VOL. CXXXVI NO. 3

CMC cuts science majors, replaces with ‘Integrated Sciences’ program

KAHANI MALHOTRA email saying that the major he initially applied for would no longer be offered.

Beginning with this year’s freshman class, students at Claremont McKenna College will not be able to pursue majors in specific STEM fields including chemistry, neuroscience or biology. Instead, the majors have been replaced by a single “Integrated Sciences” major. The change, which follows CMC’s decision to pull out of the joint W.M. Keck Science Department, has prompted concern and frustration among first-years on campus.

According to Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences (KDIS) webpage, the new major is centered around human health, the brain and the planet.

“The program is designed to offer CMC students an exceptionally strong background in the sciences using innovative pedagogies and curricular design,” the page reads. “It leverages both experimentation and computation as powerful approaches for discovery.”

For some first-years like Gabe Gardner CM ’28, the change came as a surprise. When he committed to CMC in December 2023 through the college’s binding Early Decision program, he was under the impression that he would be able to pursue a major in Environment, Economics, and Politics (EEP) — formerly one of the college’s most popular science majors, along with Science Management.

Gardner realized this was not the case last spring — several months after he’d committed to CMC — when he received an

“It was a big shock for me,” he said. “CMC was my dream school because of the major.”

Before this change, Gardner prepared for the major he thought he could pursue, even meeting with current students

in the major and talking to professors about it.

“I decided [at] the beginning of my [high school] junior year that CMC was my dream school, so I’d known about the major for a while,” he said. “I researched EEP for a year.”

William Wales CM ’28, who also applied to CMC as an EEP

major, described how he was “rolled over” into the Integrated Sciences major upon arriving.

“I wish I had this information sooner because I didn’t really come to terms with this change until 48 hours before class registration,” he said. Wales mentioned how he

heard rumors that KDIS was considering reinstating the EEP and Science Management majors through sessions on the new Integrated Sciences department and discussions with faculty members. “I wish there were some kind

See SCIENCE on page

Hispanic Heritage Month celebrated across campuses

KEEANA VILLAMAR

Sept. 15 marked the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month, which celebrates over 20 Hispanic and Latinx communities around the world. Across the 5Cs, various clubs and organizations are hosting events and introducing new cuisines to dining halls to celebrate.

Kicking off the month, students at Pomona College said they are planning to celebrate through various parties.

“I know there’s a ‘Carnival’ party happening later this month, [and] I plan on going with one of my friends who is part Brazilian/ Japanese,” Jacob Zarate PO ’27 said. Chicano Latino Student Affairs (CLSA) is an affinity group for Latinx students at the 5Cs, one of many organizations that provide resources and support for Latinx students. Other organizations include Scripps College’s Cafe Con Leche, Claremont McKenna College’s Mi Gente and Pitzer College’s Latinx Student Union (LSU).

Joseline Aguilera CM ’27

shared that on the first day of Hispanic Heritage Month, members of Mi Gente and other Latinx students gathered together to celebrate. Aguilera, a CLSA sponsor, added that more events are in the works.

“For CLSA, we’re also having an event towards the end of Hispanic Heritage Month where we come together to celebrate all of Latin America,” Aguilera said. “We’ll have tables, food and knickknacks to represent all the different cultures.”

On Pitzer’s campus, LSU hosted several events to commemorate the start of Hispanic Heritage Month. This included a themed “Snackie,” a weekly Pitzer tradition, where students enjoyed various foods from a wide array of Latinx cultures.

The organization also hosted an “LSU in the Kitchen” event, where students cooked tostones at the Pitzer Demon -

See HERITAGE on page 3

Mid-autumn festival lights up the 5Cs

The Mid-Autumn Festival is a cherished tradition commemorating harvest in many Asian cultures. Held annually on the 15th day of the eighth month of the Chinese lunar calendar, the festival fell on Tuesday, Sept. 17 of the Gregorian calendar this year. Students across the 5Cs gathered to celebrate, participating in festivities such as lantern-making, mooncakes and reflection, uniting international and non-international students alike in a shared appreciation of the holiday.

On the evening of Friday, Sept. 20, about 100 students gathered at Claremont McKenna College’s Cube to honor the festival by setting paper lanterns atop the surrounding pool. The annual event was co-hosted by the Claremont Chinese Students and Scholar Association (CSSA) and CMC’s Asian Pacific American Student Association (APASA). Open to both Chinese and non-Chinese students, the event offered mooncakes and lantern-making.

Chinese folklore honored the legend of the moon goddess Chang’e with mooncakes, a pastry filled with sweet bean paste or salted egg yolk, which are often shared with extended fami -

ly and friends. Similarly, lanterns symbolized the lighting up of paths to good fortune and prosperity. Students wrote their wishes on the paper edges and placed them in the shallow water, watching the illuminated red lanterns floating underneath the moon.

Though she missed her hometown festivities, Michelin Ma PO ’28 said she was glad she could celebrate with this new community.

“I really liked sitting there with my friends and reflecting on my wishes for this new season,” Ma said. “I felt connected and very satisfied.”

Historically, CSSA hosted this event on a smaller scale. However, this year’s collaboration with APASA brought an unexpectedly large turnout.

“We thought it was going to be a small, warm event,” Felix

See MID-AUTUMN on page 4

Scan here to listen to The Splash, TSL’s news analysis podcast. Hosted by Ben Lauren PZ ’25 and Dania Anabtawi PO ’26.

ISABELLA ZHU

ANJALI RAO • tHe StUDeNt LIFe

science majors at Claremont mcKenna College, leaving some students frustrated.

JIAYING CAO • tHe StUDeNt LIFe

Students, affinity groups and dining halls at the 5Cs are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month through various forms of celebration.

SASHA mAttHeWS • tHe StUDeNt LIFe

ISAbeLLA ZHU • tHe StUDeNt LIFe

The 5C community celebrates the Mid-Autumn Festival.

SCIENCE:

Integrated sciences major prompts frustration among first-years

Continued from page 1

of official policy on whether these majors are coming back next year,” Wales said. “I’m taking chemistry right now to keep a major that might not even be an option later on.”

While students can recreate the Science Management or EEP major by dualling in Integrated Sciences and a humanities subject, doing so would prevent them from pursuing a specific track within Integrated Sciences.

“There isn’t really a dual major you can do that can fulfill what EEP promised to people,” Gardner said. “It’s imperative to look into bringing [it] back.”

Gardner is now pursuing a Government and Classical Studies major at CMC, although he still wants to combine environmental and political studies in his academics.

“I think I can still go on the same route, it’s just less of a direct [one],” he said. “I have to take electives and other classes to fulfill the education I would have received in EEP.”

The KDIS website elaborates on options for CMC students who are still seeking a pure science major.

“As a member of The Claremont Colleges, CMC students wishing to major in a science field other than Integrated Sciences can request a major at the W.M. Keck Science Department, Harvey Mudd College, or Pomona College,” the site reads. “Acceptance into those majors is determined by those programs and is not guaranteed.”

Unlike those in the class of 2028, Leo Sundstrom CM ’25, who declared his major before this year’s change, can continue pursuing the Science Management major. Though initially thrown off by its elimination, Sundstrom feels optimistic about the change, “I was kind of surprised and bummed,” Sundstrom said. “But the more that I’ve thought about it, CMC is differentiating themselves and pushing the envelope in a lot of different aspects of what it means to be a university.”

Four students forced to relocate from Oldenborg dorm accommodations to make room for isolation housing

The unexpected relocation of students from Pomona College’s Oldenborg dormitories to make space for isolation housing has sparked frustration and concern among students over the school’s handling of on-campus housing.

On Tuesday, Sept. 10, four students living in Oldenborg dorm accommodations were notified via email that they would have to vacate their rooms by Friday, Sept. 13.

“Due to the housing needs of the college, you are being administratively moved out of the Oldenborg 307/309 double spaces,” Director of Campus Life Operations Josh Scacco wrote in a Sept. 10 email to them.

Eze Iheanacho PO ’26, one of the four relocated students, expressed frustration at having to move on such short notice and questioned the college’s approach to housing.

“It’s clear that they are

pushed to the brink with the housing crisis,” Ileanacho said. “As we get more people and more students every year and we’re not building more housing, people will not be happy with having to stay in these cramped rooms.”

Erick Diaz PO ’27, who was also relocated, said that he didn’t select to live in Oldenborg but was assigned to a double room there during the summer, despite initially wanting a single room.

“At the end of last year, I got a late housing time, so when I got to choose housing there weren’t any open spots [left anywhere], so I got deferred,” he said. “Two to three weeks before school started, I got my housing assignment, and I was put in a suite in Oldenborg.”

Diaz was relocated to a single room in Harwood Court and expressed confusion about the situation.

“I don’t think there was a big downgrade in terms of housing,” he said. “I was just confused why they went through the trouble of putting all four of us in Oldenborg because if the singles were

always open, why weren’t we just put in the singles in the first place?”

Pomona’s Oldenborg Language Hall — which houses the Language Tables program, as well as 140 students in dormitory facilities — has previously been the subject of much debate surrounding Pomona’s housing.

In February 2023, a TSL report found that a surge of Oldenborg housing applications was due to a desire for its coveted amenities. Students cited the fact that Oldenborg was one of only five dorms on campus out of 14 total with options for single rooms as well as air conditioning. In an email to TSL, Scacco said that the relocations earlier this month were part of a normal administrative procedure to ensure the availability of isolation housing to quarantine students infected with COVID-19 for the 2024-25 school year.

“Residents agree that, in managing the best use of the college’s facilities, Pomona can perform administrative moves,” Scacco

said. “Recent administrative moves involved shifting 4 students from waitlist double rooms into single occupancy rooms with a typical 2-3 day moving timeline.”

According to these students, they had received no prior communication from the Pomona Office of Housing and Residential Life regarding this change and were offered little support.

“The staff that I talked to at Residential Life made it clear to me that they did not want to help me with the moving process,“ Iheanacho said. “They weren’t even willing to provide me with a moving cart.” Diaz echoed similar sentiments, expressing frustration over the logistics of moving.

“Since they placed us on the third floor of Oldenborg, I had to move everything back down three flights of stairs, and then move into my room at Harwood, which is on the second floor,” he said. “The idea of carrying all my things up and down so many stairs was really daunting, and I was confused, and there was no help [from Residential Life].”

‘Casual Conversation with Ven. Pomnyun Sunim’: Korean Buddhist monk discusses identity, happiness and suffering at Q&A

AUDREY PARK

Editor’s note: The speaker, Pomnyun Sunim, spoke in Korean during the event, and an interpreter was present to translate.

On Friday, Sept. 21, Pomnyun Sunim, an acclaimed Korean Buddhist monk, delivered a public talk titled “Casual Conversation with Ven. Pomnyun Sunim,” at Claremont McKenna College’s Bauer Center Pickford Auditorium. At the event, he provided guidance to audience members facing personal dilemmas and advised them to avoid self-suffering. Sunim, the 2022 Ramon Magsaysay Award recipient, is a popular Zen teacher renowned for his Dharma talks and his humanitarian engagement efforts with North Korea. He also founded the Jungto Society — a volunteer-based organization that seeks to spread Buddhist teachings — and has written several books on finding peace. The event opened with a short video introducing Sunim and his work. Following that, Sunim walked on stage and the main event began. Structured as a Q&A, audience members could ask questions and receive advice about topics such as identity, self-suffering and choice. Sunim answered five pre-registered and three live questions. Multiple attendees asked Sunim about balancing familial duties and obligations with personal desires. In answering them, Sunim emphasized the value of choice and self-prioritization.

“Taking care of your parents is an option,” Sunim said. “It’s a recommended option. You’re not bad just because you can’t take care of your parents. Based on that perspective, I think you should

prioritize living your life.”

Another attendee asked Sunim about the role of personal happiness. Sunim responded that happiness is much more attainable if one equates happiness with the absence of suffering, rather than extreme highs.

“For me, in everyday life, I don’t really have a reason to suffer,” Sunim said. “I’m going to respond to your question by saying that I’m pretty much constantly happy. And I’m not referring to a state of over-excitement or overjoy.”

When asked how to balance the opinions of loved ones with the opinion of one’s self, Sunim argued that one’s perception of the self is a societal construct.

“There is no intrinsic thing called self,” he said. “If you have a sense of identity, it is constructed.”

Millicent Wanyeki, a student at Claremont Graduate University, explained that she came to the talk to learn more about Zen living.

“When he said that understanding is about being both loving and compassionate, it really resonated with me,” Wanyeki said. “It was also powerful [the] way he talked about identity as a construct.”

Pil Pak, one of the event organizers, appreciated how Sunim was able to share a different perspective with community members.

“Sometimes, you’re so involved in your emotions, but Sunim sees it in a different way, which can really help if you have a problem or question,” Pak said.

The Q&A lasted around two hours and was followed by a book signing where Sunim’s books were available for purchase. At the end of the event, Sunim imparted some final words of wisdom to the audience.

“Let’s walk the easiest path,” Sunim said. “Let’s not self-suffer.”

NITYA GUPTA & MYLES KIM

CHRIS NARDI • tHe StUDeNt LIFe

Some students are questioning Pomona College’s housing policies after four students were relocated from the Oldenborg dorms to make space for isolation housing.

French fiasco: Scripps seniors step up as TAs for discussion labs

JOELLE RUDOLF

Following a surprise opening in the French discussion lab teacher position at Scripps College, students Georgia Norton SC ’25 and Sophie Feldman SC ’25 were scouted and quickly hired to fill the vacancy.

Norton was informed of the job opening through a chance encounter in the Scripps mailroom with Chloé Vettier, assistant professor in French studies at Scripps. Norton, who has a minor in French, explained to Vettier that she was hoping to tutor this semester because she couldn’t take any more French classes.

“And [Vettier] said ‘If you want to get more involved, send me an email tonight,’” Norton said. “‘[The French department] needs to replace a TA this week.’”

The last time a student taught French discussion labs was during COVID-19, so Vettier had to confirm with the department that Norton and Feldman could be hired. After being given the goahead, they began working.

“I do classes Tuesday, Wednesday and one session Thursdays,” Norton said. “[Feldman] does one session Monday, one session Thursday, and she does the discussion tables and the French movie nights.”

The students of the French discussion lab were made aware of the change just as suddenly. Claire Abboud PZ ’28, an Advanced French and discussion lab student, described how one day the class’s normal teacher failed to show up.

“When we first walked in, we were all kind of confused,” Abboud said. “Then the professor said ‘Well, actually, she had to

go back to France for personal reasons.’”

The week of Sept. 16 was Norton and Feldman’s first week on the job — having only taught a couple of classes each so far and with little input from French professors, they are still embracing the flexibility of their new position.

“My goals for this class are to help develop whatever skills students need help with,” Feldman said. “I’m not going to be super rigid about what that looks like.” Norton shared a similar sentiment about her teaching strategy.

“To be so honest, I have not been in this class before,” Norton said. “So I can just converse, I can help you with your homework, I can teach you about French things, but at the end of the day, the students are kind of co-constructing the class with me.”

Despite the last-minute change in class leadership, Abboud remains positive about the remainder of the semester.

“I have [Norton] as my TA and she seems really sweet,” Abboud said. “I think we’ll have a fun and interesting class.”

The French discussion labs are intimately sized, with only six students in Abboud’s class. Abboud explained that although this class doesn’t offer credit, it is a requirement for her official Advanced French course.

“I have my actual class where we learn grammar, and then this is a more fun class where you just kind of talk and hang out with people and you can watch movies or listen to music together,” Abboud said.

Norton and Feldman hope to lean into the discussion lab’s

enjoyable and engaging possibilities.

“I want it to kind of be more holistic than just grammar exercises, because learning a new language doesn’t need to be a scary or a hard thing,” Norton said. “At the end of the day,

learning to communicate in a different language is just learning to communicate, period.” Norton remembers what it was like to start learning French and she empathizes with her new students.

“I’ve totally been where all

of these students have been, not that long ago, and so my goal is to provide real help,” she said. “I want them to feel confident and comfortable in the language, but I also want them to feel welcome and supported, not just as students, but also as friends.”

Nobuko Fujita fills role in Pomona College Japanese Department

ANNE REARDON

During the week of Sept. 16, Nobuko Fujita, a recently retired California State University, Los Angeles professor stepped into the role of teaching Japanese 1A at Pomona College.

This mid-semester change in class leadership comes after previous Japanese 1A Professor Mari Lopez had to step away for medical reasons, with students reflecting on the impact she left during her time teaching the course.

“We only met Professor Lopez about three weeks ago, but she was such a nice teacher and I felt that we were able to build a good relationship with her,” Japanese 1A student Ken Eckel CMC ’28 said. “She is very understanding. You always want to come to class because she’s such a good person.”

Pomona’s Japanese Department was considering a few different options for how to move forward — before hiring Fujita, there was talk of canceling all three sections of the class that Lopez had formerly taught. This would have ramifications for the students in the class and the future of the Japanese program, as upper-level courses would be at risk of lacking sufficient enrollment.

“When they came and told us [that Lopez wouldn’t be coming back] everyone looked visibly sad or concerned,” Noa Baghdassarian PZ ’28, another Japanese 1A student, said.

While students have praised Fujita, some have had trouble having to adjust to a new syllabus, work submission process and grading system.

“I haven’t seen a couple of my classmates since the news,” Eckel said. “I’m pretty sure at

Continued from page 1

stration Kitchen. Barron said that LSU still has its “El Mercadito” event to look forward to, which will close out Hispanic Heritage Month.

“El Mercadito brings Latinx-owned vendors from the area, cultural performances, and activities like piñata breaking to Pitzer’s campus,” LSU Co-President Osvaldo Barron PZ ’27 said.

This year’s El Mercadito will take place shortly after Hispanic Heritage Month ends on Oct. 19.

However, not all students feel that Hispanic Heritage Month has been celebrated enough on campus. For instance, some students have voiced complaints

least one student did drop the class.”

As student and faculty concerns about the class’ cancellation continued to circulate, administrators and the Japanese Department leadership worked to find a replacement on such short notice.

“Fortunately, through the help of a faculty member at UC Riverside, we learned about Professor Fujita who [had] just retired and had been using the same textbook,” Kurita said. “So she was, in a way, ready to start teaching.”

After studying at Columbia University and receiving her MA in Japanese Pedagogy, Fujita has taught at multiple universities, including the University of California Riverside and California State University, Los Angeles.

“Everybody, [including] HR and the Dean [Melanie Wu] really paid close attention to what was happening,” Kurita said. “I also just wanted to recognize how hard the staff members and administrators were working around the clock to accommodate our situation.”

Before Fujita was hired, Kurita, with the help of Professor of Japanese Kazumi Takahashi, spent many late nights at Mason Hall scrambling to get materials and content for the class. Since taking over for Lopez on Sept. 16, Fujita has now been teaching 1A students for over a week.

“I was a little nervous that the new professor wouldn’t be caught up to speed just because it was such a sudden change,” Baghassarian said. “But she’s been really great. She’s really prepared. She’s had slide presentations for us that are super detailed and helpful.”

that Scripps has not done much to celebrate the month, apart from hanging up posters and decorations of Latinx culture.

“I feel like a good event would be a potluck, where people can bring different cultures into the mix,” Karina Hernandez SC ’27 said. “I’m ethnically Mexican and I feel like other cultures are not as seen during Hispanic Heritage Month.”

Hispanic/Latino community members make up only 19 percent of Scripps’ campus population, as of the 2022-2023 school year. According to Hernandez, this can be difficult.

“At a predominantly white institution, it’s easy for people of color to feel erased,” Her-

nandez said. “There’s a running joke that photographers only take pictures of people of color to prove [Scripps] has diversity.” At Harvey Mudd College as well, some students feel that there has been little effort to celebrate the start of Hispanic Heritage Month.

“Even with Salsa-Mudd, a Hispanic affinity group with a big emphasis on social events, Hispanic Heritage Month isn’t talked about much,” Julia Kolt HM ’26 and CLSA sponsor, said.

Still, Kolt said that she enjoys being involved in the Latinx community at the 5Cs.

“I didn’t grow up around many Hispanic people, so it’s

nice to find a community with similar interests and backgrounds to mine,” Kolt said.

At the same time that Latinx student organizations are holding events for the community, Scripps and CMC’s dining halls are celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month by offering new dishes on their menus. These dishes focus on traditional cuisines across the cultures in Latin America.

“We’re featuring Latin American and Hispanic-inspired dishes with a focus on corn in traditional items like tortillas,” said general manager of Malott Dining Hall Mark Gillera. At CMC, Collins Dining

Hall has adopted a theme called “Mundo Latino” which occurs every weekend, and more often during Hispanic Heritage Month.

“They make a bunch of dishes from around Latin America like tortas, esquites, tostadas and other different foods,” Aguilera said.

Aguilera emphasized the importance of food in bringing people together and celebrating identity.

“For a lot of Latines, a big way of showing gratitude is through food,” Aguilera said. “Sharing food, dancing, and showing up to future social events is a good way of showing community and being an ally.”

COURteSY: pOmONA COLLeGe

After Pomona College’s Japanese Professor Mari Lopez was hospitalized, the Japanese department hired Nobuko Fujita, a recently retired professor from California State University, Los Angeles.

COURteSY: StepHeN FeLDmAR

Georgia Norton SC ‘25 and Sophie Feldman SC ‘25 will be leading a French discussion lab after an unexpected opening in the department.

A registered herbivore at the carnivore convention

EmmA CHOY • tHE StUDENt LIFE

In my last article, I posed the question that plagued me during my semester abroad: Can we travel and honestly call ourselves environmentalists? This week, I am facing yet another challenge against my identity as an environmentalist. I am working for enemy number one: the meat in-

dustry. I won’t disclose the name of my new place of employment, but here’s what you need to know: It’s a BBQ restaurant and I’m vegetarian.

The irony of the situation did not hit me until the end of my first day of training when my manager served me a platter of smoking hot beef and pork. It dawned on me

then that I hadn’t seen meat on my plate since I transitioned to a vegetarian diet almost three years ago. The smell of BBQ went straight to my nose and I had to put my hands under my legs to stop myself from pushing the plate in the opposite direction.

“This is embarrassing,” I mumbled to my new manager, “But I don’t eat meat.”

“Oh,” he blinked in confusion.

“Well… you can bring it home to someone, but lemme go through what’s in front of you.”

He rattled off the names of the dishes that I had studied during the previous two hours of training: tri-tip, baby back, spare rib, brisket.

The only time my fork touched any of it was when I scraped it into a togo bag for my friend’s carnivorous boyfriend.

“Why are you working here?” was the overwhelming response from my coworkers when they found out that I don’t eat meat. Initially, my answer was clear-cut: I needed money so I took a job. After working for over a month now, my answer has become more complicated.

Fact: Meat and dairy consumption in America is trending upwards.

The friendship power of charcuterie

We are a little over a month into the semester and, to be honest, I’m still combatting the senior slump. There are days where fatigue overtakes me and, overwhelmed by all the work I have to do, I wish I could just sleep and wake up at graduation. Sometimes, perhaps cynically, I think to myself that I’ve seen all that Claremont has to offer. But there are also times when the sweetness of life here surprises me, reminding me to cherish this final year that I have left.

One of these moments happened a few weeks ago as two of my friends and I prepared to build a charcuterie board for the first Tuesday night dinner gathering of our club, First Love, a 5C religious club for “students who follow Jesus and love the campuses.”

We had planned to build the board before people started arriving at our meeting spot in the Scripps Student Union. We didn’t realize how inexperienced we were at assembling charcuterie until we started trying (“We” had also made a charcuterie board for our dinner kickoff last year, but it was really Eliana Yi PO ’24 who took charge that time).

We took out fruit, cheese and boxes of crackers from our shopping

bags, but then stared at the ingredients mindlessly, laughing at our own charcuterie ignorance. By the time people started showing up, we still had nothing on the board. But this empty platter surprisingly became the perfect springboard for conversations, teamwork and laughter between new friends.

The three of us ended up assembling the charcuterie board together with six others who came; as the board came together, I saw new friendships start to come together too.

We laughed together at my less-than-stellar initial placement of the Port Salut cheese and the way too many pumpkin crackers that initially took up one-third of the board. One friend sweetly shaped a handful of freeze-dried strawberries into a heart – “for First Love!” she said.

We laughed even harder when we decided to put brownie bites on the board and ended up eating them all over the course of the night. My friends and I had bought the brownie bites specifically because it was our friend’s birthday and we had promised that we would save some for her. We didn’t.

This experience of making the charcuterie board — with friends old and new — was a perhaps silly but sweet reminder that even in

senior year, new and absolutely wonderful friendships can form. It rejuvenated me and made me look forward to our Tuesday dinners this semester, a much-needed excitement after many days of thesis and grad school stress-induced malaise.

Senior year is already hard and, to reference my first article of the semester, sometimes I still feel soupy and sad. But I am grateful that even in the slump, I can build boards of fruit and cheese and crackers galore with people who care for me. I’m grateful that Claremont has provided me with the opportunity to eat and laugh with these people every night. That is truly something to savor.

And who knows, maybe charcuterie-board-building will become a tradition of this semester’s First Love Tuesday nights. According to Rachel, who missed her birthday charcuterie that day, another charcuterie board Tuesday is in order. Next time, we won’t eat all of her brownie bites (or will we?).

Emily Kim PO ’25 is from Irvine, California. This semester, she spends her evenings 1) snacking on Trader Joe’s Takis and 2) racking her brain over what the heck is going on in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene.

MID-AUTUMN:

Continued from page 1

Kuang CM ’27, a board member of APASA, said. “There were an insane amount of people – way more than we could imagine.”

Students gathered near the lantern-making table and bonded over the ways they celebrated the festival in their hometowns.

“It’s important to recognize the cross-cultural influence of the holiday for East Asian cultures,” Christine Hu CM ’27, a board member of CSSA, said.

In the future, APASA and CSSA said they hope to include more activities to engage the growing number of participants.

Kunag said he plans to include informative workshops to educate students on the significance of the holiday. “[The] Mid-Autumn Festival especially is…meant for reuniting with friends and family. Since most international students at the 5Cs can’t do that here, we host these major cultural events to support them,” Hu said. “There’s this Chinese saying that even though we’re in different places, we’re still under the same moon, and I think that’s very beautiful.” The Claremont Taiwanese American Student Association (TASA) also hosted a Mid-Au -

Speculation: Am I contributing to this trend by working in the meat industry? Does abstaining from eating meat offset its sale? How does one calculate a meat-neutral lifestyle?

Pondering these contradictions at my host stand, I realized that I’m a registered herbivore at the carnivore convention.

Excluding religious affiliations and allergies, going vegetarian in the United States is seen less as a dietary choice and more as a political stance.

In American culture, vegetarians lean more left while meat-eaters are typically more conservative.

The left is most concerned with the ethics of the meat industry as it relates to animal rights and environmental sustainability. When we point and wag our fingers, who are we blaming? A farmer in a straw hat in a red barnyard?

City dwellers get their meat from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs), which are ethically questionable operations.

Our issue is with them, not small family farmers.

It’s no coincidence that there is an overlap between vegetarians and liberals in America. This group of people, myself included, often do not see where meat comes from. It’s a mystery to us, so we can fill in

the blanks as we see fit. We can view meat production as a wholly unethical industry.

This, however, is not the absolute truth. Raising animals for consumption is said by local farmers to be a humbling experience. They eat the meat to honor its life.

I can understand this. During my time working at the BBQ restaurant, I’ve developed an oddly intimate relationship with meat — one that I have never experienced before being immersed in a meat-eating culture. I’ve learned to identify all of the different variations of chicken, pork and beef that we serve. I know what part of the animal they come from. I know what the meat is rubbed in and how long it needs to roast. I see how our cooks honor the animals with the care they put into making delicious dishes, and I see happy people walk out of the restaurant rubbing their full bellies. Will I start eating meat again? Not anytime soon. I still see the environmental value in a plant based diet. But working in a BBQ restaurant has opened my eyes to how ingrained meat is in our culture and politics.

Annika White PZ ’24 is an environmental columnist from Southport, Connecticut. She enjoys hammocking, journaling and making playlists on Spotify.

Your most Fizzed questions answered

ELLIE CHI

The 5Cs most beloved and infamous app: Fizz. I sometimes get nervous opening Fizz in public, worrying about what wild comments might pop up on my screen. These range from asking if anyone has seen a missing pair of AirPods to cringe-worthy posts of my peers thirsting online.

The app was developed in 2020 and created a platform for students from the same university to anonymously post photos, messages or graphics. But why do students ask such outrageous questions? Why not ask your friends? In part, anonymity allows individuals to speak more freely. But if students seek honest answers, posting on Fizz is not the solution. Most Fizzes have zero responses, prompting me to wonder if there’s another purpose behind sharing your whole life story for thousands of strangers to see.

I thought I’d try to tackle the difficult task of answering some of the most popular Fizzes.

“Is it normal for a guy to look at you a million times in class and if so what do i do like idk how to flirt”

Yeah, it’s totally normal if your huge head is blocking the board! If you’re pretty sure you don’t have an unusually large head, then I’d assume that he’s at least a little interested.

I’m not an expert on flirting, but I have friends who are! Some tips: Eye-contact. It’s simple yet effective. Just try not to stare too much — that’s creepy.

Ignore the person slightly (yes, someone actually gave this advice). Whenever they’re speaking, you’re busy scrolling through the 5C Dining app or looking elsewhere.

Laugh at their jokes, tease them a bit and exercise some casual banter.

If you don’t like feeling ignored: “Being left on read is the worst feeling ever. Do I bring it up or should I just focus on myself?”

Never bring it up. Confrontation is the worst thing that could ever happen. Focus on yourself by canceling Snapchat Premium and watching Andrew Tate or David Goggins. As reflected in the endless Fizzes asking for romantic advice, dating is a hot topic in Claremont. People want their feelings validated and their sometimes-delusional dreams encouraged. Posting on Fizz opens up the rare opportunity for someone to respond and reassure them they aren’t crazy – that kid is totally in love with them too.

tumn social event earlier in the week on Sept. 13 at Dialynas Lounge. Students bonded over games, mooncakes and an abundance of beloved Asian snacks.

Molly Liao PO ’28, who usually celebrates the holiday in Taiwan through barbecues with her family, said she appreciated how TASA welcomed everyone, regardless of their background.

“Everyone can just get some free food no matter their country or region of origin,” Liao said. “It was a chance for students to be united when the moon is the roundest.”

Still feeling frustrated? “Anyone else on the verge of a mental breakdown? If so I’m sorry! If not…dang I want to be you!”

Sorry, I’m thriving! Pro tip: live in a triple with paper-thin walls and remind yourself that you’ve got 200 pages and ten essays due by yesterday. You’ll never feel like crying! (Also, TimelyCare has free virtual mental health services if you log in with your school email). Hope this helps. Or you could just pretend that you’re not an adult: “Middle school library or computer lab time: what was your go to coolmath game?” Papa’s Freezeria, Fireboy & Lavagirl, Duck Life 4. At the 5Cs, it can feel like you’re the only one in sweatpants and struggling while everyone else has it all together. Fizz is a place where students don’t have to feel bad about rotting on their phones, because they’re connecting over the internet. Remember, you’re not the only one crying in the library or grinding NBA2K all day.

“Bros and bronettes, can I borrow someone’s copy of ‘A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Become Hot (Dudes Edition)’ please? I high key need it” Sorry, bro. I don’t have the “Dudes Edition,” but you could totally borrow my copy of Elisabeth Elliot’s “The Mark of a Man” that my mom gifted me last Christmas. My advice is to just be interesting and interested. Put effort and care into the activities and things already in your life – that’s hot.

“has the water here turned anyone gay yet?” No … I’ll keep drinking, just in case.

I pray that these last two Fizzers did not ask these questions seeking serious answers. Still, they shed some light on the truth. As a Marylander, it seems that the average levels of attractiveness and gayness in California are much higher.

Some Fizz posts seek more laughs than actual answers; others voice the deeper truths of what many students may be thinking. One question that I keep thinking about is: “What did I do to deserve this.”

First, I’m sorry. I feel you. Sometimes we did nothing to “deserve” the situations we’re placed in. But “why me?” I don’t know. It might bring us more peace to focus on the joys ahead, like the next even crazier Fizz post.

So why post on Fizz? Maybe it’s a way to lighten up some of the more difficult parts of life without publicly exposing ourselves to the embarrassment that comes with it.

Anyway, I’m deleting Fizz.

Ellie Chi PO ’28 is from Clarksville, Maryland. Her New Year’s resolution is always to be more honest and she honestly really enjoys reading “The Catcher in the Rye.”

SHIXIAO YU • tHE StUDENt LIFE

mOmENtS tO SAVOr

ANNIKA WHITE

SASHA

DEAr rOOmmAtE

EMILY KIM

Finding solace in Osamu Dazai’s ‘Schoolgirl’

she’s not naive, she tends to be disrespected by men.

To look from above: ‘The Instrumental Image: Aerial Photography as Problem and Possibility’ at the Benton

NADIA HSU

Photos are often seen as depicting only their content. The viewer forgets that what we see has been framed and manipulated for us. This seems to be especially true for aerial photography: we look at an aerial photo and see abstracted visual information, that is a field and that is a house. We see only what is there, which is all that is there.

A monochromatic blue beach, with sea and sky melting into each other. At the perfect intersection between sand, sea and sky, a young girl stands in a school uniform. That’s the cover of “Schoolgirl” by Osamu Dazai.

Though renowned in Japan, modern Japanese writer Osamu Dazai has only recently emerged as a popular name among younger Western audiences, in part due to a character that takes his name in the anime series “Bungo Stray Dogs.” Readers have been captivated by his brutally intimate approach to alienation in a postwar Japan.

I was one of these people. After reading his novels “The Setting Sun” and “No Longer Human,” I was impressed by how Dazai was able to write characters that were cruel and immoral, yet still tragic and vulnerable. For a while, Dazai was all I talked about at home.

So, for my 16th birthday, my mom gave me “Schoolgirl.”

Published in 1939, the novella follows the thoughts of a young girl as she goes about her day. We don’t know much about the girl, like her name or age. But as we follow her stream of consciousness, we do learn that her father has recently passed away.

Before reading the novella, I was curious as to how Dazai would put the reader in the shoes of a young schoolgirl. However, when I first read “Schoolgirl” I was a little disappointed. Unlike many of Dazai’s other female characters, this girl was too … flat. Her thoughts felt childish and mundane: She speaks of bus stops and what she had for lunch. The way her character was written seemed empty, too — I had no idea what she looked like or how others perceived her.

Seeking to understand if my perspective was unique (or possibly confirmation bias), I opened Goodreads and scrolled through reviews of the book. Other people were also uncomfortable with this character, but they gave it a very specific name: misogyny.

I’d seen Dazai get called misogynistic before. There’ve been many contemporary debates regarding his depictions of women. It’s hard to pin down exactly who a “Dazai Woman” is. Sometimes she’s young, frail, naive and reliant on men. Other times, she’s old, harsh, knowledgeable and independent. The accusations of misogyny, though, don’t arise necessarily from the female characters themselves, but from how they interact with male characters. When she’s naive, she tends to fall prey to men. When

The girl from “Schoolgirl,” however, is isolated in her own void of existence. We don’t see her interact with anyone other than herself. Does this still qualify as a misogynistic depiction? I didn’t know.

So I forgot about it. That is, until last year when, in a cruel twist of fate, my mother — the person who gifted me the book — passed away.

I found myself thinking more about the novella. It’d been the last birthday present my mom had ever given to me, and its monochromatic blue cover seemed to haunt me in my dreams. So I decided to reread it. And then, less than a year after I first read “Schoolgirl,” I found myself feeling exactly like the book’s main character: a young girl floating through routine feeling dazed and hollow and riddled with grief. At one moment in the book, the girl talks about how she likes taking her glasses off because “everything goes hazy, as in a dream.” People’s faces “seem kind” and she doesn’t have to “argue with anyone at all.” I was instantly reminded of the time I told a friend that I liked to take off my glasses, because I’d be so busy trying to make out people’s faces that I couldn’t even begin to think about anything else.

Later on in the novella, the girl begins to feel happy. But, as she stares at herself in the mirror and sees “an animated face, liberated from [her own] sadness and pain and seemingly disconnected from such feelings,” she instantly feels bad about having a good time and falls back into her melancholy.

How could a 30-somethingyear-old Japanese man in the 1930s possibly capture the guilt that a grieving 16-year-old Brazilian girl in the 2020s was feeling?

That’s just what literature does. Somehow, I found an unexpected solace across culture and time in Osamu Dazai’s novels.

I still can’t tell if Dazai’s writing is misogynistic. Nobody can for certain. But here’s what I know: “Schoolgirl” is the closest I’ve felt to being represented in literature. Dazai neither sanctifies nor demonizes women — he humanizes them. And these flawed, insecure and genuine women feel real to me.

Anna Ripper Naigeborin PO ‘28 is from São Paulo, Brazil. She’s recently been into watching Éric Rohmer movies.

“The Instrumental Image: Aerial Photography as Problem and Possibility,” which opened at the Benton Museum of Art in August, asks the viewer to look further, to see the problems and possibilities that aerial photography offers.

The exhibit takes its name from Allan Sekula’s seminal 1975 essay, “The Instrumental Image: Steichen at War,” which examines aerial reconnaissance photos taken during WWI under the direction of Edouard Steichen. The Benton’s show considers how aerial photos have been used in projects of war and imperialism.

One tactical photo in the exhibit shows the ambiguous rectangular shapes of buildings and fields from above, its meaning hidden until the viewer reads its title, “Reconnaissance picture of the Nazi airfield and aircraft works at Villacoublay, near Paris, just four hours after a raid by Flying Fortress” (1943). In another, a piece of land appears as only a grid of dark squares without its title, “Total area devastated by the atomic bomb strike on Hiroshima is shown in darkened area within the circle on photograph” (1945).

This destruction of context and form, which aerial photography performs, becomes – in wartime reconnaissance photos – a tool for surveillance and information-gathering.

“Aerial photos look very aestheticized somehow, like divorced from their context,” museum visitor Juna Hume-Clark PO ’27 said.

This divorce — what Sekula called a “quest for transparen-

cy” — is weaponized. The tactical aerial photo captures an object in its frame and decides that it exists. That object is then able to be categorized into either enemy or not enemy. When photographed, a person or thing becomes a singular signal that must fit into this binary.

“What do we responsibly do with this loaded history?” Solveig Nelson, the exhibition’s organizer and the Benton Museum’s recently appointed Curator of Photography and New Media said. “[The show] is the beginning of a question.”

“The Instrumental Image” calls attention to aerial photography beyond just its violent potentials, also tracing what Nelson said was a “B-side or a kind of alternative history of aerial photographs where people were using it in order to sometimes actually humanize something.’”

According to Nelson, these photos use the aerial view as a way to “offer a new way to see a place that we think is familiar, to kind of defamiliarize the way we think about our environment.”

They open up possibilities instead of closing them, looking at objects and sites in new ways instead of forcing them into a single meaning.

Among this group of “humanizing” photos in the exhibit are works from the Benton Museum’s large collection of wire photographs (images transmitted via electrical impulse), photos of or responding to protest movements, landscape photography and other contemporary works by conceptual photographers.

“I think the photos that caught my attention the most were the photos of student protests, especially at Kent State University,” attendee Dora Wang PO ’27 said. “It resonated with me a lot because of what’s been happening on campus and across the U.S., across the world.”

Several of these contemporary photos use an aerial perspective to reference historical moments and sites, in turn responding to the medium’s complex history. Among rows of black and white images, Stan Douglas’ large color

photo, “New York City, 10 October 2011,” takes up a whole wall. As one of four prints in his 2021 series “2011 ≠ 1848,” the image restages the arrest of a protester during the Occupy Wall Street movement. Similarly, LaToya Ruby Frazier’s 2018 photo essay, “The Geography of Oppression,” uses aerial views of Memphis, Chicago and Baltimore to visualize how the cities were affected by Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination 50 years after the fact. In his essay, Sekula uses a number of different terms to describe aerial reconnaissance photos: artifacts, records, tools, artworks, decorations, commodities and relics. Conceived as functional objects that yet made their way into exhibits and museum collections, the images don’t fit easily into any one of these categories.

“I think to me photography has always been somewhat of a tool to depict things,” Wang said. “Before [seeing the exhibit], I’ve only thought about photos as depicting a story.”

Juxtaposed with these photos by contemporary conceptual artists, supposedly tactical or functional aerial photos become art objects. In this way, the line between artwork and tool is blurred.

To see reconnaissance photos as art objects is to disrupt their original operations, which take their content as a singular truth, and situate them in a wider field of possibility. In viewing them as artworks deserving of a considered look, the exhibit opens them up to broader interpretation.

“You’re just trying to decide what to bomb next, right? But when you look at it, it might look like a beautiful landscape or an aestheticized landscape,” Nelson said.

The symbols of “field” and “house,” instead of being assigned to “enemy” or “not enemy,” suddenly might mean multiple things. Military terrain becomes abstract landscape.

“I don’t think [the exhibit] is problems versus possibilities,” Nelson said. “In many cases, it’s both in the same site.”

The work of “The Instrumental Image,” and of us as viewers, is to skew these photos into possibility.

‘Feels Good Man’: Pepe and the alt-right

Documentary filmmaker Arthur Jones connects our society’s “narrative collapse” — an inability to construct linear narratives on a wide scale — to the rise of internet conspiracies.

“The internet has largely exploded this dynamic of coherency,” Jones said. “Instead, we are sort of all…piecing together our reality from these fragments, these little memes, and it’s a wildly disassociated jumble.”

On Sept. 19, Jones presented a screening of his Emmy-winning documentary “Feels Good Man” as

part of the Connections Speaker Series in the Humanities Studio at Pomona College, followed by a lecture and Q&A.

“Feels Good Man,” created in 2020, explores the evolution of the Pepe the Frog meme and the struggle of its creator, Matt Furie, to come to terms with Pepe co-option by the alt-right, particularly during Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. Lisa Anne Auerbach, an art professor at Pomona College, introduced Jones.

“[The documentary] … is a story of an artist who loses control of his character and the idea

of how a silly, sweet drawing might become weaponized in a time when images are currency, identity and communication,” Auerbach said.

Jones, who had been friends with Furie years before the altright wrested control of Pepe, found himself drawn into the chaotic world of 4chan, the platform where the meme gained traction. As he witnessed both Furie’s struggle and his conservative father’s political shift toward supporting Trump, Jones began investigating how the internet was weaponized in reactionary politics.

“[4chan] was a place that was a completely crowd-sourced subculture, free of corporatism. It was started by teenagers and it [was] wild and carefree … and that’s what made it appealing. But that’s also what made it dangerous,” Jones said in the panel.

The documentary depicts the many ways Pepe was adapted on 4chan to support Trump. Following a mass shooting at Umpqua Community College in Oregon, Pepe became a symbol for the incel-driven Beta Uprising on 4chan, leading to threats of violence in schools and colleges across the country.

“The more time I spent on it, I found it to be maybe the most profound place I’d ever been. The thing that was most profound about it was that it really molded the people who spent time on [it]

but it was profoundly sad, it was profoundly angry, it [had a] profoundly lost feeling,” Jones said.

English Professor Kevin Dettmar, the director of the Humanities Studio, explained that this year’s theme, “Connections,” was chosen because they were looking to explore phenomena negatively impacted by the pandemic.

“I realized that [his documentaries] are both about connections and community,” Dettmar said.

“In the light of his research into conspiracism and the online sharing of memes, what positive steps can we take to build and preserve human connections in a time when the nation seems more polarized every day?”

In the documentary, Furie explained the artistic process behind his comic “Boys’ Club,” which features Pepe. Though he initially chose not to engage with Pepe’s memeification, its adoption by the alt-right led him to create a campaign to save Pepe by asking people to post positive versions of the frog online. He grieved what his creation had become, going so far as to kill off the character in his comic strip. Finally, as the frog gradually became repurposed for more hopeful contexts like the Hong Kong protests, he rediscovered the joy in drawing Pepe.

“It’s the movie that’s kind of trapped to the time that it was made but I hope that … it will be a work of unique media literacy,”

Jones said. “I really wish people would start to interrogate these platforms and apps and systems that ultimately control our lives and are reprogramming the way in which we all communicate.”

Attendee Miranda Yee PZ ’27, a media studies major, said she was particularly fascinated by Jones’ examination of the wide-reaching impacts of internet culture.

“I think the conspiracies spawning out of the internet were super interesting,” Yee said. “I was able to talk with Arthur outside and he’s a talented filmmaker and documentary maker.”

Attendee Friederike von Schwerin-High, a professor of German at Pomona College, was intrigued by Jones’ depiction of various historical conspiracies such as the Satanic panic in the 1980s.

“Going back to the 1980s, to the time when he grew up, to see that there were already ideas about satanic worshiping, or … QAnon predecessors. That was surprising to me because I lived here in the 90s and I didn’t make that connection,” von Schwerin-High said.

Auerbach reflected on how the outside perception of artwork can alter the creation itself.

“It can be a challenge to understand how what we thought was ours … becomes part of a larger cultural discourse. A documentary film … can [help] us understand the myopia of a bubble while interrogating … what happens when the bubble pops,” Auerbach said.

SHIXIAO YU • tHE StUDENt LIFE

ANDrEW YUAN • tHE StUDENt LIFE

ANANYA VINAY

ANNA RIPPER NAIGEBORIN

SANDEr PEtErS • tHE StUDENt LIFE

Filmmaker Arthur Jones presented a screening of “Feels Good man” at rose Hills theater.

“the Instrumental Image” is on view at the benton from Aug. 15 to Jan. 5.

Is polyamory back?

VILLANELLE

I believe that, like many other things in this world, virginity is a social construct. However, I like to tell people that I lost my virginity in a threesome simply because I find their reactions so delightful. And, in the most objective sense, this statement is true. The first time I had sex, I was cramped in the trunk of a car with two of my friends just after midnight on the 4th of July. It was awesome. After a celibate summer, I returned to college this semester only to be bombarded with endless talk of hookups, love triangles and messy situationships. I realized then that threesomes are exactly what the 5Cs need. Though I fear reading this would make my philosophy professor quit her job, I find an apt application to threesomes in Aristotle’s conception of catharsis. In the philosophical sense, tragic catharsis is commonly understood as a purgation of emotional excess and a purification of tragic emotions. I would argue that threesomes function as a kind of sexual catharsis, purging its participants of sexual excess and restoring them to a purified sexual and emotional state.

It might seem counterintuitive to imagine that a threesome, which is in itself a kind of sexual excess, might purge said excess. But catharsis is ironic in this way. A tragedy arouses feelings of pity and fear, yet at the same time, it’s pleasurable to watch. In the same way, I believe that embracing the cathartic power of the threesome would purify Claremont’s atmosphere of its stifling sexual frustration.

To make my position clear, I return to my high school fateful threesome. I was a rising senior, and my two friends were in a semi-unserious relationship the summer before they started college. At their own request, I will refer to them as Le Freak (girl) and Le Nasty (boy).

Le Freak is bi but had never kissed a girl before, and I, being the unfortunate lesbian that I am, had to do something about that. It was a brief kiss, but we wanted more, so we stumbled upstairs to wake the sleeping Le Nasty and ask his permission to make out. But Le Nasty’s “yes” was accompanied by the suggestion that all three of us go out to his car.

I remember little of the pil -

grimage to the driveway, but forever imprinted in my mind is the image of my reflection in the bathroom mirror as I judged my sobriety and decided, “Yeah, I’m gonna do this.”

The threesome was cathartic for all of us in varying ways. Despite being drunk and at my most sexually excessive moment, it was in the back of his car that I first internalized, “I am a lesbian,” because trust, I wanted nothing to do with Le Nasty’s … le nasty. I also realized that, while sex is fun, it’s not the end-all be-all of intimacy that I had previously imagined.

Our threesome was cathartic from Le Freak’s perspective because she got to have sex with a girl without prematurely ending her relationship with Le Nasty. As for Le Nasty, he could have had a threesome with a girl who actually likes men, but he nominated me, which I deem an excellent display of restraint and sexual purity!

Given my awesome and cathartic threesome experience, I see a promising future for casual polyamory at the 5Cs. It is the answer to every complaint: “Villanelle, I like this girl, but I want to give guys a try.” Have a threesome. “Villanelle, I’m not over my ex, but I’m kind of seeing someone new.” Have a threesome. “Villanelle, I don’t know whether I should go for this girl or her roommate.” HAVE. A. THREESOME.

Sex doesn’t have to be that serious if you don’t want it to be, and a threesome is a beautiful and hilarious way to express that. Regardless of whether it’s the best sex of your life (it probably won’t be) or a downright disaster, having sex with two people at the same time basically cancels out … so it doesn’t matter! It’s purifying, it’s liberating and above all it’s cathartic.

Reader challenge of the week: Have a threesome.

Villanelle is an associate professor at the Claremont Colleges in the Department of Sexual Education. Her research is on the validity of the so-called “masc shortage.” She is hoping to get tenure by devoting herself to her research, conducting cross-campus interviews and having lots of sex.

An early morning with cold plunge club

A group of students stood shivering near Pitzer College’s Green Bikes Program (GBP) on the chilly morning of Wednesday, Sept. 18. Donned in hoodies and sweatpants with bathing suits peeking out, and clutching towels, bags of Yerba Mate leaves and quilts, onlookers may have mistaken the scene for a bizarre hazing ritual. Yet this weekly Yerba Mate cold plunge club might just be the newest in a venerable line of Pitzer traditions, starting just a few weeks ago.

The meaning behind a Pitzer tradition can be elusive. Many say the only thing they have in common is their shared eccentricity. Franzia (“Bike Porn”) — scantily clad group rides around campus, Balancing Club, Kohoutek, slacklining on the Mounds and painting the Free Wall all exemplify a diverse student body.

“Those types of Pitzer traditions ... more student initiated, kind of casual, [are] a good way to meet new people and also involve the outdoors,” Jules Jaasma PZ ’26, a leader of the cold plunge, said. “I think it’s just a great way to connect with people and just do traditions that help build community.”

At 7:00 a.m. sharp, the plungers received a message detailing the meeting point — the Pitzer parking lot. Driving up Mt. Baldy Road, the sun behind the hills, the energy in the packed cars was palpable. The group arrived at a sparse dirt lot on Joatngna Trailhead facing a small pool of running water surrounded by trees. As they sat cross legged atop a variety of blankets, jackets, and towels, the crystalline tinkling of the water replaced the sounds of

conversation. Jaasma led the group in silent breathing exercises. Chests rose and fell in sync as sunlight shone over the edges of the mountains, illuminating the students’ shivering bodies with golden warm light. It was time to plunge in the icy creek. The water was cold. Most let out quiet gasps and shivers as they kicked up clouds of clay colored silt. Yet some, including Jaasma, were unfazed. She and a few others slowly made their way towards the middle of the pool and submerged themselves, while the others, wet from the waist down, looked on in horror and admiration.

“People do [the cold plunge] for different reasons. Some people come and really do it for the headrush benefits, some stay in for longer... more like an ice bath situation,” Jaasma said. “The whole communal aspect... It’s just really fun. You can feel the physical change when you go in the water.”

As the students gingerly climbed out, legs and feet numb on the dusty ground, the third phase of the program began. The plungers, now wrapped in towels, passed around teaming gourds and bowls of Yerba Mate.

“I love stuff like this. I love the outdoors, and meeting cool people, so this was awesome,” Noa Rollman PZ ’28 said. “Right now I feel definitely more awake than before. I’m not a morning person so usually at this time I would be asleep.”

Many felt that somehow, their day was now on the right track.

“I just love the water in general,” Rassa Nyce PZ ’28 said. “When you get in it when you start your morning it can make your day really good ... we’re just excited to try something new.”

By now the sun was high in

the sky, and after the thermoses were emptied and Instagrams were exchanged, the students drove back to Pitzer. As quickly as it was assembled, the congregation retreated to their mornings and days, feeling energized and perhaps more like Pitzer students than when they had left.

“This feels very Pitzer. I know people haven’t been doing it for too long but it’s definitely a very Pitzer thing to do,” Rollman said. “To drive into the mountains, get into a pond in the morning, drink some Mate, can’t imagine many other schools have a regular group that does this.”

Stella Seid PZ ‘26 was inspired to create the club dedicated to these plunges after a stay on an Italian sustainable farming homestead, where she met a group of graduate students who described their morning cold plunge ritual.

Seid took her suitemates to scout nearby locations and established a group chat on Sept. 3. Within a week it was a club of 30. This rapid success might have come as a shock to some, but Jaasma seemed unsurprised.

“Just start. That’s what I say for everything,” Jaasma said. ”Literally last class [my professor] said ‘If not us, who? If not here, where? If not now, when?’ I think that’s just so true for everything. Now is the time, especially being at college and being at Pitzer, you have a lot more freedom and space to do that, and a community to do that with.” When asked about what cold plunge hopefuls might need to know, Jaasma answered enthusiastically.

“I want people to know that they can just come and try it out, because it’s a really fun time,” Jaasma said. When asked what she would do differently next time, Rollman replied simply.

“I’ll bring more friends next week,” she said.

How “I Saw The TV Glow” uses your memories

On May 14, 2024, at 1:13a.m., I posted the following review to Letterboxd: “FUCK YOU JANE SCHOENBRUN HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME HOW FUCKING DARE YOU.”

Five stars.

My hands were shaking as my friend and I left the theater after watching “I Saw the TV Glow” (2024) for the first time. It was past midnight and the lobby was eerily empty. Even the employees had seemingly abandoned us, and the only sounds were the echoes of our footsteps and the electric hum of the lights. By the time we reached my car, I was approaching hysterics, laughing nervously and tearfully glancing around the dark parking garage. Time felt wrong, thick and slippery; my sense of reality slanted.

Dear reader, I’m going to offer you a movie-watching experience like none you’ve ever had before. But it will cost you something.

“I Saw the TV Glow” is a coming-of-age horror film from director Jane Schoenbrun. The movie follows eighth-grader Owen (Justice Smith) as he is introduced to a “Buffy”-like TV show called ‘The Pink Opaque’ by Maddy (Brigette Lundy-Paine), a girl a few grades above him. The two bond over their love of the show until Maddy vanishes from their suburb without a trace. A decade later, her reappearance for Owen begins to blur the line between reality and the world of ‘The Pink Opaque.’

I’ll avoid saying much else about the plot in this review because I hope you give this movie as blind a watch as possible, and also because I’m not sure I could describe the plot

if I tried. “I Saw the TV Glow” is steeped in melancholic early 2000s nostalgia, rendering suburban liminal spaces with such emotional accuracy they feel like resurfaced memories. Characters wander through empty school hallways, wood-paneled basements and deflated children’s bouncy houses, all bathed in bisexual lighting. The surreal visuals and quietly detached performances from Smith and Lundy-Paine make the film feel like a bad dream, one that the viewer doesn’t quite know how to wake up from when they leave the theater. Some reviewers call the film pretentious or plotless. Others

praise its originality and killer soundtrack. But strangely, some reviews barely seem to be about the movie at all. The most liked review on Letterboxd opens: “My name is Julie. I am a trans woman. And tonight is the first time I’ve said those words to anyone other than myself.” Across the internet, people are sharing their stories of how the film gave them the push they needed to start their transition. “I Saw the TV Glow” is not a movie about being trans in the way that other recent mainstream movies are. There’s no heartwarming dress-shopping montage or tearful coming out scene; the word “transgender” is never uttered. And yet, people

credit Jane Schoenbrun with pulling something out of them they weren’t fully aware was there. This is all the result of Schoenbrun’s unconventional brand of filmmaking. “I Saw the TV Glow” requires a uniquely high level of audience participation for a mainstream movie. Critics are partially correct when they claim the film has very little plot, but they miss the point: you, the viewer, are meant to provide the connective tissue of the story.

It goes beyond simply relating with the characters or their circumstances. Without your personal experiences — half-remembered summer nights, the arc of your own intense but fleeting friend-

against you

ship — the movie is not complete.

Regardless of whether or not you are prepared to hand those parts of yourself over, “I Saw the TV Glow” will take them and spin them into a surreal nightmare.

It’s an approach to storytelling that won’t work for everyone by design. But when it clicks, Schoenbrun’s existential horror crawls under your skin and lays its eggs there. Nothing else is able to instill deep dread and paranoia quite like a horror movie about you. It can make you question your own hazy memories, your sense of time or identity.

I feel the need to reiterate that I am recommending this movie.

I’m certainly not saying that you have to be trans to participate in this film’s experience. If you’re queer, if you’re neurodivergent, if you’ve ever sleepwalked through suburban adolescence, if you’ve ever clung to television as a life raft while the rest of your life turned to static — you may be entitled to financial compensation. And this movie might change your life.

“I Saw the TV Glow” offers viewers the same experience ‘The Pink Opaque’ does for Owen and Maddy: a vision of a world that could be more real than the one you live in now. There’s only one way to find out if it will have the same effect on you.

Why not pop

StELLA rObINSON • tHE StUDENt LIFE

mAX rANNEY • tHE StUDENt LIFE

PARKER DEVORE

NIKO KAY SMITH

PArKEr DEVOrE • tHE StUDENt LIFE

A NIGHtmArE ON 6tH St

On Wednesday mornings, a group of students participate in a cold plunge and share yerba mate afterwards.

Eliminating test scores is not the answer to educational equity

ERIC LU

Earlier this year Dartmouth College announced that it would once again require all future applicants to submit standardized test scores as part of its admissions process. In the following days, a handful of top-ranked schools, including Harvard, Stanford and Yale followed in Dartmouth’s footsteps and reinstated testing as an application requirement. Dartmouth’s motive was straightforward: it found that test scores were better at predicting a student’s first-year success than any other variable in the admissions process, and that they were particularly indicative of talented applicants from disadvantaged communities.

But here at the 5Cs, we are moving in the opposite direction. Pomona College announced that it would extend its test-optional policy to the application season of 2028-29. Claremont McKenna College and Harvey Mudd College followed, extending their policies to those applying to enter in 2025. While proponents of test-optional policies argue that standardized testing benefits the wealthy — often citing expensive test preparation services and tutors — the reality is that every aspect of the college application process is manipulated by wealth. Essays can be professionally edited; extracurricular profiles can be embellished and financed. Yet the SAT and ACT provide a unique element of fairness: all students take the tests under the same conditions and are evaluated by the same standards, arguably making this portion of the admissions process the most equitable. Dartmouth’s study found that extracurriculars and essays — factors weighed heavily in test-optional admissions — had no predictive value on future academic success and disproportionately benefited wealthy students. Rather than create a more equitable testing environment, a test-optional policy has dissuaded low-income students from taking standardized college entrance exams at all. In its 2023 SAT Suites of Assessments Final Report, the College Board found that students from families making less than $53,000 per year comprised just 11 percent of testers in 2023, while in 2016, students from families making less than $40,000 per year made up nearly 30 percent of testers. But less advantaged students don’t just take standardized tests less frequently; many, as Dartmouth found, had scores that would’ve qualified them for admission that they chose not to submit. According to Dartmouth’s

dean of admissions, these students were often rejected when they may have been accepted if they reported their scores. At the opposite end of the debate, studies have found that requiring students to take standardized tests — not necessarily submit them — leads to positive outcomes. An economist at Harvard studied the state of Michigan, where free standardized tests were not only provided to all students but required. She found that “For every 1,000 students who scored high enough to attend a selective college before testing was universal, another 230 high scorers were revealed by the new policy.” While programs like QuestBridge, which aims to connect promising low-income students to top colleges, offer critical support to motivated low-income students,

there are few mechanisms that identify talent within students who don’t recognize their own potential. A universal test could bridge this gap, helping disadvantaged students uncover their full abilities.

Finally, the achievement gap between low and high-income students on the SAT/ACT highlights a deeper issue: our classist education system fundamentally fails to provide equal opportunities for all students. The real solution lies in improving how we support students from the very beginning and standardized test scores remain the key measure for evaluating the effectiveness of those improvements. As noted in a letter signed by 12 NAACP members, “data obtained through standardized tests are particularly important to the civil rights community be-

cause they are the only available, consistent, and objective source of data on disparities in educational outcomes…abolishing the tests or undermining their validity only makes it harder to identify and address the deep-rooted issues in our schools.”

Moreover, the impact of a post-affirmative action admissions process coupled with FAFSA challenges is already being felt at Pomona. This application season, Black student enrollment dropped by nearly 50 percent, while Latino enrollment rates stagnated. The reality is that a race-blind, test-optional admissions process tends to favor wealthy applicants who can afford to submit polished essays and cultivate impressive extracurricular profiles. Without affirmative action, standardized testing policies can serve as an

important safeguard for low-income students and students of color.

Pomona’s decision to extend its test-optional policy is misguided. Other Claremont Colleges should consider a smarter approach. The SAT and ACT aren’t perfect, but in a sea of subjective measures, they remain the best way to identify talented students who can succeed in college. To make college admissions more equitable, we should test more, not less. And while standardized tests shouldn’t be the centerpiece of students’ applications, reinstating testing requirements and making tests more affordable and accessible — along with resources to prepare for them — would hold each candidate to a fair, baseline standard.

Eric Lu PO ‘28 is a Politics major from Salt Lake City, Utah.

Why clinging to college memories can hold us back

TESS MCHUGH

Last weekend, my friends and I ventured to our favorite Indian restaurant in Upland for dinner. We have cherished this restaurant since freshman year, and the memories of our meals there are abundant. The conversation was flowing beautifully as I devoured my shahi paneer, until my friend suddenly disrupted the flow with a jarring interjection:

“Guys, next year is going to be so sad without our Swad of India dinners.”

All of my friends’ faces drooped as this thought washed over them. What a buzzkill, am I

right? It was clear that a yearning for the past overcame my friends because our conversation got stuck in memories for the rest of the outing.

There’s nothing wrong with reminiscing, but too many of my fellow seniors and postgrads are unhealthily clinging to the past of our college years. Whether it’s my friends solemnly reminding me that this is our “last” of something or my postgrad close friend in New York City crying about how much he misses Pomona the night before I returned — there is a pervasive feeling that the best years are behind us. This romanticization

of the past leads to the toxic assumption that one “peaks” in college, which implies that a person’s life will only get worse.

This thought process stems from rosy retrospection, a cognitive bias where people tend to remember the past as better than it actually was. Rosy retrospection blinds college seniors from observing the beauty of our present moment.

Understanding this cognitive bias, we seniors must challenge and question the way we interpret our memories if we want to truly enjoy our last year and embrace the future.

It is normal to think fondly

of the past when an era’s end approaches, but with less than a year left, the main goal should be to revel in the present as much as possible. We are young, vibrant, and full of life — enriching opportunities confront us daily in the present and await us in the future. To perceive the past as better than where we currently are, or where we’re going, is illogical when we have barely scratched the surface of life.

Rosy retrospection plays an important role in maintaining a positive mindset and promoting mental health, but we must recognize that the comforting past we tend to recollect is faulty. Over time, the unfavorable aspects of past events fade from our memory while the uplifting elements endure. When reflecting on the past, we tend to recall people, events, locations, and objects in more abstract terms. This abstraction makes us inclined to concentrate on positive, broad ideas rather than the intricate and sometimes unpleasant specifics. Without awareness of our cognitive bias, it’s easy to trust our memories of college as reality.

For example, at our dinner last weekend, my friends talked longingly about our first dinner at Swad of India. We discussed the food, the group of sponsor buddies we were with and the jokes that were the foundation of our freshman year. While memory depicts this moment as perfect, my friends failed to remember the unfamiliarity that consumed us as freshmen, the difficulty we faced navigating the bus system or how one of our friends spread a virus to all of us at that dinner.

A pessimistic perspective on life is not what I am arguing for; rather, I argue that we should equalize all of our memories’ components to balance the past with the present and future.

I understand there is no way to utterly defeat this cognitive bias due to its role as a protection mechanism in our brains. However, recognizing that rosy retrospection exists is achievable and grants us a degree of freedom from its total influence.

One should ask themselves and others this question when harping on the past: “Was that moment truly perfect?” Seeking input from others is crucial when recollecting the past. Different people will recall past events in varied ways, and their perspectives can contribute to a more accurate understanding.

Journaling has proven to be an effective strategy for lessening rosy retrospection’s control. Maintaining a diary or journal can help us remember details, clarify uncertainties, and reflect on events more authentically. Documenting our thoughts is a tried-and-true method frequently recommended in self-help literature. This practice grounds us in reality, offering a reliable way to retrieve accurate memories when we need them most.

In my study abroad journal I emphasize equally the unpleasant moments and the amazing moments. Whenever I’m yearning to go back in time to fall 2023 in Barcelona, I read through my journal where the best moments and the raw moments of struggle are still fresh to remind myself of the perfectly imperfect study abroad experience.

As college seniors, it’s easy to romanticize the past and mourn what we think we’ll lose. We must resist this urge and acknowledge rosy retrospection to reclaim the present and embrace the future. Let’s savor each moment, journal our thoughts and remind ourselves that life is a journey — not a peak. There’s so much more ahead if we dare to embrace it. Tess McHugh PO ’25 is from Denver, CO. She loves geography map quizzes, cider, and Star Wars.

Why more CMCers don’t write for TSL

Writing about TSL in TSL — meta, I know. But I have a good reason for it.

Of 115 students who are working for TSL this semester, only 17 are Claremont McKenna (CMC) students, or around 14 percent. Although CMC makes up around 22 percent of the five undergraduate Claremont Colleges’ student population, only 14 percent of TSL staff are CMC students.

I am a CMC student who has written for TSL for almost two years now, and my experience has been nothing but positive. But I can’t help feeling out of place during TSL meetings, as almost everyone around me are Pomona, Scripps or Pitzer College students. I have nothing against those students, but it feels like these three colleges have their own student journalism clique that is separate from CMC. Everytime I walked into the newsroom, I wondered why this is the way it is. So, I decided to do some research and I have identified four main reasons why more CMC students don’t write for TSL — a phenomenon that must be addressed.

Currently, there are two other news outlets that are associated

with CMC’s students and campus: The Forum and Claremont Independent. Although both online publications accept submissions and staff writers from the other 5Cs, The Forum is housed in and funded by The Salvatori Center, a research institute at CMC. Meanwhile, the Claremont Independent (CI) is officially a 5C club, but it was founded by CMC alumni and most of its staff writers are current CMC students.

Josh Morganstein CM ’25, one of The Forum’s editors, explained why he thinks CMCers are particularly attracted to their mission.

“Every student wants to work at the places that best represent their values,” Morganstein said.

“And I think, as CMC students, we have a storied tradition of intellectual diversity.”

On a similar note, Charlie Hatcher CM ’25, the current editor-in-chief of CI, explained how TSL and CI differ and why the latter may be more attractive to CMC students.

“The types of things that CI is most interested in covering are not the types of things that TSL mostly covers,” Hatcher said.

“So people who are interested in free speech, academic freedom, viewpoint diversity and

administrative overreach are more drawn to CI.”

It seems to me that CMC students stereotype the political leanings and inclinations of TSL. CMC students are mostly liberal, but they are more conservative than the Pitzer, Pomona and Scripps populations. So, when CMC students read articles by writers almost exclusively from these three colleges, which can be very left-leaning, they get the impression that TSL censors or suppresses more conservative opinions.

This is not true. The political representation of TSL stems from the ongoing cycle of our staff makeup: CMC students only see liberal views represented at TSL; CMC students don’t want to write for TSL. More liberal-leaning articles are published by Pomona, Scripps and Pitzer students. CMCers only see liberal views represented, so again, they decide that they don’t want to write for TSL.

There also seems to be an underlying, incorrect view that TSL is associated with Pomona which may arouse a sense of competition, suspicion and dislike from CMC students. It might also imply

that TSL’s main audiences are Pomona students, faculty and alumni.

Terril Jones PO ’80, a journalism professor at CMC, commented about this false view that TSL is Pomona-centric.

“There still seems to be some hesitation to go to TSL, because it’s based at Pomona,” Jones said. “There is just a sort of a mental barrier to doing something, maybe cooperative, or something that is perceived as a largely Pomona operation, even though it’s not.”

This is also a mistaken belief, as TSL is not specifically affiliated with any single Claremont College, and it aims to be representative of the views and news on all of our campuses. Of course, this is difficult when writers who have an insider perspective and interest in reporting on CMC are not part of TSL.

That is why a lot of CMC’s campus news goes under-reported at TSL. Morganstein noted this noticeable lapse in TSL coverage.

“If CMC gets lost in TSL, The Forum is here to pick it up,” he said.

The Forum and Claremont Independent are filling a need that TSL is not addressing, and if TSL truly wants to brand itself as the

Claremont Colleges’ newspaper, it must place an emphasis on recruiting CMC writers, reporting on CMC and attracting CMC readers. Yet, there might be other reasons for the disparity. For example, in the past year CMC’s campus has not been as active compared to the other 5Cs, which accounts for part of its absence in TSL.

“If there were more protests on CMC’s campus, would we be seeing more CMC news in TSL?” Jones asked. “Maybe. Perhaps CMC is seen as a quieter, less newsworthy campus, because it’s not creating the headlines that Pomona and Pitzer are. At the same time, [TSL should] go find those headlines. Maybe they’re there.” Another reason for the differing student demographics at TSL, The Forum and Claremont Independent is that they have different journalistic missions. As the only weekly print publication at the 5Cs, TSL has quicker turnover and does not emphasize investigative journalism, which is a large focus of The Claremont Independent. Additionally, the Forum’s main focus is open-submission op-ed pieces. TSL on the other hand also has sections that publish more creative pieces, such as the Arts & Culture and Sports sections.

CMC students do not seem to value creative journalism, which they frequently associate with TSL, as much as political journalism. Because of CMC’s academic interests as an institution, and the rigorous pre-professional culture, CMC students do not write more creative pieces that they believe may not help them in advancing their professional endeavors. TSL is the newspaper for on-theground breaking news, sports and creative journalism, which has value that CMC students may not see.

Having multiple papers at our colleges is a great asset, different news outlets can present different perspectives on the same issue and also specialize in different areas of journalism.

“There’s no reason that The Forum and TSL can’t compliment each other,” Morganstein stated. “The more eyes we have on articles across the 5Cs, and the more open discourse we have about issues close to home and those far from home, the better.”

Being one of the few CMC writers at TSL is great because I feel like I am taking on the role of the CMC representative for the other 5Cs. But the other colleges, which make up a lot of TSL’s audience, should, and deserve, to know about the activities, events and movements happening at CMC. But that is only possible if more CMC students join TSL. So come, we need you!

Lisa Gorelik CM ’25 is from Moscow, Russia. She hopes that the TSL newspaper clippings outside her dorm room will inspire more CMCers to join TSL.

LISA GORELIK

2ND PLACE Keven Perk

Defending the nest: Patricia DePalma

A true leader with a passion for the game, Patricia DePalma PO ‘27 plays a major role as a goalkeeper on the Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) women’s soccer team.

In the current season alone, DePalma has racked up 17 saves, six shutouts and two goals allowed in eight games. She set her in-game record with six saves against Whittier College on Sept. 18, and six days earlier on Sept. 12, faced 10 shots against the University of California

Santa Cruz and saved the four that were on target.

The Sagehens have an overall record of 6-0-2 in their early stages of SCIAC play. DePalma expressed her excitement about the season so far, and said she was eager to see what the team can do as the year progresses.

“I’m really looking forward to seeing our team develop as the season goes on because we have a really good group of players,” DePalma said. “I think everyone has been bringing a lot of intensity

in training, so it has been really fun to see our team improve a lot in the last month.”

According to DePalma, her most memorable moment as a Sagehen was a Sixth-Street rivalry night game against the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) Athenas on Sept. 30, 2023, which ended in a 0-0 draw. DePalma recalled how, despite the scoreless game, P-P demonstrated fighting spirit and grit.

“I remember it was a really hard game under the lights, and there

It’s time we treated the epidemic of female ACL tears like the injury crisis it is

I remember the exact moment my knee gave out. It was my last U18 club volleyball competition four years ago. I went up for a hit like I had done a thousand times before, but this time, it went horribly wrong. I landed on one leg – again, something I had always done – and collapsed onto the ground.

The pain that shot through my body was so intense it threw me into a state of shock; I couldn’t even cry. My assistant coach carried me off the court and later told me how hard I had been squeezing his hand. All I knew at that moment was that my season – and potentially my career – might be over.

What I didn’t realize at the time was that I had ruptured my ACL (Grade III), MCL and meniscus. This is a dreaded trio, and an injury combination far too common in women’s sports. As I began my long and painful road to recovery, I couldn’t shake the question that filled me with frustration: Why are women so much more prone to tearing their ACLs than men? And why is there such a glaring lack of research into this problem?

The harsh truth is that female athletes are 2-8 times more likely to tear their ACLs than their male counterparts. Plenty of explanations are tossed around: the menstrual cycle’s effect on ligament elasticity, the wider hip ratio of women or the biomechanics of the way women land from a jump. But despite these theories being discussed for years, the research into exactly why women are at this distinct disadvantage remains inadequate. Often, the attempted explanations are speculative and, although there’s been a recent increase in research, there’s very little concrete data to back them up.

The conversations we should be having about why female athletes are at a higher risk, how we can reduce that risk and how to better treat and rehabilitate these injuries are simply not occurring at the level they should

be. There is a dangerous lack of urgency surrounding this problem.

During the 2023 Women’s World Cup alone, 25-30 female athletes missed the tournament due to ACL injuries. That’s enough to field a two-team match. It’s frankly unacceptable that this isn’t being treated as the injury crisis that it is.

One can’t help but wonder: If this injury epidemic was happening in the men’s Premier League at the same rate, would there already be an entire committee dedicated to the issue?

For those of us who have experienced the dreaded ACL tear, the recovery process is grueling. Rehabilitation programs typically span 9-12 months and are often designed for the male body. A study published by Penn State University in the Journal of Orthopaedic Research found that women suffering from ACL tears due to chronic overuse are less likely to recover fully compared to men. This research offers valuable insights but still falls short of explaining why female athletes face such higher risks and prolonged recovery times. Where is the targeted, comprehensive research into how women’s bodies respond to this injury?

These disparities in injury rates and the lack of targeted research on ACL injuries in women highlight a much deeper issue: the gender gap in sports medicine. For far too long, female athletes have been an afterthought in sports science and medical research. This goes beyond just ACL injuries – our risks, recovery needs and even the equipment we use all differ from men’s. Yet, time and time again, we are treated as “little men” in the world of sports. Take something as basic as the shoes we wear. I tore my ACL while wearing men’s basketball shoes, specifically KDs. This is a widespread issue: Female athletes, even at the elite level, are often wearing men’s shoes that are scaled down for women but don’t consider

the unique biomechanics of the female body.

The anatomy of women’s feet is different; we have narrower heels and wider forefeet which means that men’s shoes don’t provide the right fit or support. The result? Instability, improper mechanics and a higher risk of injury. If we’re not even given gear designed to fit our bodies, it’s no surprise that knee injuries are so prevalent in women’s sports.

The physical toll of an ACL tear is only part of the story; the mental strain of such an injury is also significant and often overlooked. From the moment I landed awkwardly on that court, I knew something was seriously wrong. It wasn’t until I got the diagnosis that I understood just how long and difficult the road to recovery would be. The months of physical therapy, the constant fear that I might never return to the same level and the loneliness of watching my teammates play while I sat on the sidelines – it all took a heavy mental toll.

Even today, every time I step on the court, I think about my knee. For all athletes, no matter their gender, it’s difficult to find sports-specific mental health support in the aftermath of a traumatic injury like this.

Female ACL tears are not just an unfortunate byproduct of playing sports – they’re a crisis that deserves far more attention than they currently receive. It’s time to prioritize research, gear and support systems that reflect the needs of women in sports. Anything less is leaving us at risk.

Georgia McGovern CM ’24 was meant to graduate in the spring but decided three seasons of volleyball were not quite enough for her. Like all British people, she loves soccer: She is a passionate Liverpool FC fan and, yes, despite never having played a single minute of soccer in her life, she knows the offside rule.

were a lot of people watching,” DePalma said. “It wasn’t the best game that we have ever played before, but it was definitely a time where we all had each other’s backs. That specific game, we were feeling really proud that we all fought hard.”

DePalma finds inspiration from her teammates, especially senior Eliana Prosnitz PO ‘25.

“Someone that I look up to on my team is Eliana because I played in high school with her,” DePalma said. “I think she has this style of play that looks very smooth and graceful.”

As a goalkeeper, DePalma has eyes on the whole field, priding herself on being an effective communicator to ensure the team is organized. While DePalma has shown she is capable of a strong individual performance, she attributes much of her success to her teammates.

“They’re the ones that are always pushing me in practice and in the game,” DePalma said. “I can count on them to always tell me to pick my head up and to keep moving.”

Head Coach Jennifer Scanlon shared her observations on the balance DePalma strikes between working hard while also taking time to celebrate.

“She’s locked in on the field and doesn’t take any reps off, she wants perfection,” Scanlon said.

“But she’s also all about celebrating team success when we score a goal and she races up to congratulate a teammate.”

This hard work has paid off for both DePalma and the team as a whole, according to Scanlon.

“She has great reactions and can get to balls to make saves that you wouldn’t expect her to,” Scanlon said. “She’s also spent time working on her technical skills and her distribution, which has really paid off for our team. She can help us keep possession and break lines which is a huge help to starting our offensive attack.”

DePalma has a specific pregame routine that includes the same gameday breakfast and ABBA’s “Dancing Queen,” which holds a special place for her on the field.

“I really like Dancing Queen by ABBA because that’s the song that plays if I get a shutout, so sometimes I listen to it before the game to get myself hyped up,” she said.

DePalma’s praise is not confined to the pitch, with Hadley Johnson PO ‘26, a fellow goalkeeper on the team, noting DePalma as an inspiring teammate and friend.

“Patrica has helped me on the field by pushing me to be my best, and off the field by being a supportive friend and teammate,” Johnson said. “The best part about Patricia’s game is her mentality; She is so dedicated to her individual goals and that pushes her to be the best she can be.”

As the Sagehens look to control the season ahead, DePalma seems to be playing a big role in this journey.

“She has been the difference-maker in a couple games that changed the result of the match,” Scanlon said. “She lives for the big moments and wants that responsibility.”

After shutting out Occidental 2-0 on Wednesday, Sept. 25 with DePalma in goal, the Sagehens will continue SCIAC competition against Chapman on Saturday, Sept. 28.

Back to the nest: Sagehen alumni return to compete in men’s

water polo friendly

Sagehen alumni just couldn’t stay away, returning to Haldeman Pool to face off against the current Pomona-Pitzer (PP) men’s water polo team on Saturday, Sept. 21. This year’s rendition of the annual tradition brought a wide age range of former Hens back to the nest, with alumni spanning from graduates from the 1950s all the way to the class of 2024.

The game began with a special rule for those returning to the pool: the first two alumni goals would count as two points each, an advantage the graduates later proved they didn’t need.

Noah Sasaki PO ’21 — part of the 2021 DIII national championship team — capitalized on this and put two in the back of the net while also adding a pair of assists, helping control the alumni’s offensive production. Throughout the match, alumni and current players tossed friendly banter around the pool, with occasional shoves in the water and taunts from alumni to upperclassmen for big misses or blunders.

“Even though it’s an alumni game, it’s supposed to be fun,” Sasaki said. “I think we wanted it to also be good practice … the expectation is to try and be as competitive as possible.”

The alumni held to those words, with a few of them executing hat-tricks throughout the game. Their competitiveness gave them the lead throughout the game, outscoring the current team by 13 points within three quarters, totaling a score of 20-7.

The current team, aware of the quality of the alumni roster, used the opportunity to their advantage to gain skills that would help them later in the season.

“A lot of them were on the

team that won the championship in 2021 so they’re still very good players,” Zach Whitfield PO ’27 said. “I feel like we learned a lot from how they played.”

Whitfield secured himself a hattrick, helping P-P fight back against the unrelenting pressure from his predecessors.

A twist came before the start of the fourth quarter: the opposing teams agreed to reset the scoreboard, wiping out the two-point advantage held by the alumni team at the time.

As the game moved toward a tense conclusion, the teams went head-to-head, and eventually, P-P team emerged victorious with a 6-4 score.

A fantastic final quarter heard additional applause, but not for fancy plays or acrobatic saves — the whole pool deck cheered for one name: John Christopher Miller PO ’59, the oldest player on the alumni roster, who carried a positive attitude into the game.

“I played three years of swimming and one year of water polo, my senior year, last man on all the teams, but had fun on all of them,” Miller said. “I had no expectations, just here for fun.”

The alumni stayed for some time after the game to connect with current players, provide additional coaching and mentor the future of the team.

“You want to make sure that you’re putting in the most effort that you can, especially for the seniors. It’s your last year,” Sasaki said. “You want to leave everything in the pool and go out on a high note.”

Meanwhile, Miller kept it simple.

“If you’re not having fun, you’re doing it wrong.”

The Sagehens, who currently hold a 2-0 record in SCAIC, will host the Gary Troyer Tournament on Oct. 4 and 5 before returning to SCIAC action with a game against Occidental College on Oct. 9.

Sagehen goalkeeper patricia Depalma has secured six shutouts for pomona-pitzer (p-p) Women’s Soccer in eight games, allowing only two goals and recording 17 saves to bring the team to a 6-0-2 overall record.

COUrteSY: pOmONA-pItZer AtHLetICS

SHEA JOKO

GEORGIA MCGOVERN

eVeLYN

JUN KWON

Second time’s the charm: Braineaters look to return to national tournament

The Claremont Braineaters Ultimate Frisbee Team is charging into the 2024-25 season with a hunger for redemption after finishing in 15th place in the 2024 USA Ultimate Division III College Championship, which the team competed in last May in Milwaukee, WI.

“We finished 15th last year, and that definitely doesn’t sit right with us,” co-captain Tanveer Chabba CM ’26 said. “This year, we want to break through and prove we can compete at the highest level.”

The Braineaters earned their spot in Milwaukee last year by securing the Southwest regional bid to nationals, dominating their regional competition including Occidental College and the University of San Diego.

The Southwest region is the smallest in DIII and with only one bid to Nationals up for grabs, the Braineaters were under pressure to perform in the regional round-robin tournament. Despite the fierce competition, the Braineaters kept their cool under pressure and came out on top.

“Beating Oxy in the game-to-go was huge,” Chabba said. “It was our way back after missing nationals the year before.”

In the 2022-2023 season, the Claremont Braineaters failed to qualify for the national championship after falling to Occidental, who later placed 13th in the final standings.

Though the Braineaters are on a mission to continue last season’s comeback success, this season comes with new hurdles: 13 of the team’s

Athletes

players are currently studying abroad, making early-season training a challenge.

“It’s tough to get a flow going with so many of our vets gone, but when they return, we’ll hit the ground running,” Chabba said.

However, intent on keeping the team’s intensity high, many of the team’s captains, including Emmett Levine PO ’27, are focusing on fitness and getting the new players up to speed. He pointed to the team’s unique balance of competitiveness and camaraderie as a strength.

“Ultimate has this reputation for being super laid back, but when we get on the field, we bring a level of intensity that surprises people,” Levine said. “At the same time, we work hard to make sure everyone feels like they belong—whether it’s their first day or their third year on the team.”

This year’s crew of captains is a young but dynamic group, with three sophomores—Levine, Noah Pershing PZ ’27 and Isamu Sims PZ ’27—rounding out the team’s leadership alongside Chabba.

“We’re all really different in how we lead, and that’s what makes it work,” Levine said. “[Chabba] is super focused on the technical and strategic side, Noah and I are a bit more about team culture, and Isamu keeps everyone grounded with his chill demeanor.”

Johnny Russell CM ’26, who played a pivotal role in the team’s nationals run last year but is currently studying abroad, shared his excitement about the potential of the team when he returns.

“I can’t wait to get back and see

how much we’ve grown,” Russell said. “Last year was a wake-up call, but we’re coming back more experienced, more cohesive, and ready to take on anyone.”

The team’s drive for redemption extends beyond just making it back to nationals, according to Chabba.

Jacob O’Connell CM ’25 earned SCIAC Defensive Player of the Week for his efforts in Claremont-MuddScripps’ (CMS) 21-17 win over George Fox University on Saturday, Sept. 21. He earned First-Team AllSCIAC and SCIAC All-Academic Team in the 2023 season, also earning SCIAC All-Academic Team in 2020, 2021 and 2022. O’Connell, a defensive back, turned on the jets and returned an interception to notch his fourth career touchdown and give CMS six points. He also took down George Fox’s quarterback for a sack on third-and-goal, one of his four tackles of the day. He now has 13 career interceptions and 87 total tackles in his time playing for CMS. O’Connell and the rest of the defense held George Fox to only three points at halftime, and the win brought the team’s record to 2-0 on the season. CMS will face Cal Lutheran in their first SCIAC match of the season on Saturday, Sept. 28.

“We’ve been putting in the work — conditioning, weight training, drills — so we can do more than just break seed this time,” Chabba said. “Last year we were the 16th seed and finished 15th, but we’re aiming for a much higher finish this time.”

With scrimmages in the fall and

official competitions kicking off in the winter, the Claremont Braineaters are laser-focused on making it back to the championship and solidifying their place among the best in DIII Ultimate.

“We’re not going there just to play,” Levine said. “We’re going there to win.”

Spencer Deutz PZ ‘25 notched one assist against the Caltech Beavers on Sept. 21 to help lead the Sagehens women’s soccer team to a clean sheet victory, followed by a 2-0 win against Occidental. This season, Deutz has scored two goals in eight games and is looking to build upon her 2023 season, where she was Second Team All-American, First Team All-West and First Team All-SCIAC. She also landed on the College Sports Communicators Academic All-District and SCIAC All-Academic Team. In 2023, Deutz scored three goals and assisted two more, logging 1,313 game minutes — the third most on the team. Prior to attending Pitzer College, Deutz played soccer for Campolindo High School and Lamorinda Soccer Club. She was a full-time starter on the top 10 U17 US Development Academy team during the 2019-2020 season. Sitting with a 6-0-2 record, the DIII No.8 ranked Sagehens will look to continue their impressive start to the season when they face Chapman University Sept. 28 away from home.

Friday, September 27

men’s tennis vs. ItA West regionals

Women’s tennis vs. ItA West regionals

men’s Golf vs. Chapman @ Costa mesa

Volleyball vs. pomona-pitzer

Friday, September 27

Volleyball @ Claremont-mudd-Scripps

Saturday, September 28

men’s tennis vs. ItA West regionals

Women’s tennis vs. ItA West regionals

men’s Water polo vs. Chapman

Volleyball @ Occidental

men’s Soccer @ Whittier

Saturday, September 28

men’s Swim vs. Alumni and Intersquad

Women’s Swim vs. Alumni and Intersquad

Football @ La Verne

men’s Soccer @ Chapman

Women’s Soccer vs. Whittier

Football @ Cal Lutheran

Sunday, September 29

men’s tennis vs. ItA West regionals

Women’s tennis vs. ItA West regionals

Women’s Soccer @ Chapman

Nathan perry Cm ’28 winds up as the Claremont braineaters Ultimate Frisbee team prepare for the season, hoping to return to the USA Ultimate Division III College Championship.

SArAH ZIFF • tHe StUDeNt LIFe

ANNIKA SHARMA