paper bags and donating them to a local nonprofit, and are continuing to research solutions for soft plastic waste like Amazon packages.”

Scripps’ Denison Library also set up a booth at the fair. Ainsley Harris SC ’26 and Tamar Ladd SC ’27, both library student assistants, highlighted some of Denison’s environmental practices.

“A lot of what Denison does is it preserves old books,” Harris said. “I do a lot of archiving and so a lot of what I do is moving pieces of paper into acid-free folders … [so that they] last for a long time.” Ladd emphasized the significance of preserving these old books. According to Ladd, this work is important in enabling access to resources for both current and future students.

“We are preserving culture and history and so these resources are available for future students,” Ladd said. “[We are] just creating digital copies of our books as well, to make

sure that they can be used for a long time.”

Another display of preservation at the fair was utilized in its planning. Abby Barahona SC

’25, an intern at Scripps’ Office of Sustainability, said that they pulled it together by reaching out to both old and new organizations focused on sustainability efforts.

“I basically just reached out to a bunch of 5C organizations and clubs and also a few in the surrounding area in Claremont who are dedicated to sustainability and have various efforts,” Barahona said. “Then we ended up being able to have 20 different booths here in the sustainability fair and a lot of them were here last year. A lot of them are new as well, since there are a lot of new clubs happening every year.”

Barahona noted the importance of showcasing student initiatives advocating for sustainability.

“A lot of the time and the purpose of this event is to really showcase those students who are working so hard,” Barahona said.

“Like we have the Scripps Free Closet that happens every single Tuesday, [there are] students in there working, making sure that students are able to access free clothes … There are just various efforts happening on campus that are super important and we just want to be able to showcase this is what everybody’s doing at Scripps.”

Barahona also emphasized the importance of recognizing student leadership in sustainability initiatives.

“I think there is a lot of behindthe-scenes work here at Scripps that’s going into sustainability that is really spearheaded by the students,” Barahona said. “I think that goes largely unnoticed.” Tai shared her positive sentiments about the fair, emphasizing its power to bridge the various organizations advocating for environmental action and sustainability.

“While I often find myself focusing on what our community is still lacking, this fair was a great reminder that there are already many wonderful forms of environmental action,” Tai said. “Being with others that share a common goal was also very energizing — it was a great environment to connect.”

PROTESTS: Nationwide escalation of administrative responses to student dissent

Continued from page 1

testors.

In an April 8 post from Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine, they pointed to the recent increase in militarization at the 5Cs and called for students to come together against it.

“This is more important now than ever before,” they wrote. “We need all hands on deck to oppose police repression.”

Despite the latest surge in the escalation of administrative response, legal actions against dissenting students have been taken by colleges for months.

On Nov. 8, 20 Brown University students and members of BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now were arrested during a sit-in following a rally in support of Palestine.

Those participating in the sit-in specifically called for divestment based on Brown’s Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Policies report, which was released in March 2020 and recommended divestment from companies associated with Israel and its occupation of Palestinian land.

One of the 20 Brown students arrested in November, who requested to stay anonymous, recalled how the lack of communication from the administration transpired during the sit-in that led to the arrests.

“Christina Paxson, [president of the university], did not speak to us once,” the student said in an interview with TSL. “I would have thought that our president or at least some higher-up would have at least called in to have a discussion with us and they didn’t.”

That same night, all 20 students were released from the Providence Police Department and their charges were later dropped; however, on Dec. 11, 41 more Brown students were arrested for a demonstration in University Hall — the same building the 20 previous students occupied — but their charges have not been dropped.

In a March 12 statement on Instagram, the 41 students and members of Brown Divest Coalition arrested Dec. 11 announced their pleas of not guilty

on the charges against them and emphasized the symbolic nature of Brown’s unprecedented use of police force and what that means for its relationship with students.

“Never in University history has Brown pursued criminal charges against student activists to the point of conviction,” the statement read. “Brown’s political choice to selectively leverage the carceral system against its students sends a clear message: The University values making an example of its own students to intimidate the campus community and shut down meaningful dialogue more than it values both its students’ individual futures and the community resources that Brown continues to drain.”

Now, four months after the 41 Brown students were arrested, school administrations across the country are cracking down on demonstrations, many with the aid of the police. The April 5 arrest of the 20 5C students at Pomona —whose charges have not been dropped and four of the seven Pomona students are still facing suspension — came at the start of a nationwide string of mass arrests of collegiate protesters.

The most severe of these administrative responses came on April 18 at Columbia University after its president Minouche Shafik authorized the New York Police Department to sweep a student encampment resulting in the arrests of over 100 students. Students had set up the “Gaza solidarity encampment” on the university’s South Lawn, pitching dozens of tents, hosting speakers and calling for divestment.

Still, over a week into the action, the encampment is still active as students remain on the Lawn and are currently in negotiations with Columbia administration.

Despite their geographical distance, each of these movements are connected to one another and are situated within a much larger global context. At an April 11 rally in support of the 5C students arrested on April 5, one speaker called for students to remember why they are protesting; that even with the national attention on student arrests, this should not distract from their goals of Palestinian liberation.

“Our sit-in was one drop in an ocean indebted to and aligned with the Palestinian-led worldwide boycott, divest and sanction movement,” the student said.

COURTNEY CHEN Show at the Benton Museum of Art. She

SARA WIlKSON • THE STUDENT lIFE Scripps College hosted its 12th annual sustainability fair on April 19, highlighting community organizations that value sustainability.

BRECKEN ENRIGHT • THE STUDENT lIFE

Advice and reflections from the class of 2024

AMEYA TELI

As the school year comes to a close, the senior class of 2024 says goodbye to the Claremont Colleges and welcomes change into their lives. For many of them, college has been far from normal — from spending a year of college fully online and masking up in classes to witnessing historic protests on campus, these seniors have had a unique experience. Reflecting on this, several seniors shared advice for younger students.

Tian Dong HM ’24, a mathematics major who plans on pursuing a master’s in physics and a PhD in mathematics after graduation, reflected on how important college can be in helping students grow as people, not just academically.

“I feel like I’ve spent a lot of time becoming an actual person,” she said. “I’ve found I’ve gotten a better idea of what my interests are and how I like to spend my time and the kinds of people I like to spend my time with.”

She also emphasized the importance of stepping back and enjoying life, rather than getting carried away by the inevitable overwhelming stress that accompanies these four years.

“I think it’s important to stay present and enjoy your time here,” Dong said. “[It has] become very obvious to me that I’m going to be gone very soon, which is quite sad.”

Michaela Jones PZ ’24, an environmental analysis and American studies double major, echoed Dong, noting how quickly time can move. Currently making plans to work at an environmental organization before pursuing a PhD in environ-

mental science or geography, she reflected on this phenomenon.

“Enjoy it as much as you can because it goes by really fast,” Jones said. “As a senior, I feel like there’s been so many moments where I’m like, ‘Wow … this is so special.’ I’m sad it’s over.”

Jones shared her appreciation for the Claremont community.

“I love the people that I’m around and even just being in Claremont,” she said. “Enjoy it and take as much advantage of it as you can.”

Jones, who transferred to Pitzer College and took a year and a half off during the pandemic, noted her unique college experience and urged students not to compare their experiences to others.

“There’s no timeline that you have to be on,” she said. “If you don’t know what you’re doing when you’re graduating, that’s totally okay … I’ve learned that there’s no rush and everyone’s on their own schedule.”

Sara Colando PO ’24, a mathematics and philosophy double major who will go on to pursue a PhD in statistics at Carnegie Mellon University, shared a similar sentiment. She noted that feeling out of place in college is a common sentiment, but she also suggested that it is one that can be overcome.

“I feel like I was really nervous coming in about just going to college and [it] being a lot harder and worrying about the imposter syndrome of it all,” Colando said. “Something to keep in mind is just to stay curious in college … and not worry as much about comparison.”

Mary Markaryan CM ’24, a bi-

Three cars stolen on Pomona campus; latest in string of grand theft autos

Three car thefts occurred between Monday, April 15 and Tuesday, April 16, on Pomona College’s campus. According to Campus Safety, they and the Claremont Police Department have identified a subject and are currently investigating. The vehicles in question remain missing.

On Monday evening, two unidentified individuals stole a 2005 gold Honda Odyssey on Columbia Avenue. Surveillance footage captured them accessing the vehicle and driving it down First Street — it was reported stolen the next morning.

At 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday, Campus Safety sent an email to community members providing details on a 2009 white Ford F-350 and a white 1997 Ford F-350, both labeled “Pomona College,” that were stolen at less than an hour earlier, at 4:45 p.m.

According to the email, one of the vehicles stolen Tuesday was last seen driving toward College Avenue from First Street.

In the same email, Campus Safety described the suspects.

“One of the suspects was wearing blue jeans and a black sweatshirt and the other was wearing a dark colored long sleeve with grey sleeves and dark pants,” the email said.

Laura Muna-Landa, Pomona College’s assistant vice president for communications and community relations, gave insight into the investigation, claiming that Pomona’s administration believes that the same individuals were responsible for all three thefts.

“We believe these incidents are connected and involve the same group of individuals,” Muna-Landa said in an email to TSL. “Campus Safety, in collaboration with the Claremont Police Department, has identified a suspect, and the investigation is actively

ongoing. We are unable to provide further details at this time.”

The Claremont Colleges have experienced an increased number of auto thefts this semester, with similar incidents occurring in February and March of this year.

On-campus safety has been addressed in Pomona’s most recent Annual Security and Fire Safety Report. A section on security considerations for the maintenance of campus facilities highlight the increased safety of parking structures due to the presence of video surveillance systems.

“Several parking structures, computer rooms and other areas on campus are equipped with surveillance cameras; signs announcing the use of video surveillance systems are posted in the parking structures,” the report states.

Video surveillance captured, but did not prevent, the most recent auto thefts. Rachel Ma PO ’26 expressed her worry about leaving her car in student parking, but acknowledged the lack of other options.

“I’ve definitely heard about the [Grand Theft Autos],” Ma said.

“I care a lot about my car and obviously there is nowhere else to park it, so I guess that can be kind of concerning when I know that there is nothing I can do if my car were to get stolen.”

While the colleges provide services such as Campus Safety’s 24-hour dispatch center, 24-hour safety escort service and LiveSafe app, Muna-Landa sought to ease rising anxieties over the crimes.

“Regarding campus safety, it is our assessment that these incidents are isolated,” Muna-Landa said. “We have no indication of an ongoing threat to The Claremont Colleges community.”

ology major on the pre-med track who plans on going to medical school after completing a master’s program, also spoke about imposter syndrome. “The first year, a lot of students here feel a lot of imposter syndrome and now I don’t feel that at all,” Markaryan said. “Just know you’re not alone in what you’re feeling … and you’re going to feel like you’re the only one, but I guarantee you there’s someone else … that [feels] the exact [same] way.”

Markaryan also urged students to take risks and to form new relationships.

“When you’re entering college,

it’s kind of the time where you’re meeting people,” she said. “Let’s say they’re giving out ice cream downstairs in our dorm … Go make relationships because it’s your first year, that’s kind of where everyone’s meeting each other.

Reach out to people and be social.”

Similarly, Quincy Johnston

SC ’24, a politics major who will be participating in a labor capital strategies fellowship at Georgetown University this summer, noted that being confident and taking risks is important to the college experience.

“I think that especially when you’re an underclassman … it

VANESSA HO • THE STUDENT lIFE

can be scary to take more risks, like whatever that means for you,” Johnston said. “I was afraid to raise my hand at the beginning of … school and like, who cares? You know, you just gotta do it and it makes the experience way more fun. If you don’t take risks … it’s not as much fun.”

Along with this, Johnston emphasized the value in staying true to oneself.

“I think life is just better and everything you do makes you happier when you’re unapologetically yourself,” she said. “I love the people of Claremont … it’s just a wonderful place to meet new people all the time.”

PITZER: Housing crisis leaves class of 2027 without options

Continued from page 1

but, more importantly, that they want to be on campus.

“Hopefully we stay all four of us together because I think that’s what we agreed on,” Pershing said. “But if I end up with none of these guys, I’d better be … on campus.”

Pershing said he is most discouraged by the lack of communication between the college and the students currently without housing, noting that he wants more transparency from the Residence Life Office.

“I would love to have them tell us what [our] options are, like what we might end up getting,” Pershing said.

A lack of transparency seems to be a deeper issue for Pitzer’s Residence Life Office as it is unclear in the college’s policy whether or not housing is guaranteed.

Pitzer’s Residence Hall Agreement, only explicitly states that “the College guarantees housing to all first year students,” and makes no mention of a housing guarantee for students in other grades.

The agreement also offers some clarity on procedure in situations such as this one, but it does not provide tangible solutions for the current crisis.

“If residence halls are filled, the College reserves the right to place students temporarily in overflow housing until regular space is available,” the website reads.

There is currently no “overflow housing” listed for students unable to participate in room draw.

However, this is not conveyed to prospective students. According to Harold Fuson PZ ’26, a tour guide at Pitzer College, the script written for guides states that housing is guaranteed for all four years.

“In the tour guide script it says that Pitzer offers guaranteed housing for all four years,” Fuson said.

According to Fuson, many students do not consider CCA, roughly a mile away from Pitzer’s main campus, “on-campus housing,” and even that is not currently an option for those waiting for housing.

“CCA is included in their guaranteed on-campus housing, but apparently [even] CCA is full this year” he said.

Fuson also said that tour guides are instructed to inform visiting families that about 87 percent of students chose to live on campus each year. He noted that living on campus provides a strong sense of community, which is a big selling point for the college.

“[At Pitzer] all of the dorms are right next to each other and so even if you’re not living in the

were

same dorm as some of your closest friends you’ll be within a 30 second walk from all of them,” Fuson said. “There’s a lot of community building that comes from that spontaneity of being able to run into someone in the study room or go say ‘hi’ to someone late at night that you might lose if you’re living off campus.”

Fuson suggested that the crisis stemmed from the upcoming national May 1 deadline for the class of 2028 to commit to college. Before the college knows the exact size of their incoming first-year class, there remains uncertainty in determining how many rooms to reserve to ensure their guaranteed first-year housing promise can be met.

“It’s my understanding that’s what’s causing this problem,” Fuson said. “To my knowledge, incoming first-years have guaranteed housing.”

Resident Assistants (RA) at Pitzer also felt strongly about this issue and expressed that Pitzer’s trend of over-enrollment continues to alienate students and put them in anxiety-producing situations.

“I think it is messed up how Pitzer continues to do this cyclically,” an RA, who asked to stay anonymous due to fear of their job security, said. “I have seen the uncertainty of housing assignments induce real distress in my residents. They did something very similar to the class of 2025 — that is why we had the ‘CCA 24.’”

The “CCA 24” refers to the 24 Pitzer students in the class of 2025 whose on-campus housing assignments were revoked and they were forced to CCA to make room for the overenrolled class of 2026. The same trend continues as members of the class of 2027 remain in housing limbo.

Pitzer’s Class of 2025 President Sara Kimura PZ ’25, explained that students part of the CCA 24 all originally had housing assignments in Skandera Hall, an on-campus dorm, and that their move to CCA left them with little support from Pitzer offices.

“Housing and the Office of Student Affairs (OSA) literally did not have a shuttle system that started before 9 or 10 a.m.,” Kimura stated in an email to TSL. “It was an issue that students had classes before the shuttle would start, but [OSA] would constantly argue that CCA was not that inconvenient, as the shuttle is always there to serve them.”

Kimura elaborated that this recurring practice of pushing students to CCA causes a rupture in the Pitzer community.

“I know from my own conversations with [the Residence Life Office], that they believe CCA is a highly desirable choice for upper-

classmen, as it is apartment living with training wheels,” Kimura said. “However, they fail to recognize that Pitzer sells itself as a close knit community and advertises that the majority of students live on campus, which most students do not see CCA as a part of.”

The RA also acknowledged the amount of strain on the Residence Life staff that the administration’s decision to over-enroll puts on them.

“It has been so stressful working at the Residence Life frontdesk,” they said. “We have been putting up with a great deal of angry parents and people who are so frustrated with their living situation. That goes for both us as student employees and our professional staff coworkers in the office.”

Another RA, who also requested anonymity, noted the lack of knowledge that they and their colleagues have about the resident housing portal.

“The last day of housing registration I had a couple of students come in asking about their housing, and I felt bad not being able to provide a useful answer that would leave them feeling a bit better about their situation,” they said in an email to TSL. “At the end of the day, the most I can do is direct them to the housing email and wish them good luck.”

Complicating the housing portal further, there was a suspected glitch that caused lottery times to be incorrectly assigned. In a March 26 email from the Pitzer Residence Life Office titled “So I’ve Submitted My Housing App...Now What?,” it explained that housing selection times would be April 23 from 4-7 p.m. for class of 2025, April 24 at 4-7 p.m. for class of 2026 and April 25 at 4-7 p.m. for class of 2027. However, this suspected glitch made it so that both the class of 2025 and 2026 were assigned lottery times for April 23. This change came as a surprise for many students in the class of 2026 who were prepared to register the next day.

“Honestly, I was surprised when I saw my lottery time was on the 23rd,” said Anya M. Sharma PZ ’26 in an email to TSL. “I thought it was supposed to be on the 24th, but I just went with it.”

Amidst vague policy language, residence portal glitches and over-enrolling, members of the Pitzer class of 2027 without housing assignments remain with more questions than answers. As a result another rising sophomore class is left grappling with the consequences of decisions made by Pitzer administration.

“Regardless of the housing process, the rising sophomore class is always left the scraps, with CCA being the least attractive due to the isolation from the main campus … Pitzer students [are] in a repeated cycle of an unsatisfying housing system,” Kimura said.

SAGE HARPER

WENDY

Three car thefts occurred between Monday, April 15, and Tuesday, April 16, on pomona College’s campus.

Running for a cause: IDEAS 5k Dream Run

ADRIANA MACIEL

Pitzer College’s Clock Tower Lawn buzzed with excitement on April 20 as students, faculty and community members gathered for the annual Improving Dreams, Equality, Access and Success (IDEAS) 5K Dream Run. The event offered more than just a race; attendees enjoyed a variety of delicious food, competed for prizes and shared in the day’s lively atmosphere.

IDEAS is a 5C organization that provides a safe space for undocumented students, unDACAmented students — Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipients — and allies. IDEAS was founded at the Claremont Colleges by Eric Martinez PO ’14, Diana Ortiz PO ’14 and Johanna Recalde PO ’14 in fall 2011.

The organization increases awareness about the experiences of undocumented students, highlights the diverse interests of its international community and fosters partnerships to promote intersectionality, solidarity and unity among marginalized communities. By advocating for all immigrants, IDEAS dismantles the narrative of the “good immigrant” often associated with the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act.

After a brief hiatus due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the IDEAS 5K Dream Run made a triumphant return last year, continuing its mission to unite the community in support of undocumented students. The annual run, a tradition at the Claremont Colleges, raises mutual aid funds to support undocumented high school seniors and current undocumented students in areas outside the purview of the 5Cs.

Organizers Kassandra Soriano Martinez PZ ’25 and Angeles Soriano Martinez SC ’24 discussed the lengthy planning process, which started at the end of fall 2023.

COUrTESY: TASMiA MOOSANi

hours later.”

Angeles Soriano Martinez explained that this year’s orchestrators wanted to improve upon last year’s iteration of the event.

“This year, we tried to make the route of the run easier to navigate by placing arrows and having student workers directing people,” Angeles Soriano Martinez said.

“We also wanted to make sure to better time the schedule of the event. Last year, people finished the run before we anticipated so the food was not available until

“Our team is still fairly new to this process, but we have learned a lot,” Kassandra Soriano Martinez said. “Our main goal was to bring the community together. There is a lot of planning surrounding the number of attendees that we hope to have, which is based on numbers from last year.”

WAYS OF SEEiNG

sally Mann’s memory-haunted landscapes

Sally Mann’s photographs of the Southern landscape are romantic, almost gothic.

Mann, who has spent most of her life in and around Lexington, Virginia, has always focused on the American South. Although most well known for the success and controversy surrounding her 1992 collection “Immediate Family,” much of her work since then has centered on the Southern landscape.

“Mother Land” (1992-96) and “Deep South” (1998) depict Virginia, Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi in hazy black-and-white images. Most of these photos were taken using antique deteriorating lenses and the collodion wet-plate technique, a 19th-century process producing much of the blurring, fading and manipulations that distort the images.

Vignette erodes the corners of pictures, absorbing the dark shapes of trees and vines into a single black mass; vines and fallen branches disappear into a fog as if floating; scars and flaws sometimes cut through the image like burns.

These distortions feel like projections of imagination — places where the illusion of authoritative reality that a photo provides is broken.

“Southerners live at the nexus between myth and reality,” Mann wrote in the “Mother Land” exhibition catalog, “... Memory is most often an act of will.”

In Mann’s images of the Southern landscape, myth and reality overlap. The imagined landscape superimposes the real landscape.

In 2000, an escaped convict shot himself in the woods of Mann’s farm and she photographed the site where he died. As her work shifted, she began to question how bodies change the land that they are held in — and in turn, I think, how land holds and remembers bodies. She began photographing former Civil War battlegrounds.

Living only 50 miles from Jerry Falwell’s former headquarters, a two-hour drive from a third of Civil War battlefields and in a town whose residents included Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson, Mann is acutely aware of the Southern culture that bleeds into her work, including its obsession with loss and memory.

“Flannery O’Connor said the South is Christ-haunted, but I think it’s death-haunted,” Mann wrote in the “Deep South” exhibition text. Mann is photographing what haunts these sites — or whatever is left of them, that is. These images, distorted with the collodion wet-plate technique similar to her other landscapes, are haunted. At times, the line of a horizon is barely visible between a dark sky and dark ground; ripples texture hills and sky like doomsday clouds.

Her photos of Sharpsburg, where the 1862 Battle of Antietam that left 23,000 dead took place, look nearly apocalyptic, with a black sun and clouds eroding the image. Mann, in these distortions, is showing us what we can’t see. Ghosts, maybe. She is recording not just the land itself but the memory and imagination that it holds. In their soft, manufactured, black-and-white fog, the photos seem to speak to both the romance and violence that hangs in the air of these landscapes and so in the South’s memory of itself post-Civil War.

In her 2015 memoir “Hold Still,” Mann wrote about the treachery of memory and its “malignant twin,” the treachery of photography.

“Once photographed, whatever you had ‘really seen’ would never be seen by the eye of memory again,” Mann wrote. “It would be cut … from the fat life of time.” Mann documents not only the decay of a place — of a landscape that exists half in memory — but the decay inherent in photography as a medium.

Photography is an attempt to remember something — we want to hold a moment still in time. I do, at least. Photos always feel kind of melancholy to me, as if filled with a longing for what they have frozen. Mann’s images just make that melancholy more visible. But they also make clear the unreliability of photography and memory, the vulnerability of both to distortion.

More than anything, Mann’s images ask how we remember ourselves; how both landscape and photography hold memory and how both ultimately fall flat.

Art columnist Nadia Hsu PO ’27 is from Austin, Texas. She is chalant.

The run was a success by every measure: Through word of mouth and constant marketing throughout the schools, the IDEAS club managed to bring the 5C community together for a beautiful day, to run for a cause. Over 200 students, faculty and community members participated; organizers estimated the run has collectively raised over $4,000 for mutual aid.

Organizer Luis Mendoza CM ’25 appreciated the continued support of students and community members.

“On top of helping plan the event, I was able to run with everyone as well,” Mendoza said. “We had a huge group of runners this year and I overheard great conversations about people who participated last year and are excited to continue supporting the event.”

The route began from Pitzer’s Clock Tower Lawn, winding through Pomona College and Claremont McKenna College before circling back to Pitzer. Volunteers were stationed along the trail to guide runners. Crowds cheered

runners on as they crossed the finish line to collect their medals. After runners finished the marathon, they enjoyed delicious pupusas by Sivar Treats, a family-owned business.

“We sold out of food and shirts, which shows how many people really wanted to be part of this event,” Kassandra Soriano Martinez said. “Seeing the community together, being able to cheer people on was really fun and seeing so many people support our event made me feel like we belong and are supported by our peers and community members.”

Why ‘True Stories’ is the greatest Western surrealist musical slice-of-life satire ever made

GERRIT PUNT

In 1986, David Byrne made a movie. I don’t know if that’s common knowledge or not. I saw it for the first time only a month ago, but in the weeks since, it’s wriggled its way deep into my psyche and for the life of me, I can’t get it to leave.

The movie in question is called “True Stories” — an odd little cinematic earworm that could only come from the mind of the New Wave’s most whimsical frontman.

It’s really not much more than a smattering of vignettes — tabloid snippets documenting the unusual denizens of a tight-knit Texas town as they skitter about their lives in preparation for their community’s sesquicentennial “Celebration of Special-ness.” There is, of course, the wealthy woman who never leaves her bed, the rabidly conspiratorial preacher and the compulsive liar allegedly responsible for half of Elvis’s catalog. These are the eccentrics around whom the film orbits, a townful of side characters promoted to major players.

Perhaps the most curious character is Byrne’s, who — draped in his finest rodeo threads — narrates the film; an observant out-of-towner made

small against the grand Texas prairie by his expansive hat and proximity to John Goodman’s unwavering panda-bear frame. He is our gussied-up Texas tour guide, the glue that sticks these loosely bound scenes together and a veritable wellspring of charming comments and contemplative observations.

There are musical numbers and church sermons and dinner table theatrics. There is an auctioneering contest and a procession of shriners in their little red buggies. There are no grand narratives and few full-circle arcs. These disordered sights and sounds are connected by a solid throughline of kitsch sensibilities, an abiding dedication to meditation and a road-trip compulsion to pull aside and soak in the sights.

And frankly, that’s more than enough. “True Stories” begs an intriguing question: Can a movie really just be a bunch of odd characters and good quotes and musical numbers? Is that enough?

It answers itself in turn with a resounding “Yeah, why couldn’t it?”

I think sometimes we, as film watchers and filmmakers and film-talk-abouters, have a proclivity to apotheosize plots — strong, sound, lean ones where no thread gets left untied and no hero goes un-journeyed.

There’s value in that I suppose — you can make good things from good molds — but, to use a folksy colloquialism of my own, there’s more than one way to skin a cat. I make movies in my free time, just short films. It’s something I enjoy despite the gray hairs it gives me. I like to write. I want to write better. I’ve turned to books on writing, YouTube, screenwriting gurus, people who speak with a sense of authority on the rubrics of good storytelling.

Truth be told, there’s something that always feels mildly poisonous about it. The more I seek to understand the secret rules of storytelling, the more writing as a practice feels rigid and self-conscious and uninspiring. I think that the more I do it, the more I run the risk of never being able to make something like “True Stories.”

David Byrne never made a narrative feature film before or after this. His role as a filmmaker is tertiary to his roles as a musician and wearer of big suits, though I don’t think “True Stories” is as brilliant as it is in spite of that. A first-time filmmaker nursed on the tenets of “the great stories” could never make this. It’s too unencumbered, too lyrical.

It’s filmmaking through musicianship. It’s got the structure of a song — a conglomerate of great seemingly disparate verses welded together by thematic coherence and a unified sound.

What a wonderful way to tell a story.

The tagline for the film describes it as “a completely cool, multipurpose movie,” and I think that’s an apt description. “True Stories” is a catalog of music videos. It’s a bundle of memorable quotes and thoughtful musings. It’s a playful, surrealist satire on middle-America kitsch and ’80s consumer optimism. It’s so disarmingly fond of the people and places it’s prodding that it serves double-duty as a love letter. It’s also a reminder, if for nobody else but me, that exceptional stories take the form they need to. In that regard, “True Stories” is, perhaps, the greatest kind of art there is — the kind that makes great art seem more worth making.

I think about John Goodman singing “People Like Us” almost every single day. It keeps me going.

Gerrit Punt PO ’24 is a lifelong fan of David Byrne and big cowboy hats. This is his last article for The Student Life. He hopes you enjoyed it.

ESHA CHAMPSi • THE STUDENT liFE

NADIA HSU

Pitzer College’s Clock Tower lawn was lively on April 20 as students, faculty, and community members gathered for the annual iDEAS 5K Dream run.

FrAME rATiNG

Art columnist Nadia Hsu PO

’27 explores what Sally Mann’s photographs tell us about memory.

TANIA AZHANG

The globalization question

A few weeks ago, a Pitzer College friend of mine visited me in Paris from Scotland. We discussed the study abroad semester wrapping up and how much we’ve learned while abroad.

Ultimately, we both came to the same conclusion: Anyone who decides against studying abroad is an idiot.

Before the juniors who decided to stay on campus get all up in arms, I want to clarify that we’re JOKING. Please calm down.

There are many reasons one might or might not choose to study abroad. Some are international students who are already abroad by virtue of studying in the United States. Other students feel they are sufficiently worldly because of past travel experiences. Some just don’t feel like it. I get it.

But with study abroad, the world opened up to me. The experience (and privilege) of going from country to country with nothing but a carry-on, sitting for two hours on a flight and suddenly finding yourself in a new place with a completely different

climate, language, culture and history is a joy like nothing else I’ve experienced.

And so, for my final study abroad column, I come to you with my ultimate conclusion about all this chaos. How has my perception of the world changed?

This past semester, I’ve visited the urban antiquity of Athens, the windy highlands of Edinburgh and the tropics of Sevilla. Four countries — counting France — in as many months. I’ve also met people from Sweden, Australia, Turkey, Brazil and many other countries through my academic program.

Having been exposed to people from around the world, I can’t help but reminisce on the question I posed in my very first article about how different disparate countries can really be in the age of the internet and globalization.

In their book “Global Governance,” David Held, Anthony McGrew, David Goldblatt and Jonathan Perraton propose that through radio, film, television and the internet, “people every -

where are exposed to the values of other cultures” at a rate like never before.

“Nothing, not even the fact that we all speak different languages, can stop the flow of ideas and cultures,” they said.

In a globalized world, powers like the internet and media transcend nation-states as their influence stretches the world over — thanks to TikTok, Instagram and other social media, as well as film and popular culture, a world culture has arisen.

This isn’t to say we have entered an era of global monoculture: The world is evidently wrought with instability and stratification. But I propose that we exist in a time where globalization and global stratification are taking place simultaneously. It all seems like a very sick joke.

I’ve encountered this global culture in my own travels.

Speaking to a random stranger in Sevilla, I mentioned that I was American.

“I love your country,” he said.

“The NFL, NBA, NASCAR, Major League Baseball. You guys rock.”

An Iranian-Swedish friend in Paris told me how much he loves the Lakers and American films.

“Heat,” “Goodfellas,” “The Matrix,” he could go on and on.

“Does it surprise you that I’m a Swedish guy who loves American culture?” he said. “I’m halfway across the world.” I told him “no,” because the same thing happened to me in Iran.

The world is a far cry from being truly globalized: We are war-ravaged and cultural disputes abound in every country.

But we speak a universal language. I was somewhat cognizant of this phenomenon by virtue of my upbringing in Iran. I know firsthand how far America’s soft power can reach. But to truly see it in practice in all of these different contexts, I realized that though the universal language exists, we take the music, the films and TikToks and interpret them according to our own culture.

We superimpose these cultural symbols into our own surroundings. And although

globalization is taking place, we are still wonderfully different.

Perhaps our universal language doesn’t homogenize us but rather provides us with the tools to understand each other.

After studying abroad, my perspective on the world, though not so radically different, has changed. I’m in awe of how similar and different we can be and I’m completely stupefied as to why one wouldn’t choose to see it for oneself.

As I retrace where our ancestors have tread for thousands of years, seeing the cultures, languages and monuments that testify to our beautifully historic existence, I feel I have lived a thousand lives.

Although we often lament our ultimate end, every human life is, indeed, a small infinity. To see the world is to witness the infinite lives we have collectively lived and to understand how far we are capable of going.

Columnist Tania Azhang PZ ’25 is currently studying abroad in Paris. She often wonders if Sartre was right about hell and other people.

‘Inside-Out as a Model for Constructive Dialogue’: Pitzer students and faculty discuss prison exchange program

NIKKI SMITH

All six members of the Pitzer College community who gathered to speak at Benson Auditorium agreed on one thing: The best classes they’ve taken weren’t at any of the Claremont Colleges, but in prison.

On April 22, Pitzer hosted “Inside-Out as a Model for Constructive Dialogue,” a panel reflecting on 10 years of the college’s program, as a part of the Presidential Initiative on Constructive Dialogue. The Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program involves Claremont faculty who teach courses at California Rehabilitation Center (CRC) in Norco, California, to both “outside” students from the 5Cs and “inside” incarcerated students.

The panel featured professors and former students of Inside-Out classes, who explored the liberatory nature of education inside prisons and discussed how to carry that transformative approach to community-building and pedagogy to the rest of Pitzer’s curriculum.

The Inside-Out model was developed by professor Lori Pompa at Temple University and was adopted by Pitzer in 2014. The Pathway-toBA program, created in 2020, allows incarcerated students to earn a bachelor’s degree from Pitzer through Inside-Out classes.

The panel consisted of Pitzer professor of sociology & secular studies Phil Zuckerman, Professor of Organizational Studies Barbara Junisbai, former “inside” students Bernie Hernandez PZ ’23 and Danny Camarena PZ ’23 and “outside” students Sahar Dabirian PZ ’24 and Siya Bhola PZ ’25.

The moderator, professor of political studies Nigel Boyle, asked the panelists to comment on whether the Inside-Out model facilitates more candid conversations about contentious issues compared to traditional classroom models.

Teaching his first Inside-Out course this semester in secular studies, Zuckerman discussed how the inclusion of incarcerated students led to a wider diversity of religious beliefs in the classroom, therefore

creating room for more interesting discussions.

While that may sound like a recipe for conflict, Zuckerman claimed that it was just the opposite.

“There was just a playfulness … and a certain grace that emerges in the inside classes,” Zuckerman said. “People don’t seem to be as on edge to offend each other. There’s a kind of openness to blunders and making mistakes … It’s the ideal setting to have a conversation about really personal and difficult things.”

Zuckerman felt that this willingness to risk saying the wrong thing has gotten more rare in Pitzer classrooms, a sentiment which several other panelists echoed.

“Students on campus are very pressured to be politically correct,” Bhola said. “The cancel culture is, I feel, a very real fear for Pitzer students. And inside the prison, the main difference is that people are more forgiving and open-minded … The discussion-based classes I’ve taken here have really taught me how to disagree with someone respectfully and be willing to hear the other perspectives.”

Pitzer President Strom Thacker created the Presidential Initiative on Constructive Dialogue in December due to concerns regarding students’ reluctance to discuss challenging topics. The initiative aims to program more difficult conversations on campus. Monday’s panel was the fourth and final event hosted by the initiative this semester.

Hernandez also appreciated the forgiving space created by Inside-Out classes. Now the assistant program manager at Pitzer’s Institute for Global/Local Action & Study, he participated in the Pathway-to-BA program while incarcerated at CRC.

“In a male prison, there’s an air of toxic masculinity that happens in the prison … It doesn’t allow for so much of an open dialogue in a classroom setting that wouldn’t result in consequences,” Hernandez said.

Because of the Inside-Out classes, the inside students created their own

guidelines for the group that would prevent conflicts outside of class.

“The outside students have to be there because they serve as a catalyst for how the results and the dynamic of the classroom becomes more progressive, how we create progress in this classroom, how we build stronger relationships behind the courage that we have with each other,” Hernandez said.

Another focus of the discussion was how to bring the elements that make the Inside-Out program so special — ideological diversity, open discussion and collaborative approach — to Pitzer’s other “outside” classes.

Dabirian discussed the impact of learning from the life experiences of the “inside” students. When learning about the AIDS crisis in a public health class, she was able to speak to other students who had firsthand accounts of its impacts on their communities. This people-first style made learning more impactful than the traditionally grades-focused approach of most elite institutions.

“For our final project, we are working on an intervention … for

the school-to-prison pipeline,” Dabirian said. “In my group, there are three … inside students, we have some parents represented. So, what would they like to see for their children? We have outside students who, not too long ago, were in school. So we’re able to get this very holistic understanding from a lot of different perspectives.”

Professor Junisbai, who has taught many Inside-Out courses in organizational studies, expanded on how a similar pedagogical style can be applied to other classes, emphasizing that a learning community that embraces lived experiences is vital.

“Community building and icebreakers are not just for the beginning of the semester,” Junisbai said. “In the end, if we want to be … more connected humans, then maybe the material is not always the most important thing. And I feel like sometimes when I say that, it seems a little non-rigorous. But it turns out that the hardest part is to be a human being and let other people be human beings. That’s the most rigorous part of education.”

A brief Q&A followed the panel discussion. By this point, several audience members who had been involved with the Inside-Out program had gotten emotional listening to the panelists’ testimonies.

Hernandez acknowledged one attendee who had teared up.

“Her emotion just trickled down to me and it made me feel that sort of sense of being a humanitarian and being a humanitarian was difficult in prison,” Hernandez said.

Attendee Kenneth Butler PZ ’22, who helped establish Pitzer’s Inside-Out Pathway-to-BA program, stood up and addressed Hernandez and Camarena, the formerly incarcerated members of the panel and added his story to theirs.

“I’m not just a college student, I’m a first-generation college student,” Butler said. “And I think that’s what gets us inside guys so invested in this, that we have this opportunity to have our voices heard. And we’re not just throw away people … The students who take the Inside-Out classes are looking for something different and they find that magic and here we are now.”

MICHELLE ZHANG

I’m not a big fan of the desert. Don’t get me wrong — I appreciate palm trees and have done my fair share of hiking through barren landscapes. But I’ll always remember the time my family’s car got stuck in a ditch in the middle of Death Valley. That might’ve been the starting point of my general ambivalence toward the wasteland. If given the choice between walking through the Mojave Desert or along the Pacific coast, I’d probably choose the latter.

Over this past year of living in Southern California, though, I have to admit that I’ve grown more fond of the Claremont landscape. I’ve become accustomed to the cacti and succulents; I’ve gotten used to pebbles and boulders; I still marvel at the sight of snow-capped Mount Baldy looming above campus. However, I’ve taken for granted the sheer variety of plants that thrive in the arid climate. When my friend and I decided to embark on a casual hike at the California Botanic Garden, I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect.

The California Botanic Garden is the largest botanic garden in the state that is solely dedicated to California-native plants. Encompassing 86 acres, it was established in 1926 by horticulturalist Susanna Bixby Bryant. It has since developed into an impressive collection of over 22,000 native species. The Garden hosts various events and classes, including yoga and wildflower walking tours.

As we walked into the Garden, I had a strange, idealistic vision that we’d encounter lush

An ode to the botanical

greenery and vibrant roses. My preconceived notions were immediately squashed. Stepping out of our Uber, I glanced around at the dry shrubland, which was composed of varying shades of tan and brown. As we walked through the entrance, we were met with an array of signs pointing us in different directions; the Redwood Grove on our left, the Channel Islands Garden on our right. Without any particular path in mind, we randomly chose one and began walking.

It was sweltering and I’d forgotten to bring a hat with me. I could feel the sun beating down on my neck, beads of sweat collecting on my forehead. In this moment of discomfort, I felt infinitesimally small under the unrelenting sky and strangely exposed due to the lack of shade. I was reminded of that fateful experience years earlier in Death Valley.

“Everything looks the same,” I thought, glancing around at the dense shrubbery. But did it? As I moved past the uncomfortable heat and tried to focus on what was around me, I started to appreciate the diversity in the landscape. Lining the path were fluffy stalks of chaparral yucca, spiky boojum trees and towering palms. I wasn’t surrounded by withered grass but instead by native shrubs and bushes which had learned to adapt to the dry heat.

I wasn’t in a wasteland — I was visiting a thriving habitat for native wildlife. Sure, the environment might not have looked exactly like the green

botanic gardens that I’m familiar with in Northern California, but it was an impressively vibrant ecosystem nonetheless. Realizing this allowed me to more deeply appreciate my surroundings, not only within the Garden but also around Southern California in general. If you’re itching to get off campus and touch grass (or, perhaps more aptly, shrubs) amid final assessments and reading week chaos, I recommend visiting the Garden.

It’s located just north of the Claremont Colleges on the other side of Foothill Boulevard; the entrance is directly to the right of the Claremont Collegiate Apartments (CCA). It’s a 10 minute walk from Harvey Mudd College and you can also take the Foothill Transit bus (Line 188) south of Pomona.

In addition, if you’re interested in getting involved directly, there’s also an opportunity for community engagement through the Garden’s volunteering pro -

grams. You can help with assisting garden guides or preparing dried plant specimens for the Garden’s collections. It’s worthwhile to better understand our natural environment and appreciate it despite the dry heat and occasional weekend storms.

My final piece of advice for you this semester? Go on a walk! You might just see something new.

Michelle Zhang PO ’27 is from the Bay Area. She’s a proud lefty and considers people-watching a hobby.

It was a phase, mom…

I began experimenting with alternative fashion in the summer of 2019, right about when TikTok took off. Alternative fashion is a broad umbrella term that encompasses various fashion movements and subcultures that deviate from mainstream, high street fashion — think emo, goth, punk and so on.

When summer break rolled around, I was finally able to dye my hair an unnatural color, which was forbidden in my strictly-conservative, no-jewelry, no-nail-polish, tweed-blazer-and-floor-length-woolen-skirt British boarding school.

I carefully selected a pinkish-purple color to adorn my already bleached hair and rocked it for a total of two months before cutting it all off into a bob upon my return to school.

Even though my hair may have looked “normal,” I returned to England with a whole new “e-girl” wardrobe — a fashion trend that was making its rounds across TikTok and the fad from which many modern emos and goths got their initial alternative fashion inspiration.

Multi-coloured barrette clips, neon fabrics, big ol’ eyeliner, fake freckles, at least two chains on each pair of pants, oversized graphic tees over hoodies and, of course, Billie Eilish concert merchandise. That was, regrettably, my look during my junior year of high school.

It wasn’t until the COVID-19 pandemic that I really went all out with my gothic era. Why? Well, let’s just say that very few of my peers were fanatics of my e-girl era and I often got teased about it at school and on social media. People were outraged by my choice of black lipstick and highly concerned about the amount of piercings I was acquiring.

Exploring your style during the pandemic lockdown is likely relatable to many of you — being shut up in our own homes with minimal social interaction drove many of us to spend countless nights scrolling through social media. Plus, being stuck at home with no one around you meant that it didn’t really matter how you looked, so you could test out new looks without fear of judgment. I know a lot of you are still traumatized by the horrid pandemic haircut that your mum gave you in the family kitchen.

The quarantine period allowed me to research brands and stores that catered to the gothic aesthetic, since this style was not particularly mainstream. I was able to perfect my eyeliner skills, buy some 5-inch stompers and lots of spiky jewelry to make a statement for my final year of high school.

Analyzing my senior year of high school style choices today makes me realize that many of my motivations stemmed from a frustration with conformity and a need to rebel.

My parents have always been extremely supportive of all of my fashion endeavors, yet my school and my classmates wanted to restrict my expression in a set of standards.

A few weeks ago, I realized that I hadn’t put a dark, alternative outfit together in a long time. So, I dressed myself in my usual leather vest and chunky platform boots for my morning class. When I looked at myself in the mirror, however, I felt uncomfortable. I felt like I was forcing myself to do something I did not want to do for the sake of keeping up an image that I was ready to let go of.

When I dressed goth, both in high school and during the beginning of college, my choices were all about making a statement.

“Look at me,” my outfit choices said. “I know you don’t like this, but I don’t care, I’m going to do it anyway.”

Today, this attitude feels childish to me. I don’t need to prove a point through my fashion. Plus, when I feel like being a little controversial and outrageous, ironic fashion seems to do a better job.

Even some of the articles I wrote for this column a year ago make me cringe. In my early writing days, I was anxious to fully transition my style because the people around me knew me as the “goth girl” and I felt I would lose my identity if I lost that style of dress.

My own rebellion against rules became a type of conformity and

regulation that I imposed on myself. Perhaps the lack of regulation on self-expression I experienced in college is the reason I no longer feel attracted to alternative fashion. I have rarely received negative reactions to my gothic outfits in Claremont. This is a good thing, but it also means that whenever I do dress goth, it doesn’t seem to serve a purpose — I am not fighting against a principle and I don’t feel like myself.

It is not that I think that alternative fashion is not attractive or fashionable. I still love seeing other people wearing all black to an 8 a.m. class in the scorching California heat — it’s just that I am no longer that person. I don’t think that my fashion transition has much to do with aging or wanting to look more mature; rather, I just feel that I have outgrown the version of myself that enjoyed being goth.

Last week, I cleared out my closet and donated almost all of my gothic clothing to local thrift stores, keeping just a few pieces as mementos of my teenage fashion journey. We all go through phases in fashion, especially during our teenage years. I have no regrets about how I looked or the money I spent building my alternative wardrobe.

To all my goth rock stars out there — keep doing what you’re doing and don’t let anybody tell you otherwise. But if you feel inclined to move on and leave your emo days behind, like I did, don’t feel anxious or guilty about it. Clothing is supposed to make you feel good about yourself. If it is not doing that for you anymore, then maybe it’s time for a visit to Goodwill.

Elizaveta (Lisa) Gorelik CM ’25 is from Moscow, Russia. She is ecstatic to spend the upcoming summer in non-black, heat-attracting clothing.

QUiNN NACHTriEB • THE STUDENT liFE

SASHA MATTHEWS • THE STUDENT liFE

LISA GORELIK

FASHiON BiBlE

Post grad doesn’t have to be all panic

KLARA JACOBS

Since graduating from Pitzer College in December, I’ve felt like a salmon swimming upstream. Or, more often than not, floating and falling backwards in the current.

It’s easy to panic in the unavoidable waters of change postgrad. But, contrary to the title of one of the most sought-after self-help books and most popular TikTok sounds at the moment — “The Panic Years” — I’ve been learning through trial and error to find meaning in the chaos of these first few months.

The post-grad job search is the most daunting beast you will encounter after throwing your cap in the air.

It’s natural to feel overwhelmed and scared while looking for the next step in your life journey. Opening a dialogue about your feelings is helpful because, as you will discover, everyone is stumbling along in an attempt to sort out our next steps. You are not alone, and there are key steps you can take to reduce the all-consuming panic.

I’m definitely not a professional and am still figuring out how to lean into the discomfort of the “real world,” but have found that with these steps I have been able to move closer to my career and life goals, one step at a time.

If, like me, you haven’t lined up a job before walking across the graduation stage, the hunt begins in your months post-grad.

Take advantage of the Career Centers at the 5Cs! It’s never too late to ask for a Zoom meeting to help talk through your career goals and application plan. Meeting with someone who can help provide some direction will leave you feeling empowered and less overwhelmed.

LinkedIn has become my best friend — I’ve devoted more time to LinkedIn than all my other

social media apps by far. Swapping homepage apps is easy, but gaining momentum in networking has taught me a new level of fortitude and self-preservation.

A written elevator pitch and the confidence to hit send has carried me thus far, and since then I’ve become more confident in my value and potential.

I’ve learned that your network is there to support you — a literal net to fall into as you stumble around as a newborn adult. Don’t be afraid to lean into it!

While at first I felt apprehensive about asking others to make time for me, I’ve come to realize that networking is mutually beneficial. By making lasting and meaningful connections with fellow Pitzer grads, I’ve learned so much about different fields, gained insight and remained in contact with people doing the actual work.

Those I’ve been fortunate to speak to thoroughly enjoyed helping out a fellow 5C graduate — a win-win!

When it comes time to start applying, biting off chewable parts of the application and job search is much more doable than jumping into the deep end and floundering.

This becomes even more of a challenge when the rigid class-homework structure is removed post-graduation. On the days that I find it most challenging to get moving, I outline each detail — when I’ll be eating breakfast, to what time I’ll take a walk outside, to how many networking emails I’ll send and when.

While it may seem a bit overzealous, having a structure to fall back on provides the backbone for your new life. After all, we are not just our jobs — but the sum of the parts of our interests and passions, as well.

I make it a point to encourage myself to keep a hold of those passions — reading, music, hiking, travel — while still applying myself in the job search. And let’s be honest, this whole adulting thing isn’t always easy, so keeping some childlike wonder in your back pocket is a must.

It is important to remember that everyone has their own schedule and timeline.

The old adage “comparison is the thief of all joy” has rung especially true in my last few months. I’ve felt unaccomplished and ashamed watching my friends secure full-time jobs and move into their first apartments while I’m still applying for roles.

*Whispers* The sensory journey of ASMR

*Tapping fingernails, begins speaking in a whispered voice with sounds of rain in the background*

Hello, TSL readers!

*Tongue clicks*

*Crinkles napkin, takes a bite of apple, makes hand movement towards face*

I hope you are all doing well and I am excited to take you on this informative and sensory journey today.

*More tongue clicks, more tapping*

What do mouth sounds, tapping fingernails, roleplay, light patterns and ambient sounds have in common? They are all considered forms of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR).

If any of the actions mentioned above provided you with a tingling sensation that began on your scalp and moved down the back of the neck and upper spine, then ASMR has done its job — and it’s time we treat ASMR with respect.

I have been a proud proponent of the ASMR community for almost six years and I owe many a good night’s sleep to ASMR videos.

In my body media class my sophomore year, I presented ASMR as a body practice by screening a beloved video where FrivolousFox ASMR slowly whispered comforting affirmations to her listeners using a highly sensitive microphone. The class’ discomfort was evident. Of course, there is nothing wrong with disliking ASMR, but I was confused by the apparent undermining of ASMR’s impact as

a body practice. Sure, ASMR definitely seems outlandish in comparison to the usual body practices of yoga, meditation, tai chi and breathwork that my classmates presented. However, just because ASMR may not be my classmates’ cup of tea should not reduce its value as a body practice.

What many people fail to recognize is that ASMR serves the same purpose as all body practices: to emphasize the connection between the mind and body, reduce stress and focus on cultivating awareness of bodily sensations, movement patterns and breath.

Although the scientific research on ASMR is limited, there is evidence that proves ASMR is effective at lowering heart rate, easing insomnia and reducing symptoms of anxiety and depression.

ASMR’s positive physical and mental impact has even influenced certain professionals to incorporate ASMR into therapeutic practices.

For example, Curt Ramsey is a licensed counselor who provides ASMR therapy sessions for individuals and couples struggling with personal stress or relationship challenges.

Rebecca Benvie, an expert in somatic therapy, energy healing and ASMR, owns a practice in New York City called WhisperWave that offers ASMR therapy sessions. In the testimonials, clients raved about all of their senses being activated in an unbelievable way that left them feeling relaxed, safe and rejuvenated. Clearly, there are many people

that practice ASMR regularly to calm their minds and bodies. To invalidate ASMR is to invalidate these people’s body practices. ASMR as a body practice should be judged by the positive impact it has on its loyal community — not by its content.

FrivolousFox ASMR’s up-close whispering barely scratches the ASMR surface. ASMR triggers are more ubiquitous than people think. Natural sounds, such as water droplets, waves, or crackling wood, are popular for triggering ASMR. The noises and visuals of daily activities, such as page turning, preparing a meal and painting can trigger ASMR as well. Think about all of the times you’ve tapped your fingernails while thinking or waiting for something — you may not have noticed it, but you were practicing ASMR. Many of us are oblivious to the fact that we are enjoying ASMR in normal, everyday situations.

The body practices we choose to incorporate uplift us when we are at our most vulnerable. Calm, safe spaces are crucial for healing and the ASMR community has been a consistent source of relaxation for me. No matter what that body practice is, it is beautiful so long as it is restorative. Even if it involves listening to somebody take a bite from an apple.

Tess McHugh PO ’25 is from Denver, Colorado. She loves Ruth Ware’s murder mystery novels, Pepo Melo and Cowboy Carter.

But, what has helped me is acknowledging my own unique timeline.

There is no one-size fits all mold to “make it” in the postgrad world. I, for one, spent a month back home with my family before realizing that a change of pace was what I needed. Booking a one-way flight to London (on my credit card — please don’t read this, parents) was a terrifying leap in what has turned out to be the right direction.

While jumping the pond may not be what you need, something as small as finding a new hobby can feel tethering in the postgrad swirling waters. I suggest asking those older

VANESSA HO • THE STUDENT li FE

than you — parents, grandparents, community members —–about what they did in their first few months after graduating or even just what they were up to in their early 20s. In doing so, I have been regaled with stories of Woodstock, galavanting abroad, barista gigs and even working in a cement factory.

Knowing that there is no wrong direction — only forward direction — is reassuring and upholds the age-old truth that we are human beings, not human doings.

Klara M. Jacobs PZ ’23 is 111 days into her post-grad life, currently couch-surfing the UK, and is still making daily to-do lists while seeking out a full-time position.

A relationship isn’t ownership

ANJALI SUVA

It’s a bittersweet feeling when a close friend enters a new relationship.

Suddenly, you find yourself mourning all the free time you used to spend with them and the plans you make with them become less and less frequent — or more and more turn into dates (with you as the third wheel).

In romantic relationships, time with one’s partner becomes misplaced and is often prioritized over spending time with friends and family.

Our culture has encouraged the idea that a romantic relationship is a stronger, more essential bond that triumphs over all others. It’s the ultimate goal. Popular media is filled with songs, movies and books that portray romantic relationships as the key to a fulfilling life.

Although romantic love can be a powerful and fulfilling experience, I don’t agree that romantic love is inherently stronger or more important than the other types of relationships in one’s life. Why is a romantic relationship always the priority? And why shouldn’t it be?

Ownership and belonging are intrinsic to the standard monogamous romantic relationship. In these relationships, one person figuratively belongs to another. The feeling of being exceptional in another’s eyes is exhilarating. The idea of singular belonging is what prompts the general consensus that romantic love is more important than other relationships — because it’s exclusive. In return, the other friendships in one’s life lose significance.

In non-monogamous relationships, emphasis is placed on balancing one’s relationships with their multiple partners. Because more individuals are involved in these relationships, there is a greater need for constant communication and setting boundaries.

Similarly, those in monogamous relationships should balance their time and emotional energy across the different relationships in their lives.

When someone prioritizes their relationship with another person above everyone else, they run the risk of minimizing vital parts of their identity. People are influenced by their multitude of relationships and are defined by their unique roles in the lives of others. This is what shapes us into complex individuals. If these relationships are neglected, one can end up overly reliant on a singular person to validate them or give meaning to their life.

This mindset ultimately prevents individuals from spending time with other individuals that enable them to progress in different aspects of life.

It’s essential to view yourself as an individual first and foremost rather than as a partner. Your ability to function independently from your partner depends on how secure you are with yourself.

If you require a romantic partner to give meaning to your life, you will continue to find yourself in imbalanced relationships and continue to define yourself solely through your partner.

Instead of expecting a single person to bring us the most happiness, it’s far better to reap the benefits of relationships that honor every facet of ourselves — because we don’t deserve anything less.

Anjali Suva PO ’27 is from Orange County, California. She loves watching horror films, reading fantasy books and abusing em-dashes in her articles.

This exclusive, singular view of romantic relationships has run its course. For help, we need to turn to non-monogamous relationships — and see if the lessons extracted from them can be applied to monogamous ones.

SASHA MATTHEWS • THE STUDENT li FE

TESS MCHUGH

How migrant farmworkers bear the brunt of the climate crisis

KATE KING

There’s a good chance you’ve thought about where the food you eat comes from, especially if you consume a plant-based, locally sourced diet. The chance that you’ve thought about the people who produce the food you eat, however, is much smaller.

California’s Central Valley produces around 25 percent of the nation’s food supply. If you’re eating fruit or vegetables in the United States, especially in California, it’s more likely than not your food is coming from the Central Valley.

In the wake of ongoing climate change, farmworkers in the Central Valley are suffering and

by supporting large industrial farms that encourage poor working conditions, we are funding their exploitation.

Two of the biggest issues for workers in the fields are heat stress and air quality. Farmworkers, who are essentially all low-income and are often undocumented, are more than twenty times more likely than civilian workers to die from heat-stress-related illnesses.

Unlike many who make an hourly rate, most farmworkers are paid at a piece rate: Employers compensate them according to the number of boxes they harvest, rather than the time they spend in the fields. This means

many workers fear losing income if they take breaks, which makes them less likely to request medically-necessary rest periods. To protect themselves from the harsh sunlight and pesticides they are exposed to, many farm workers wear long clothing. This increases their risk of heat stress because protective clothing can increase the ‘feels like’ temperature by up to 27 degree Fahrenheit.

Given the lack of protection for undocumented workers, we can assume that things will only get worse as climate change progresses. Research indicates that upon a 4 degree Celsius increase in

temperatures, the average farmworker will work 62 days per year in what is classified as an “unsafe thermal environment” — a whopping 41-day increase from current estimates. Another primary issue is the life conditions outside of work.

The lack of housing infrastructure means that workers are subject to heat stress outside of the working day, as well.

A study conducted by Emory University and the Farmworkers Association of Florida in 2018 found that of those studied, 53 percent were dehydrated before their working day even began and more than 80 percent had dangerous body temperatures on at least one of the three days studied. Moreover, air conditioning is extremely scarce, which forces workers to live in triple-digit temperatures after long days out in the sun.

Housing costs, which were once covered by employers, have since become the workers’ responsibility — and 97 percent of seasonal workers listed their annual household income as less than $15,000. A survey conducted in the Coachella Valley illustrated that 30 percent of seasonal farmworkers live in situations “not meant for human habitation,” i.e. living outdoors, in cars, etc.

Living conditions for migrant farmworkers have moved beyond uncomfortable to borderline unlivable.

If conditions are already this bad for farmworkers in California, what will happen as temperatures rise and water supply dwindles? Is there anything we, as consumers, can do to intervene?

By continuing to eat the food that comes from farms that subject workers to horrific working and living conditions, we facilitate a market that promotes workplaces with inadequate

protections. Beyond advocating for sweeping climate and labor reform, you can support migrant farm workers through local community-based programs that aid rural communities in their adaptations to current conditions. These include small, ethically sourced farming initiatives.

One example is the Green Raiteros, a program in Huron, a town in the Central Valley, that provides an EV ridesharing service for people in the area. The state-funded program employs drivers at a starting rate of $18 per hour, contrasting with the gig worker model, such as a flat payout per ride without employment benefits, that companies like Uber and Lyft use.

By both reducing carbon emissions and providing sustainable jobs in the community, the Green Raiteros illustrate how efficiently resources could be used if allocated to the communities in California that are most vulnerable to climate change.

Supporting initiatives on campus that address the needs of farmworkers is also incredibly important. Get involved with 5C-wide organizations like the Claremont Colleges United Farmer Workers, or the Claremont Student Worker Alliance to help communities affected by climate change organize for better working conditions. Moreover, vote in elected representatives that support crucial measures like increases in funding for community-based initiatives, meaningful nationwide climate reform, immigration reform and labor reform.

Cease being complicit — your participation could provide substantial support for a farmworker’s life.

Kate King SC ’27 is from Ventura, California and Al Ain, United Arab Emirates. She loves tea nights, Word Hunt games and getting piercings.

What makes a protest ‘acceptable’

COOPER CRANE

On April 5, Pomona College’s administration called deputies from four surrounding police departments to arrest 20 students who were protesting at Alexander Hall. This incident shocked many at the Claremont Colleges, but looking at campus protests across the country, it’s clear that this escalation was only natural.

The unprecedented presence of police on Pomona’s campus on April 5 was deplorable and should rightfully be condemned. But I’m not here to talk about that. Instead, I want to draw attention to important facts about what these protests represent. The student activism happening today is about more than just Pomona and its administration. These protests reflect a larger problem within protestors’ rights — and reveal why protesting against Israel is so difficult.

In the aftermath of the militarization of Alexander Hall, the pressure for Pomona to divest from Israel has only increased. President Gabi Starr has deflected her responsibility, arguing in an email on April 15 that the issue of the suspensions is no longer in her hands.

Pomona’s administration is not acting alone. Last week, mass demonstrations at Columbia University were alarmingly broken up by riot police.

Notably, the language employed by the university’s administration — similar to Pomona’s — justifies the extreme intervention by disavowing the actions of protestors as antisemitic.

Why are protests against Israeli violence in Gaza being so intensely repressed?

Protests are meant to be disruptive. That is, in fact, the point of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience. The language around what is and is not acceptable action in protesting ignores the design to disrupt acceptability politics. After all, if the protests were not disruptive, they would be ignored.

When Pomona’s unions picketed two years ago, they strategically decided to picket during Family Weekend outside of Pomona’s Frary Dining Hall — a decision that brought them significant attention and contributed to their concessions in contract negotiations.

Protestors have always been seen as disruptive and labeled as nuisances by detractors, but that is the entire point. And it works.

Protestors’ rights to demonstrate are protected under not just the First Amendment, but several decades of jurisprudence and precedent — rights which are being rapidly rolled back in a process that is extremely selective.

Right now, protests of Israel are being repressed by the United States for historical reasons. The characterization of Pomona’s Palestinian Liberation movement has been extreme — in a way other protests on campus, like the union protests two years ago, have not been.

However, the things said today about Palestinian Liberation Pro -

testors and the Black Lives Matter movement have been said about protests against the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement and the AIDS crisis.

These patterns of repression have reemerged.

American investment in the Middle East has long supported Israel, starting during the Cold War, as a regional power supporting American interests. This investment has created deep financial and political ties, which many institutions like Pomona depend on.

To put it bluntly, because of colonial history, Israel has money. Palestine does not. And, the support for Israel and its government by college campuses is dependent on donor politics.

Last year, for example, multi-billionaire donor and trustee Marc Rowan — who is the CEO of the powerful equity group Apollo Global, which has significant financial ties to Israel — issued statements writing that they would cease to financially support UPenn if Liz Magill remained president. In response, Magill resigned, revealing the college’s reliance on donor support.

Additionally, students who have been given platforms to speak are overwhelmingly pro-Israel. This

means that they lean towards the stance held by conservative college administrations and their pro-Israeli donors.

The rhetoric from political pundits on the right has called on a narrative that frequently invokes an identitarian religious conflict: Christendom against Islam. Islam, however contradictory to this narrative, is a religion which is also steeped in Abrahamic tradition, like Judaism and Christianity.

Protests against Israel are not protests against Jewish individuals or especially Jewish Americans. This rhetoric is dangerous because it disturbingly conflates Jewish identity with Israeli politics. It also distracts from the real problem of Israel’s violence against Palestinians. Meanwhile, pundits supposedly from the left (including Pomona’s administration) invoke arguments judging acceptable politics and expression — all over a conflict in which thousands have been, and continue to be, killed.

Emotions are being misrepresented and student anger is being written off as irrational and unproductive, regardless of its cause.

The term “identity politics” is one I’m not eager to invoke, but I believe it encompasses much of what

is currently happening.

In his book “Elite Capture,” Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò shows that the distribution of power is often through systems of social identity that are captured by political elites to advance their own interests. The current ruling power has a vested interest in the violence in Israel continuing and they have hijacked the conversation about Israel to safeguard their power.

Protests against Israel have thus become a lightning rod for conservative commentators to deride the state of higher education.

The targeting of left-leaning college leaders who are sympathetic to Palestinian views is part of a larger so-called “culture war” that seeks to regress progressive agendas and maintain the conservative status quo.

Retaliation against students is part of this campaign.

Students who are protesting are now seeing their futures being threatened by colleges in an attempt to silence any discussion about Israel or its actions in Gaza. The threat of doxxing is being used as a real and intimidating tool to punish dissent and opposition to American policy.

To put it succinctly, resistance to Israel’s human rights violations and

violence in Gaza are tempered by a political system influenced by elites in which many actors, including Pomona’s administration, its faculty and its students, are forced to engage.

For these reasons, anti-Israeli protests are being intensely depoliticized through spurious and bad-faith arguments against protestors.

If Pomona genuinely seeks an open dialogue, we, as students, need to be able to bring these facts to bear.

We also need to accept that if the change we seek is truly what we desire, then we need to be prepared for Pomona’s administration — and the many institutions in the United States — to continue to oppose it.

This may well mean that the protests happening today will need to continue.

Civil disobedience and disruptive non-violent protest is not only justified, but maybe the only form of resistance we have left.

Cooper Crane PO ’24 is in his final semester of senior year. He came to Pomona with the intent to study imperial and transnational history and post-colonial ethnographies. He is deeply disturbed by Pomona’s role in supporting neo-colonial relationships and its administration’s denial of the violence taking place in Gaza.

Cooper Crane PO ‘24 explains how protests factor in larger political conflicts.

scripps needs to get its (sustainability) act together

MAYA MALEV

Scripps College illustrates itself to be an effortlessly sustainable institution. With extensive sustainability reports, a sustainability team, a composting program and the opportunity for students to provide feedback to administration on sustainability efforts, it’s easy for the college to take on the title. The reality, however, is overwhelmingly disappointing.

Taking credit for all of the sustainability efforts made by students, Scripps’ administration is failing to support and give credit to the students that actually make Scripps into a more sustainable place.

According to Scripps’ 2021-2022 annual sustainability report, the largest origin of carbon emissions from the college is due to purchased electricity. This contributed to 48 percent of total emissions, which was about 5,850 metric tons of carbon dioxide.

It truly is astonishing how much carbon we emit even though the then-President of Scripps signed the Climate Leadership Carbon Commitment in 2019 — a signature that was long overdue after all four other Claremont Colleges signed. Since this “commitment,” the college has failed to officially announce when it intends to attain carbon neutrality.

On an administrative level, Scripps promotes having a sustainability department devoted to implementing sustainability tactics on campus. This “team,” however, is made up of a single person with some sustainability interns, meaning that most of the sustainability measures on campus are achieved through unpaid student labor.

In reality, it’s student-run organizations like the Scripps Sustainabiliteam that have made most

campus sustainability measures possible. One such Scripps Sustainabiliteam initiative was a grass space survey that collected student opinion on preserving the different grass spaces that require a significant amount of water to maintain.

The results of the survey, which received 136 responses, revealed which grass spaces community members were willing to sacrifice in order to have a more sustainable campus.

As a campus covered in greenery, flowers and edible botanics, this survey was incredibly important for Scripps. The evergreen campus is an alluring factor

that draws in students and brings in money, but it also requires a significant amount of water for upkeep.

In the span of a single year, the annual sustainability report describes Scripps using 44 million gallons of water for the campus’ 32 acres of land. The sustainability tab of the Scripps website claims that 90 percent of lawns on campus have been switched to “low water Bermuda bandera turf.”

According to Marin Plut SC ’25, the student at the center of student sustainability at Scripps, the turf still requires a significant amount of water since it’s a non-native plant.

In tandem with the grass survey, these initiatives are proof that the Sustainabiliteam is committed to finding solutions to minimize unused grass spaces — correlation administration has continuously ignored.

Clearly, there is a massive disconnect between the administration’s and the students’ sustainability priorities. Yet another disconnect? Composting. When I arrived at Scripps, I was happily surprised by the accessibility of composting on campus. Composting is a simple and resourceful method to reduce waste and extend the life of food waste, but it is significantly more

difficult than just bringing your food scraps to the provided bins.

The Scripps website advertises that post-consumer food scraps are composted through Huerta del Valle and that between March 2023 and November 2023, Scripps diverted 35,000 pounds of food scraps to Huerta del Valle’s compost program.

According to Plut, Scripps’ partnership with Huerta del Valle ended in November.

What’s more, before it was severed, the partnership was facilitated and negotiated by students who, unsurprisingly, did not receive any credit.

Plut, who organized the original partnership between the college and Huerta del Valle, points out that the Scripps’ website’s false claim that compost still goes to Huerta del Valle is telling of the school’s priorities.

“The dining hall is so disconnected from the program that they don’t even know where it goes,” Plut said.

Administration does not prioritize climate action and is failing to even support students in their efforts to make change on campus.

According to Plut, students submitted a budget application to the Presidential Budget Advisory Committee requesting to fund the composting program, but it was denied.

The lack of funding that the Sustainabiliteam receives limits their ability to implement effective climate action. They need support, financially and otherwise, from administration — afterall, are we not “the future?” Administration, you tell me.

Maya Malev SC ’27 is an EA major hoping to make the 5Cs a more sustainable place through environmental action and advocacy.

—Akshay Seetharam HM ‘27 —Jasper Langley-Hawthorne CM ‘27

Senior night showdown: Sagehens women’s water polo make a splash against Athenas in potential SCIAC final preview

OWEN KOBETT

The Sagehens fluttered back home across Sixth Street with pomp and circumstance, taking their senior night to show the Athenas — once again — that shields and spears are no match for beaks and talons. On Saturday, April 20, Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) women’s water polo sent the Athenas home with ripped togas, beating Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) 12-5 to end the regular season with a perfect 12-0 conference record, cementing their No. 1 spot in the SCIAC.

Putting on a dominant showing for senior night, this victory marked another notch on the belt for the Hens, making it 12 years and 20 bouts since CMS last beat P-P. This includes victories over the Athenas in both last year’s SCIAC tournament and the 2023 NCAA Division III national championship final with a nail biting 14-13 overtime win.

The game began much more evenly matched than it ended with a back and forth affair keeping the crowd at the edge of their seats throughout the first half.

Sagehen goals from Kaylee Stigar PO ’25, Abigail Wiesenthal PO ’24 and Lulu Gaither PZ ’25 were quickly matched by Athena goals from Dara Schoolcraft CM ’25 and Isabel Del Villar CM ’26, leaving P-P with a thin 3-2 lead to end the first quarter.

Stigar said that despite the lead, the Sagehens were not happy with their level of play. However, she noted that they were prepared for this early setback and decided to change their mindset going into the rest of the game.

“One thing we say during or in-between quarters when we are not doing our best is play it quarter by quarter, second by second, play by play,” Stigar said.

Momentum in the second quarter mirrored that of the first, with Cooper McKenna CM ’24 putting away an equalizer with 6:07 left in the half. But the scoreboard wasn’t matched for long and Wiesenthal quickly answered with a goal, putting the Sagehens back up with the clock reading 4:04. The Hens held this one point lead into the third period.

Wiesenthal said she was proud of her team’s unity, emphasizing how their collective effort was essential to maintaining the edge in the water.

“I think that we just had to show up and be a team together,” Wiesenthal said. “I think it

is really important to play as a united front. When everyone is kind of playing individually it’s hard to work as a collective and at the end of the day, water polo is a team sport. We just showed up with a bunch of energy and a drive to win.”

After the half, P-P showed up with energy necessary to break out of the stalemate they had been locked in. Stigar scored twice before Brienz Lang PO ’26 stretched the Hens’ lead to 7-3 with 2:39 left in the third period. However, the Athenas responded only 20 seconds later, with a goal from Valerie Wraith CM ’27. Despite cutting into the lead, CMS was unable to put together a run and the score remained 7-4 to end the quarter.

Madison Lewis PO ’24 credit -

ed the teams’ success to an entire season of hard work, noting that their high-level play in transition is something they have been working on for months.

“We’ve always been locked in working as a team on offense and defense,” Madison Lewis said. “It’s just kind of getting the wheels turning and by the end of the season it’s [been] moving a lot smoother.”

The Sagehens got out of the gate fast in the 4th quarter with a goal from Gaither. This was followed by an Athena power play goal from Del Villar; however, Gaither scored again shortly after to extend the hen’s lead to 9-5 and CMS was unable to find the back of the net for the rest of the game. With 6:07 left in the game, Madison Lewis scored

P-P’s tenth goal and the game was rounded out by two more Sagehen goals, one from Gabby Lewis PO ’26 and a penalty shot from Gaither.

After this 12-5 win marked her final regular season game as a Sagehen, Wiesenthal, a senior, was confident in the program’s future going forward into next season.

“I’m just trying to soak it all in, I love water polo, so it means so much to me,” Wiesenthal said. “Once I graduate it’s harder to find places to play, [but] I’m so excited for that because next year’s team will have so many amazing sophomores, juniors and freshman so I know they will go and do amazing things.”

As a member of next year’s team Stigar had a slightly dif -

ferent perspective of the future. “I’m really looking forward to it, [but] sadly a lot of big players are graduating,” Stigar said. “Our team is just so happy and positive, we are all such good friends [and] I’m just excited to train in the summer and come back in the fall and get back in shape with each other.”

Looking forward, the Hens are hopeful for their 12th SCIAC championship and the possibility of a third consecutive NCAA title. Before that, on April 26, P-P will face Cal Lutheran and CMS will face Chapman in the SCIAC semifinals, setting up a possible Sixth Street SCIAC finals rematch where CMS will attempt to break the twelve year curse and P-P will look to win their third consecutive conference title.

Three-peat or deadbeat: Can Stags golf right the ship at SCIAC Championships after midseason struggles?

ADAM AKINS & ANDREW YUAN

Antlers up, hooves steady, Stags golf is working to stay focused as the season wraps up. The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) men’s golf team has been on a dynastic streak, earning back to back SCIAC championships and pushing to the national podium two years in a row, taking home bronzes from the NCAA Division III national championship in both 2022 and 2023. After handily taking SCIAC No. 1 by eight strokes, all signs pointed towards a three-peat. That was until SCIAC No. 2 on April 5, which saw the perennial champs down in the dumps with a fifth place finish. With the pressure of finals season coalescing with recent team struggles, the Stags are hurrying to right the ship in time to make it back to nationals on the back of strong team support.

and was a key part in the Stags easily taking the SCIAC preseason poll — attributed rocky performances to emotional team play.

“We’re really trying to dial it in and make more consistent team play,” Tan said. “It seems like most of our teammates really ride the lows of other members of our team when we’re having bad days and we really ride the highs of when we’re playing well.”

Jamison Tan CM ’27 — who hit four under par in his first collegiate round at the Redlands invitational

Upperclassmen have stepped up into the spotlight this year, including Michael Ma CM ’25

who, as captain, has been a centering force for the team, playing with a focus that helped the team through the highs and lows.

“There’s definitely interesting players to watch, like Ma,” Andy Sun CM ’26 said. “He’s definitely a leader in a team and his short game is very good. He plays with a lot of focus.” Ma led the team at SCIAC No.

2, tying third overall with par play, despite a team-wide slump and helped ensure that CMS was still in discussion for the postsea-

son tournament. Ma finished 10 positions above Tan, the next CMS representative, who putted four over par.

“[Ma] is kind of like my role model,” Tan said. “I looked at his profile before I came and he had a really good first year and I was like, that’s who I really want to be like and he’s really been a great captain for us. He was really supportive and everything, he always cheers for you. He’s been one of the guys I look up to.”

In good news for the Stags, SCIAC rule changes have diminished the effects of a poor showing at SCIAC No. 2. In past years, the champion has been decided by an aggregate of scores from SCIAC No. 1, No. 2 and the postseason tournament, but now the three-round SCIAC Championship determines the conference winner.

With the path back to nationals still clear, the Stags are hitting the green as much as possible while balancing school work and the impending flurry of finals week.

“Everyone is very busy with golf and school heading into the tourney,” Jack Rende CM ’26 said.

However, Tan said the team was still pushing each other to improve, holding each other accountable outside of practice and focusing on community building. Rende, who recently earned a spot on the team as a walk on, has been putting in the energy to help his teammates succeed.

“[Rende’s] really been pushing me a lot to practice,” Tan said. “He definitely works really, really hard and feels like he’s asked me to practice more often than I go ask him. So it’s really been pushing me to practice more. I really love that.”

The Stags are continuing to practice and grow as a team as they prepare to take to the green at the SCIAC Championships, which will be held at Los Serranos in Chino Hills from April 28-30.

Madison lewis PO ’24 celebrates a Sagehen success during their 12-5 victory over the Athenas on Saturday, April 20.

A world beyond Division III: The importance of going to professional sports games in college

“I am a diehard Colorado Rapids fan.”

Now there’s a sentence you don’t hear often. But it’s true — I am. I’ve lived in Denver and played soccer my whole life and my dad and I had season tickets to the Rapids for eight years before I came to college.

Saturday game days became a ritual that I looked forward to every week, when I could don my Cole Bassett jersey and Rapids scarf (signed by the 2016 team), eat very mediocre stadium popcorn and participate in the beloved Colorado tradition of booing the opposing team’s left back.

On a totally different but slightly related once-the-point-of-thisarticle-becomes-more- clear note, I’m also a big San Francisco Giants fan. This obviously does not stem from a hometown loyalty, but I love watching baseball and idolized (and also maybe had a small crush on) Buster Posey when I was younger and my first trip to Oracle park sealed the deal. My dad and I still go to San Francisco once a year to see a game, though we have yet to kayak in McCovey Cove … sigh, one day.

Any college student who’s a fan of professional sports knows that watching your team from your dorm room pales in comparison to the feeling of being at the stadium with your friends — a drink in hand (under 21 so non-alcoholic of course), hearing the various cheers and inevitably being incorrectly dressed for the weather. Even if you don’t religiously follow one team, going to games is an experience that doesn’t just have to do with the sport.

Not long into first semester I got a text from my older cousin, who came from Philadelphia to visit friends from college, asking me if I wanted to take the train into Union Station and go to a Dodgers game with him. Having only been on campus for a couple of weeks I was already so excited to go into LA, see my cousin and do one of my favorite activities

Athletes of the Week

ever: watch live baseball (even if it was the Dodgers). So I hopped on the Metrolink and traversed to downtown LA, eventually making my way to the stadium.

Pro-tip to anyone going to Dodger stadium for the first time: They’re pretty strict about bringing things into the park (my cousin had to stuff my bag down his pants before we walked through the metal detectors), so make sure to pack light.

Dodger stadium, with its low outfield, incredible view of Los Angeles and an insane organ player, is a pretty unique ballpark. Our seats were down the first base line, just beyond where you would be covered from the sun. Surrounded by rowdy, day-drunk Dodgers fans and their incessant chatter about Freddie Freeman, I felt relaxed. It was so fun hanging out with my cousin and his friends (who very kindly accepted the random college girl tagging along) away from campus for the day, even if I did come back exhausted and showing off awkward sunburn lines.

Fast forward to just a few weeks ago, when I was looking at the Giants schedule and saw they were headed down south for the Dodgers 2024 home-opening series. I thought about buying tickets, but didn’t know if any of my friends would want to go all the way to LA just to watch a baseball game (none of them care about the Dodgers, the Giants, or like baseball at all). But when part-time TSL staffer Harold Fuson PZ ’26 told me that he and his roommate, Jamie Miller PZ ’26, were going to game one, I saw my perfect opportunity to hang out with some cool people and watch the Giants dominate at the second coolest ballpark in California. So I invited my friend and the four of us drove (thank you, Harold and Jamie) to the park. I had a great night, even though the Giants lost and so did my friend, who was a little confused about why they were taking a break between innings

and cheered for both teams, but nonetheless enjoyed her Dodger Dog. Sometimes it can feel hard to get out of the Claremont bubble. While I love the bubble, and I love watching both P-P and CMS baseball mercy rule Redlands, sometimes going to Dodger stadium and throwing peanut shells on the ground and high fiving random adult men after a home run and eating nachos out of a helmet can be a very freeing experience. I urge anyone who wants to go to a game (LA

has no shortage of professional sports teams) to reach out to a friend, or even just someone you think would want to go with you — chances are you’ll have a lot of fun.

And for someone who’s only current source of money is the paper you’re reading right now, trust me when I say you can find seats within your budget and still have a good time.

The Rapids haven’t come to LA while I’ve been here, but when they do, I’m so ready to get back on the train, or in someone’s

car and make the trip with the few people at the 5Cs who would ever go to an MLS game. So if you ever see that girl in McConnell wearing a Rapids jersey on Saturday nights, just know that she loves Pitzer, but would rather be at BMO stadium watching Colorado destroy LAFC.

Charlotte Renner PZ ’27 is from Denver, Colorado and is quite possibly the biggest Colorado Rapids fan living in California. She is hoping that writing this article will secure her a job with the team after college.

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps

CM ’24

Men’s Baseball

CMS P-P

Friday, April 26

Softball @ Pomona-Pitzer

Baseball @ Caltech

Men’s Tennis @ Caltech

Julian Sanders CM ’24 has been on an inhuman pace to close out this season, batting an unreal 0.538, reaching base over half of the time, in each of his last four games. This performance included a three game series sweep against Chapman where his solo homer kept the Stags above the water line in an 8-7 final game. This hot streak is on pace to have Sander’s final season be his best thanks to a team leading batting average, 42 ticks above his previous season high, and the first selection to D3baseball.com Team of the Week by a Stag this season.

Pomona-Pitzer

Lulu Gaither

PZ ’25

Women’s Water Polo

Lulu Gaither PZ ’25 revved the gas at the SCIAC playoff determining sixth street water polo showdown, locking down first seed in the postseason and the regular season title thanks to dominance in sprints and control in the pool. Gaither drove the offensive forces of P-P team contributing to more than half the Sagehens’ scoring total with four goals and three assists to go with two steals and three won sprints, beating Claremont-Mudd-Scripps to settle the season and earn a 12-5 win.

This was a career performance for Gaither, setting personal records for goals, assists and points against her rival Athenas.

Women’s Water Polo vs. Chapman Saturday, April 27

Friday, April 26 Softball vs. Claremont-MuddScripps Baseball vs. Chapman

Women’s Water Polo vs. Cal lutheran (SCiAC Tournament)

Saturday, April 27

Women’s Track and Field @ SCiAC Championships

Women’s Track and Field @ SCiAC Championships

Men’s Track and Field @ SCiAC Championships

Baseball vs. Caltech (Double header)

Women’s lacrosse @ Chapman

Men’s Track and Field @ SCiAC Championships Baseball @ Chapman (Double header)

Women’s lacrosse vs. Cal lutheran

Softball @ Claremont-MuddScripps (Double header)

Softball vs. Pomona-Pitzer (Double header)

Women’s Tennis vs. Pomona-Pitzer

Men’s Tennis vs. Pomona-Pitzer

Sunday, April 28

Women’s Track and Field @ SCiAC Championships

Men’s Tennis @ Claremont-MuddScripps

Women’s Tennis @ Claremont-MuddScripps

Sunday, April 28

Women’s Track and Field @ SCiAC Championships

Men’s Track and Field @ SCiAC Championships

Men’s Golf @ SCiAC Championships

Women’s Golf @ SCiAC Championships

Women’s Water Polo @ SCiAC Tournament

Julian Sanders

CHARLOTTE RENNER

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it’s time to get out of your dorm room and into a stadium, eat some nachos, and be a real fan.

RegisterNow!

Six-Week Session: May 20–June 28, 2024

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AMST 012: Intro to Race, Ethnicity, and American Cultural Studies

AMST 012: Intro to Race, Ethnicity, and American Cultural Studies

ANTH 002: Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology

ANTH 002: Introduction to Sociocultural Anthropology

ANTH 055: Reproductive Justice

ANTH 055: Reproductive Justice

CGS 010: Introduction to Critical Global Studies

CGS 010: Introduction to Critical Global Studies

CGS 050: Power and Social Change

CGS 050: Power and Social Change

CHLT 013: Intro to Caribbean Studies

CHLT 013: Intro to Caribbean Studies

CSCI 004: Introduction to Computer Science for Non-Majors

CSCI 004: Introduction to Computer Science for Non-Majors

EA 089: California Beaches

EA 089: California Beaches

ECON 052: Principles of Microeconomics

ECON 052: Principles of Microeconomics

ENGL 047: The Human Condition: A Longform Journalism Practicum

ENGL 047: The Human Condition: A Longform Journalism Practicum

PHIL 036: Gender, Crime & Punishment

PHIL 036: Gender, Crime & Punishment

PHIL 039: Philosophies of Place

PHIL 039: Philosophies of Place

POST 030: Introduction to Comparative Politics

POST 030: Introduction to Comparative Politics

POST 040: Introduction to International Politics

POST 040: Introduction to International Politics

POST 091: Statistics and Data Analysis for Politics

POST 091: Statistics and Data Analysis for Politics

POST 135: Political Economy of Food

POST 135: Political Economy of Food

PSYC 010: Introduction to Psychology

PSYC 010: Introduction to Psychology

PSYC 101: Brain and Behavior

PSYC 101: Brain and Behavior

PSYC 103: Social Psychology

PSYC 103: Social Psychology

PSYC 194: Seminar in Social Psychology

PSYC 194: Seminar in Social Psychology

HIST 098: Palestine and Israel: A History of the Conflict

HIST 098: Palestine and Israel: A History of the Conflict

LGCS 007: Writing Systems

LGCS 007: Writing Systems

MATH 052: Introduction to Statistics

MATH 052: Introduction to Statistics

MS 056: Digital Mythologies

MS 056: Digital Mythologies

ORST 151: Participatory Action Research

ORST 151: Participatory Action Research

SECU075: History of Atheism/Freethought

SECU075: History of Atheism/Freethought

SOC 030: Deviant Sex Cults

SOC 030: Deviant Sex Cults

SOC 183: Consumer Society and Culture

SOC 183: Consumer Society and Culture

SPAN 002: Continuing Introductory Spanish

SPAN 002: Continuing Introductory Spanish

SPAN 033: Intermediate Spanish

SPAN 033: Intermediate Spanish