VOL. CXXXVI NO. 8

THE STUDENT LIFE VOL. CXXXVI NO. 8

FRIDAY, November 8, 2024

CLAREMONT, CA

COURTESY: NATE GARCIA

Look out for this symbol next to all election-related coverage.

The news analysis podcast of the Claremont Colleges. Hosted

by Ben Lauren PZ ’25 and Dania Anabtawi PO ’26.

Scan here to listen to TSL’s podcasts!

ARTS & CULTURE On Nov. 6, the Pomona College community gathered at Frank Dining Hall for politics professor Susan McWilliams Barndt’s talk, “The 2024 Election: The Day After.”

The student newspaper of the Claremont Colleges since 1889

Jeremy Martin PO ’25 and Adam Osman-Krinsky PO ’25 check out local restaurants, share their thoughts and recommendations, and get real silly along the way.

OPINIONS

SPORTS

The American political sphere is ushering in a second decade of Trumpism. For the second time, Americans have chosen a convicted sex offender over a woman, and Tania Azhang PZ’ 25 warns of the path of proud misogyny that Trump’s presidency forecasts.

Oliver Schoening PZ ’27 and Jun Kwon PO ’28 debate different perspectives on activism in professional sports.

They note some recent examples of pushback for professional athletes such as Lebron James and Colin Kaepernick in their arguments and interviewed college athletes at the 5Cs to broaden their perspectives.

INDEX: News 1 | Arts & Culture 5 | Opinions 8 | Sports 11

News

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Scripps announces reopening of Motley Coffeehouse JUNE HSU On Tuesday evening, Scripps College President Amy Marcus-Newhall announced the Motley Coffeehouse will reopen for full service on Monday, Nov. 11, a little over one month after the college shut it down following disagreements between the administration and Motley staff.

Marcus-Newhall said the decision comes after several weeks of communication between student staff and the Dean of Students team which consists of multiple administrators.

“My conversations with students and staff have reinforced the importance of The Motley to the community,” she wrote in an email to Scripps students. “Therefore, I am grateful that we can reopen this space as the College continues to collaborate with student staff members to clarify and codify

November 8, 2024

In memoriam: Olivia Guerrero

policies, operations, roles, and responsibilities for The Motley’s future operations.”

Last month’s closure came after disputes over the usage of the space and decoration policies, particularly the displaying of a Palestinian flag and political organizing in the coffeehouse.

Immediately following Marcus-Newhall’s announcement, the coffeehouse announced on their Instagram that they were open and hosting an election watch party.

“The Motley is open,” the Instagram story said. “Come watch the election and be in community.”

While the Motley space is open and available for people to use, the coffeehouse’s bar service will “return to operation” and resume normal hours beginning 8:00 a.m. on Nov. 11.

SID GOLDFADER-DUFTY • THE STUDENT LIFE On the morning of Nov. 5, Mudd President Harriet B. Nembhard, announced via email the passing of Olivia Guerrero HM ’25. At the time of the email, the cause of death is still unknown.

AUDREY PARK & CHLOE ESHAGH CW: Student death

KHYLAH PUGH • THE STUDENT LIFE Following a month-long closure, the Motley will reopen with full-service next week.

A Harvey Mudd College student died off campus this week, according to an email sent by HMC President Harriet B. Nembhard on Nov. 5. The student identified in the email, Olivia Guerrero HM ’25, was described as a “valued and important member of our community.”

Guerrero was a computer science major from Pico Rivera,

California. In the email, the cause of death was not disclosed.

“We will all miss her tremendously,” Nembhard wrote.

Nembhard informed the community that she will reach out with additional information as more is learned from Guerrero’s family regarding memorial information.

“I ask that you join me in holding Olivia’s family, friends and loved ones in your hearts and in your thoughts,” Nembhard wrote.

This marks the second student death at HMC this semester. To support students during this

time, Nembhard included resources available across the Claremont Colleges.

For students across the Claremont Colleges, Nembhard noted, Monsour Counseling and Psychological Services is located in the Tranquada Student Services Center and is providing grief counselors for individual support in the Division of Student Affairs Office, while an on-call therapist is reachable 24/7 for after-hours support at 909-621-8202. Other resources are available through the Chaplain’s Office, along with staff and faculty on campus.

Pitzer drafts new housing plan amid Claremont Students for Harris-Walz housing crisis and budget-deficit canvasses in Nevada CELESTE CARIKER

A newly proposed housing plan at Pitzer College aimed at addressing the college’s ongoing housing issues is raising concerns about student living situations and shedding light on the college’s financial budget deficit. If approved, the plan is projected to go into effect next spring.

Pioneered by Pitzer’s Residence Life Office, the new plan could significantly alter the college’s housing process. According to the plan, future sophomores will be given housing options at the college’s West, East and Skandera Halls as well as at the Pitzer Claremont Collegiate Apartments (CCA) building. Juniors and seniors will be given housing options at Mead Hall and the CCA building.

On Oct. 29, Pitzer College’s Director of Residence Life Leticia Romo held a town hall meeting to discuss this newly drafted housing plan.

As of right now, the college has 1,227 students, but only enough housing for 998 of them, according to Assistant Vice President for College Communications Wendy Shattuck. Residence Life places any students who are unable to

find housing on a waitlist.

While the plan has yet to be finalized or approved, it is already generating criticism among some students for what they described as a lack of attention to student perspectives during the initial drafting process.

“Another decision in a long line of decisions made on our behalf without our input at an institution that prides itself on prioritizing student input,” Thomas Merrilees PZ ’26 said.

The new plan is not the only way that the college is working to address the housing crisis, though. On Oct. 17, Pitzer ’s Board of Trustees discussed the possibility of building a new dormitory — a potential solution for the increased tendency of students to request single-room accommodations and to stay on campus for all four years.

However, the discussion of the construction of this new dormitory comes amidst a financial budget deficit at Pitzer.

According to the college’s 20232024 Financial Results, low enrollment contributed to a $1.3 million “unfavorable variance to budget in net student revenue.”

Total expenses were $2.3 million

over the budget.

Pitzer has already been working to address its budget problem, in part by enrolling larger classes each year. The newly admitted class of 2028, comprised of 317 students, is the largest in the college’s history, according to Pitzer President Strom Thacker.

Some students, like Ezra Levinson PZ ’27, expressed concern about how these class sizes and increased enrollment could exacerbate the housing crisis.

From this concern, Levinson urged those who could possibly be affected by the tentative housing plan to take action and get involved in the discussion.

“Get loud about it, get organized and maybe things shift for the better,” Levinson said.

Before the new housing plan can be launched, Residence Life plans to collect feedback from the Residence Hall Council and the Student Senate and make “applicable edits,” according to the town hall slideshow.

Because the plan is currently being drafted and has not yet been presented to the Student Senate, it can still be altered.

ANJALI RAO • THE STUDENT LIFE The proposed housing plan meant to alleviate Pitzer’s housing crisis has been met with a wave of student criticism due to a lack of transparency during the drafting process.

COURTESY: POMONA COLLEGE The 5C chapter of Students for Harris-Walz organized two canvassing trips to Nevada on the weekends of Oct. 25 and Nov. 1 before the 2024 presidential election.

ELLIE LAKATOS & RHEA SETHI Over the past several weeks, Claremont Students for Harris-Walz sent 25 students to Nevada for voter canvassing. During the weekends of Oct. 25 and Nov. 1, the students spent each day knocking on 40 to 50 doors to speak with potential Harris-Walz voters.

“I was kind of hesitant about it at first, but then the more that I thought about it, I was like, this would be like a really good opportunity,” Audrey Leatham PZ ’28, one of the student volunteers, said.

Leatham, who is from Minnesota, said that her volunteer efforts were partially inspired by vice presidential candidate and Minnesotan Governor Tim Walz’s ties to the state.

“I want to do what I can to have Governor Walz be a part of the White House,” Leatham said.

Another student who participated, Vera Rosenblum PZ ’28, said that she used her involvement as a way to cope with the pressure of the election.

“I did really feel like I had a lot of stress about the election and I wanted to be doing something productive about that stress and doing something to help the Harris campaign,” she said.

On the weekend of Oct. 25, 10 students drove with the local United Food and Commercial Workers 1428 labor union to Las Vegas.

Upon arriving, students split into groups to canvas at labor union houses. Their main goals were to identify supporters of the Democratic campaign and to convince these supporters to vote.

15 students returned to Las Vegas on the weekend of Nov. 1. This time, they worked directly with the Harris-Walz campaign to canvas in various neighborhoods. Across both trips, students were met with mixed success rates.

“We knocked on a lot of doors where nobody answered and we’d just leave a flier,” Rosenblum said.

“There were moments where it was a little frustrating because you want to be reaching more people.”

Still, Eli Jobrack Lundy CM ’27 — the trip’s organizer — said that many of those who did answer their doors praised the students for getting involved at such a young age. According to Lundy, this kind of connection was a big part of the experience.

“We wanted to provide 5C students with an opportunity to maximize their impact to this super, super, super important cause,” Lundy said. “The overall goal of canvassing, in general, no matter what you’re doing, is to connect with people who you believe have a good reason to agree with you and want to go through the candidate.”

The students on the trip reported overwhelmingly positive experiences, according to Lundy. For many, it was a way to make an impact and to contribute to a cause they strongly supported.

“It’s helping us ease our stress, knowing that we can at least do something to advocate for what we believe in and help create the change we want to see in this country,” Leatham said.

Lundy said that the purpose of the canvassing trips was to give 5C students a way to maximize their political impact in the election.

“It is the most important election that our generation has lived through,” Lundy said. “It will define our generation’s livelihoods in a lot of ways.”

News

November 8, 2024

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Claremont College watch parties bring together students to track election results CHLOE ESHAGH On Nov. 5, members of the Claremont College community gathered at venues across the 5Cs to watch broadcasts of the 2024 presidential election and discuss the election’s results.

The Claremont Colleges League of Women Voters (LWV) chapter co-sponsored a watch party with Pomona’s Politics department starting at 6:00 p.m. on the Smith Campus Center’s South Lawn where people brought blankets and enjoyed food while watching the election.

Lexi Duffy PO ’26, president of the LWV chapter, said that the goal of these watchparties was to bring people together to process and talk as a community about a monumental event that affects everyone in the 5C community.

“It seems like people really like having a place to process it together, to be with their friends as they’re experiencing either highs and lows,” Duffy said.

Duffy then discussed how since the colleges are known for political activism, the LWV works to provide resources to contribute to this passion that many students have.

“Overall, the 5Cs have a really strong reputation for people getting in their vote as soon as they can and making sure they have the resources to do it,” Duffy said.

Duffy added that political engagement at the 5Cs is unique in its “bottom-up” structure instead of “top to bottom,” which means that there are more students building their community around politics instead of administration making efforts for people to participate.

At Pitzer College, the President’s Office for Constructive Dialogue and the Community Engagement Center (CEC) hosted an event from 4:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m. at the Gold Student Center Multipurpose Room.

Helen Chirigos PZ ’25 and Annika Solomonson PZ ’25, two student organizers of the watch party, also said they saw a similar need for spaces of political engagement during this monumental occasion.

“These people are here because they feel interested and passionate about following the election,” Chirigos said. “So we’re just addressing a need which the student body creates on their own by being politically engaged.”

Solomonson added that since the majority of Pitzer’s student body is passionate about politics, both she and Chirigos worked with the CEC to provide the watch party with food, bracelet making and art to help students de-stress and engage with the election.

“The [CEC] has always been fundamental to promoting Pitzer’s core values and a really important part of political campus life,” Chirigos said.

“The staff work tirelessly, many of whom have worked there for many years to put on events like this and many other forms of opportunities for political engagement and awareness across community partnerships and inter-collegiately.”

Claremont McKenna College’s Kravis Center for Civic Leadership hosted a CMC-exclusive watch party for students and faculty at the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum from 5:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. The

party also included a presentation of the results of the 2024 Political Attitudes Survey, which was conducted by the Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World.

Attendee Jacob Pippel CM ’28 said that most of the people at the gathering leaned towards the Democratic party candidate, Kamala Harris.

“They gave us the results to the

political attitudes survey at the [Athenaeum] coverage last night, and 70% preferred Kamala Harris, and I think a similar amount generally leaned Democratic,” Pippel said.

Pippel also highlighted CMC’s commitment to open dialogue around the elections, noting that the Athenaeum has hosted various election-related events for months leading up to Nov. 5. Two recent events included a discussion on

potential scenarios for the 2024 election on Monday, Nov. 4, and a follow-up luncheon from the ‘Religion, Race, Gender, and the 2024 Election Conference,’ which analyzed the election results on Thursday, Nov. 7.

“CMC really embraces open discussion so everyone is comfortable sharing their opinions, and I find that nobody here has black-and-white opinions,” Pippel said. “Everyone is very thoughtful and nuanced.”

SARAH ZIFF • THE STUDENT LIFE Students from the 5Cs came together and watched the 2024 election results from different watch parties hosted by both administration and students.

5C community reacts to Trump’s victory ANNABELLE INK On Wednesday morning, former president Donald Trump won the 2024 United States presidential election, beating Vice President Kamala Harris and securing a second term in office. Since then, students and faculty members at the Claremont Colleges have expressed mixed reactions.

Trump’s win makes him one of only two chief executives in U.S. history to be elected in nonconsecutive terms. He was elected for the first time in 2016 when he beat Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton by 74 electoral votes. When he lost the election four years later to current President Joe Biden, his refusal to accept the results triggered a violent insurrection at the nation’s Capitol.

In the weeks leading up to this year ’s election, experts remained split on who would win, with most expecting a close race. Harris received 226 electoral votes, while Trump received 295, taking six of the nation’s seven swing states. Arizona, the seventh swing state, is still processing ballots but is predicted to also go to Trump.

David J. Menefee-Libey, professor of government and politics at Pomona College, said that he wasn’t surprised by the results of the election.

“We live in a closely divided, negative age and swing voters are hostile to people in power,” he said in an email to TSL. “Trump and Vance were very good at pushing that negativity and ran an effective campaign focused on grievance and resentment … Harris, Walz, and national Democrats ran mostly good campaigns, but it was always going to be tough for them.”

Menefee-Libey added that Trump’s victory could be harmful to institutions like Pomona, saying that Trump, Vance and Republicans across the country “actively scapegoat colleges and universities.” He specifically pointed to Project 2025, a 922page policy agenda detailing recommendations for Trump’s future administration.

The agenda calls for sweeping changes to the nation’s higher education systems, recommending that the federal government end its student loan programs, restrict college curricula and eliminate Title IX protections for LGBTQ+ students and women.

“I hate to see that, because I know from 40-plus years of doing this work that what we do at universities and colleges like Pomona is important and valuable to America,” Menefee-Libey wrote. “It will be hard for us at Pomona to defend ourselves and our friends from those attacks because we are more than a little bit divided and demoralized right now, but that’s a challenge this election has brought to our doorstep.”

While Menefee-Libey said he had expected Republicans to do well in the election, not everyone was so sure. Some students at the Claremont Colleges, where students and faculty members overwhelmingly lean left, said

that being in the campus’s “blue bubble” at times led them to believe that the election would turn out in Harris’s favor.

“It seemed that — given all the social media presence and the way that there was this huge energy in the youth behind it — there was a plausible chance of swinging left,” Lexi Duffy PO ’26, a public policy analysis major and co-president of the Claremont Colleges League of Women Voters, said. “I think everyone was so optimistic and excited for the opportunity of the first woman president of color. There was a lot of hope that didn’t turn out to manifest.”

Ella Alpert SC ’26, a dual major in politics and writing and rhetoric, said that she was similarly surprised and that she felt “gutted” and “dehumanized” when the election results came in.

“Deep down, I thought that Kamala would win,” she said.

“To me, this speaks to our country’s sexism and racism, and I think that that is the hardest pill for me to swallow.”

She specifically pointed to the high number of young men who voted for Trump. 56 percent of young men voted red in this year’s election, as compared to the 41 percent who voted red

in 2020, according to data from the Tufts Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. Alpert described this phenomenon as a “slap in the face” and added that she couldn’t help questioning the views of her peers.

“I think I just had more hope that maybe [the election] would go the way I wanted it to go, or that even if I don’t have as much faith in the country, I have faith in people,” she said. “What’s most disappointing to me is to think that my male peers, my white peers — and not just peers, but people across the country — don’t value women, and don’t value women of color in particular.”

Gabriel Dalton PO ’25, a history major, described Trump’s election as “an affirmation of some of [his] most pessimistic beliefs.”

“I feel like all up and down the scale, at the highest level of the global community and also just on the interpersonal level, there are pretty major concerns,” he said. “I mean, what does this even just say about the people I’m around in the real world that they’re willing to support something like this?”

Some students were more optimistic. Shivom Parihar CM

’28 said that while he wasn’t Lewis added that students p a r t i c u l a r l y h a p p y a b o u t should stay politically engaged Trump’s victory — citing the even though the presidential president-elect’s “anti-Demo- election is over, emphasizing the cratic tendencies” — he wasn’t importance of talking to each othupset, either. er and trying to understand dif“I don’t think Trump de- ferent perspectives and opinions. served to win, but I think the “A lot of people seem to cast Democrats deserved to lose,” judgment, perhaps based on he said. “I think we’ve had four political affiliation, and it’s too years of combad,” he said. “It plete mismankind of exempliagement in this fies the division Deep down, I thought country…We’ve in our country.” j u s t s e e n t h e that Kamala would win.

Other students complete deg- To me, this speaks to our similarly called radation of the for political encountry’s sexism and social fabric of gagement. racism, and I think that this country in “The chance the aftermath of that is the hardest pill for to rally behind the pandemic, a specific candime to swallow. and there’s been date is over, but no attempt to try the opportuniElla Alpert SC ’26 to rectify that.” ties for rallying There were behind policies some students and rallying bewho were happy about Trump’s hind ideas and rallying behind victory, though, such as Caden these mass efforts of ideological Lewis CM ’28. Referring to him- change, they’re not over,” Duffy self as a minority in the political said. “So that looks like getting landscape of the Claremont involved in local government, Colleges, Lewis said that he had showing up to Claremont City a “good day” after the election Council meetings and finding results came out. local ways to impact change bot“I’m excited for everybody,” tom-up.” he said. “I’m excited for my country, I’m excited for my own Joelle Rudolf and Nitya Gupta confamily, up at home.” tributed reporting.

SARAH ZIFF • THE STUDENT LIFE Following Trump’s win in the 2024 presidential election, students and faculty members at the 5Cs expressed mixed feelings about the situation.

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November 8, 2024

Election reflection: Analyzing TSL’s pre-election polls and student voters’ impact on future politics JOELLE RUDOLF In the week leading up to the presidential election, TSL polled a random sample of 125 5C students outside dining halls on their overall opinions going into election day.

As noted in the accompanying chart, less than 50 percent of the surveyed 5C students reported feeling that their vote mattered. A little over 70 percent recognized the specific state that they had voting residence in as being a primary factor in determining the real impact of their individual vote on the election results.

Susan McWilliams Barndt, a professor of politics at Pomona College, offered her perspective, addressing students who doubt the importance of their individual vote.

“I think anybody who claims their vote doesn’t matter is thinking too much about national politics and not thinking enough about local elections and statewide initiatives,” McWilliams said.

McWilliams used the city of Claremont as an example, highlighting two crucial local elections: the school board and the city council.

“At stake in those elections are what gets taught in our schools and whether or not renters are allowed to be kicked out by landlords for all sorts of different reasons,” she said.

To voters who remained undecided or abstained from the election because they didn’t feel their personal views fully aligned well with one candidate, McWilliams passed down an analogy she learned from a friend.

“Voting isn’t like getting an Uber or Lyft where it’s going to take you exactly where you want to go,” she said.

“Voting is like public transit. You need to get on the train or bus that will get you closest to where you want to go.”

When asked about her thoughts on young voters’ impact on the election, McWilliams reiterated that any potential impact traces back to actual

UNITY TAMBELLINI-SMITH • THE STUDENT LIFE A TSL poll of 125 students during the weeks leading up to the general election gives an inside look at 5C student’s electoral preferences.

participation.

“If people wonder or complain why we have a whole bunch of rich old people in charge of this country, rich people vote at about a 90 percent voting rate,” McWilliams said. “Old people vote at the highest voting rate, so no wonder the people in charge look a lot like the people who vote the most.”

McWilliams emphasized the importance of the youth vote because, historically speaking, “when young people vote, young people win.”

Although the majority of the 125 students TSL surveyed said they

were definitely planning to vote for Kamala Harris, an overwhelming 61.1 percent of the sample reported doubts about her ability to actually win the election.

Some of those who reported voting for Trump quoted his economic policy and fears of the “woke mind virus” as their reasoning, while survey participants who voted for Harris mainly mentioned reproductive rights, climate change and immigration policies.

Out of the 125 5C students TSL randomly surveyed, 97.6 percent shared that they were both regis-

tered and planning to vote in the presidential election, an overwhelming majority that reflects the extent of campus political participation.

McWilliams expressed gratitude for the energy that she witnessed students putting into the election.

“I’m very proud of those students who were, in one way or another, active in this election,” McWilliams said. “I know it can be awkward or uncomfortable to do so given the current climate in the nation and on the campuses.”

While acknowledging the voter participation on campus, McWil-

liams stressed in her interview that voting is not the only important thing people should do as citizens and residents of the United States.

She explained that only participating in isolated political events like the presidential election can lead to unsatisfactory results.

“It is so important to get involved in politics long before election day,” McWilliams said. “You have to either create or become the kind of candidate that you want to see running; you can’t expect other people to do that work for you, because they don’t know how you think.”

‘At 90, still going strong’: New 5C Events app makes scheduling easy Former SF Mayor Willie JACK ROGERS A new student-developed app designed to help students monitor community events could change the social landscape at the Claremont Colleges. The app, 5C Events, was launched on Oct. 25 via Fizz – the popular anonymous social media platform – with the post quickly amassing thousands of likes.

Three days later on Oct. 28, Daniel Xu CM ’28 and Aaron Zhang CM ’28, the app’s developers, started a 5C Events Instagram page, promoting the app and instructing users on how they could download it. Since then, the page has amassed over 900 followers, with posts showing off the app’s new features and polls allowing students to submit feedback.

Xu and Zhang have been hard at work publicizing the app and responding to this feedback. Zhang said that the two created the app after seeing a clear need for it within the community. Some of the pre-existing platforms, Xu said, are very cluttered and have a lot of unnecessary information.

“There are similar platforms like Cork [and] Engage and there are Instagram accounts like ASCMC and 5C Nightlife,” Xu said. “But all of these things are missing one factor or another.”

Xu added that on the other platforms, it can be challenging to edit event information. Often, creators have to make an entirely new post, and any older posts that were still up would have incorrect information.

Currently, the developers’ main goal is to increase 5C Events’ user base. To achieve this, they have attempted to promote the app through various social media plat-

forms while also reaching out to student-led organizations and clubs to better integrate the app into student life.

Xu and Zhang also outlined some of their long-term goals with the app.

“I think a platform like this could be used at other schools to connect students with relevant events,” Zhang said.

He noted that the experiences students face at the 5Cs are not unique and that at larger campuses, it becomes even more necessary to organize events because of the limited communication across dorms and student groups.

According to Xu and Zhang, the release of 5C Events was a big step for them as they both went into creating it with relatively limited backgrounds in app development.

“Both of us don’t really have much coding experience but with the power of AI nowadays, you can basically make anything you want,” Xu said. “So our app was created almost entirely with the help of an AI app creator called Glide, except for some coding in the back end of our app.”

Xu strongly pushed for utilizing AI to build the platform. He explained that its usage was key in segments of the app’s creation that otherwise would have been very time-intensive, especially while balancing his school work, extracurriculars and social life.

While the features of the app are intentionally simplistic, Xu and Zhang add new tools daily as they receive user feedback.

“We’re trying to ensure that all the events across the 5Cs are in the app,” Zhang said. “And we filter through these by the school and

also by parties, club events and career-focused events.”

Kabir Raina CM ’28 first heard about the 5C Events app on Fizz and checks it a few times a week to make sure that he has not missed out on any events.

He is a regular user and has so far enjoyed his experience with the app.

“It’s really nice because previously, you would only hear about events through either the 5C Nightlife Instagram or emails and it could be difficult to keep track of everything so this kind of consolidates it all together in one place,” Raina said.

He added that he didn’t mind how things were before the app existed but that his life is now easier thanks to 5C Events. Overall, he said that he views it as beneficial to the 5C community.

“I think it’s definitely something that people can start using very regularly,” Raina said.

Xu and Zhang said they hope that their app will eventually become a cornerstone across the campuses and that a majority of students will actively rely on it in their day-to-day lives. They hope for it to be comparable to the popular 5C Menus app — an app that provides the daily menus of the 5C dining halls — which was also developed by 5C students several years ago.

“We want this app to be something that everyone says to new freshmen, like, ‘Oh, have you downloaded this yet,’” Xu said. “We also want this app to be a platform where all the clubs and organizations that make events on campus can go on and just sort of input their own events.”

SASHA MATTHEWS • THE STUDENT LIFE

Brown speaks at CMC

COURTESY: CLAREMONT MCKENNA COLLEGE Former California Assembly Speaker and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown captivated a small audience at CMC’s Rose Institute, discussing his political career and the importance of bipartisan relationships.

KAHANI MALHOTRA Donning a purple tie and a large grin, former Speaker of the California State Assembly and San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown greeted an intimate audience of around 30 students and faculty at CMC’s Rose Institute of State and Local Government on Nov. 5. This smaller gathering preceded Brown’s talk at the CMC Athenaeum that evening which over 100 members of the 5C community registered to attend.

Brown has been at the forefront of California and national politics for decades. Elected to the California State Assembly in 1964, Brown later served as speaker from 1980 to 1995. Near the end of his final term in the Assembly, he ran for mayor of San Francisco and served from 1996 to 2004.

In response to a student question about his stance on local government, Brown said that he had become a “great advocate” for it. He stated that while state legislators are crucial in shaping the laws themselves, it is the local governments that play a key role in implementing them.

“You actually perform the services if you are [part of your] local government,” Brown said.

During his time as mayor, he found that public safety, public transportation and public parks were cornerstones in appealing to local perspectives.

“You’ve got to listen to local needs,” he said.

The group discussion soon turned to term limits, the restriction on the length of time an elected official may hold office, a subject that is intimately tied to Brown’s career.

In 1990, California voters adopted Proposition 140, which established term limits for state legislators.

Brown, in his longtime tenure as an Assembly statesman, became the major focus of the initiative. The enactment of term limits pushed

him to run for mayor and continue his career as a California politician.

“I would’ve never been mayor if there were [no] term limits,” he said.

“I loved being Speaker of the House.”

Brown noted term limits as a barrier to developing long-term connections as a politician, of which he emphasized the importance.

“Term limits [have] robbed all of us of an abundance of talent … because in decision making, relationships are paramount,” he said.

He then cited how, as a Democrat, these relationships were what allowed him to achieve major legislation wins, even while working under multiple Republican governors and even once in a Republican-majority assembly.

Brown emphasized that these relationships overcame partisan divides: for instance, he cited how California was one of the first states to “do something” about automatic weapons because he and his fellow politicians prioritized their relationships over personal party ties.

Julia Eason CM ’27 applauded Brown’s emphasis on nonpartisanship.

“I think he is a perfect example of somebody who is so comfortable working across the aisle and trying to, at a state-level and looking forward to a national level, really bridge those gaps of so much tension and separation between parties,” Eason said.

Dhriti Jagadish CM ’27 further commended Brown’s appeals to relationship-building.

“Seeing such a paragon of California politics speak about how important it is to build relationships, be civil and make decisions not based [on] party but on what’s right, just very exciting as we head into [the] election and voting and very stressful things,” Jagadish said.

Overall, students, faculty and staff alike laughed along with Brown’s recollections of his life in California politics.

“Brown was electric — even at 90, [he’s] still going strong,” Thomas Rose CM ’27 said. “It was just great to hear him speak.”

Arts & Culture

November 8, 2024

5C voting clubs promote civic engagement Claremont Colleges League of Women Voters AUDREY GREEN LWV is a women-led voting club dedicated to advocating for everyone’s right to vote and promoting democratic participation. The club belongs to a chapter of a national organization founded in 1920 that works towards a more inclusive democracy.

LWV believes that exercising civic duties extends far beyond presidential elections, including understanding policies, local government and everything in between.

“An election is so much more than just who becomes president, and a lot of times the most meaningful policy changes that voters have influence on are at the local level,” club leader Sydney Cottrell PO ’26 said.

Cottrell and her peers provide resources so people can gain a holistic understanding of the government and cast more informed votes.

“For me, one of the most important things about this club — beyond its explicit mission — is the community it cultivates. Whether that’s getting milkshakes at In-N-Out after an off-campus voter registration event, eating dinner with club members after our weekly meetings … I feel so fortunate to have met so many wonderful, eager and kind individuals,” club leader Ellie Urfrig PO ’26 said.

Since many college students require absentee ballots, LWV held events such as “Ballots and Boba,” where students filled out their absentee ballots together. They also held multiple tabling events where they offered nonpartisan proposition information to students filling out a California ballot, with a particular emphasis on local government.

For the 2024 election, LWV club members wrote 200 letters to swing state voters. Additionally, they co-hosted two presidential debate watch parties that had hundreds of students in attendance. The leadership team encouraged everyone to educate themselves on all policies and candidates, even those they disagreed with.

“Especially given the current state of our country, confronting political issues can seem scary and divisive,” Cottrell said. “What I hope to achieve through the [LWV] here on campus is reminding those around me of the importance of civic engagement and the excitement in knowing that your voice matters and your vote can make a difference, even if maybe it doesn’t seem like it at first glance.”

At its core, the club hopes students will continue to be active participants in democracy.

“I hope people were excited to participate and be a part of this monumental election,” Urfrig said.

“The electoral process is not perfect, but it’s a path to progress. A path we can certainly criticize, but should never take advantage of, ignore or disengage with.”

PAGE 5

During the 2024 election cycle, 5C voting clubs have sought to build community amongst students through civic action. Recognizing the importance of active participation in democracy, clubs such as Claremont Colleges League of Women Voters (LWV), Every Vote Counts Claremont (EVCC) and Claremont Initiative for Voter Engagement Strategies (CIVES) work to ensure students have access to essential resources like voter registration assistance and nonpartisan information on propositions. Above all, these clubs provide an informed and civically engaged network of peers.

CHARLOTTE HAHM EVCC is a nonpartisan club dedicated to promoting student civic engagement and policy literacy to boost voter turnout. The club is a chapter of a nationwide organization that addresses voter engagement, civic education and pro-voter advocacy and reform.

Through educational programs, media and community events, they make civic engagement more accessible. EVC believes that democracy requires active and engaged voter participation.

Co-led by Olivia Wee CM ’25 and Isabel Apfel PZ ’26, EVC educates about the importance of local governance, the structure of government branches and down-ballot voting.

The club also assists first-time voters with registration and helps with absentee ballot requests, including providing free postage.

“A big part of EVC, since it is a student group, is the peerto-peer connection element,” Wee, who is also part of EVC’s national student leadership board, said. “Students tend to give more impactful and more compelling arguments to someone who is not going to vote. They might give it a second thought.”

This semester, EVC events began as early as orientation, where they registered over 80 Claremont McKenna firstyears to vote through an ice cream social. With CIVES, they co-hosted the 5C voting carnival, which attracted 337 students. At the event, they incorporated trivia questions on U.S. government and history, such as questions from the U.S. Citizenship Exam, into fun games. Wee also worked to personally engage with students and other civic leaders within the Claremont Colleges.

“Creating the opportunity to vote uniquely sets culture.

When you show up here, if that is one of the first things you encounter, a voting event, and it is something the college endorses, then you know that this is just something that CMC people do or something that people at Pomona do,” Wee said.

Wee said that while civic engagement should be taught more widely, not all students have access to that knowledge.

In the future, they hope to create more community outreach programs for local high schools, with an additional focus on the Claremont community.

Although EVC is part of CMC’s Kravis Lab for Leadership, Wee and Apfel make a conscious effort to extend this resource to the other Claremont Colleges by holding at least one event at each of the colleges per year.

They ensure that every 5C prospective and current student has access to EVC. With a prioritization of mutual aid, EVC encourages students to support each other, especially after the outcome of the 2024 election.

“I think what makes EVC unique in general is that we are by students, for students,” Wee said. “We really are here to create space and advocate for students, particularly for when we are dealing with some pretty challenging times nationally. We try to promote a healthy way forward for democracy and hopefully for young people to keep the democratic legacy alive.”

Every Vote Counts Claremont

Claremont Initiative for Voter Engagement Strategies AUDREY GREEN & CHARLOTTE HAHM The nonpartisan group CIVES is an extension of EVC. Their aim is to improve voter turnout and provide civic education for CMC students and beyond.

Founded in fall 2023, CIVES has held multiple events to educate the community on the importance of voting.

Though CIVES hosted meetings and a voter registration drive throughout 2023, co-leader Apfel noted that CIVES’ activity and traction picked up this fall.

CIVES hosted two first-year registration drives at CMC, supported a registration drive at Pomona and tabled across the 5C campuses and the Claremont community. Set up by Apfel and Wee, the event saw lively raffles, food stands, and education booths for students to engage in voting initiatives. Apfel emphasized that the carnival was less focused on voter registration and more so on civic education.

“That’s a big pillar of CIVES as well, we are trying to make sure people are thinking civically, and are growing enthusiasm for civics too,” she said.

CIVES hopes to dispel the notion that Californian votes don’t matter. CIVES argues that democracy relies on everyone’s voices, and they encourage students to not throw away their democratic right.

“We want to make sure that students are really educated and have a better energy around civics, even if it is daunting and disappointing at times,” Apfel said.

Though CIVES is a CMC-based organization, its audience and impact reached far beyond campus. Apfel and Wee have set up tables in the greater Claremont area, offering registration, absentee ballot requests, and other voting help to passersby. In addition, they often host civic trivia to engage people and test their knowledge.

“A lot of the time, adults come with their young kids who watch their parents play some civic trivia and who maybe do not know the answers,”Apfel said. It’s eye opening for both us and the parents. It gets people in the know and little bit more and makes them realize, maybe this is really important. It is impactful … to know things about our government and voting.”

CIVES have hosted similar tables across the 5C campuses to encourage students, especially first-time voters, to come ask questions and engage civically in the election.

“My favorite work is registering a new voter just because kids would get really excited about it,” Apfel said. “I thought that was really cool, that I could impart that enthusiasm onto someone else and let them feel that kind of energy.”

Apfel also appreciated the overwhelming support and engagement CIVES received throughout the fall semester and encouraged students to continue educating themselves on politics and using their voices to see civic change. “[Following the election] we can see that there is definitely work to be done, and we shouldn’t be afraid of that, but we should be moving towards that instead,” Apfel said.

After the election, voting clubs across the campuses encourage students to remain civically involved. Though their registration and tabling have come to a pause, plenty of opportunities for civic education lay ahead.

After the election, voting clubs across the campuses encourage students to remain civically involved. Though their registration and tabling have come to a pause, plenty of opportunities for civic education lay ahead.

SASHA MATTHEWS • THE STUDENT LIFE

Meet the Hyperschedulers: The trio keeping your favorite 5C website up and running PATRICK MCDOWELL 5C students love Hyperschedule, but few know who’s behind it. As course registration for the Spring 2025 semester approaches on Nov. 12, Hyperschedule — a student-run 5C course scheduling website — frequently pops up on students’ laptops.

The current maintainers, Next Ongarjvaja HM ’26, Edward Donson HM ’26 and Stephen Xu HM ’27, shared insights into what goes on behind the scenes of one of the 5Cs’ most beloved and widely used websites.

Radon Rosborough HM ’20 originally created Hyperschedule for the 2017 5C Hackathon as a user-friendly alternative to clunky student portals. Although some portal alternatives — such as HMC Scheduler — were available, none caught on quite like Hyperschedule.

Soon after its release, Kye Shi HM ’22 added some features to enhance the user experience.

“Some of [the features I suggested] were really silly like the colors [that display the classes], but people loved the colors,” Shi said. “We changed the colors once and all my friends said, ‘Bring back the old colors, these colors suck.’”

As Rosborough’s graduation approached and Hyperschedule became increasingly popular across the 5Cs, Shi stepped up as a main-

tainer.

Initially, Shi’s main focus was simply keeping the site alive, paying out-of-pocket to keep the site running through its host server.

By 2020, according to the Hyperschedule GitHub page, monthly traffic during course registration exceeded 17,000 hits and was used by over 1,000 students across the 5Cs. Mia Celeste HM ’24 later joined Shi as co-maintainer. Together, they revamped the code to make it more accessible for future developers.

With the code newly written and Celeste’s graduation fast approaching, Celeste sent an email seeking new students to join the team. By November 2023, Ongarjvaja, Donson and Xu were on board.

Ongarjvaja had some computer science experience in high school but started at Harvey Mudd College as a physics major. He later decided to double major in Computer Science. Ongarjvaja became particularly interested in the numerous subfields within computer science and website development.

“Website development is cool in the way you can build something that you can physically see, there’s some design part to it,” Orgarjvaja said. “Also, there’s some back end and structural parts that you have to learn.”

Donson, an intended Chemistry major, had a limited computing background. Prior to Hyperschedule, Donson worked on a project as a front-end developer — building the visible and interactive aspects of websites. Although he felt underqualified when applying to work for Hyperschedule, he hoped to develop his skills on the job.

“I didn’t really have any of the skills [Hyperschedule] was advertising, but I just put my name down,” Donson said. “I was like, ‘I’ll definitely learn something.’”

Xu, who is considering a major in Computer Science, has taken on many personal programming projects since his start in freshman year of high school, including a class project centered around the construction of an interactive 2D physics engine. Xu joined as a freshman after an email to Celeste which simply read, “I can code a little bit.”

“I feel like ‘I can code a little bit’ is a bit of an understatement,” Donson laughed.

From there Xu began attending meetings and quickly made his way in as a part of the new trio of maintainers.

Reflecting on the project’s benefits, Donson noted that the ambition of his peers — and classmates who were considering becoming maintainers — motivated him to learn more. He’s recently started

working on creating servers and other personal projects that help him further develop his skills.

“There’s a bunch of people in one concentrated space that are very ambitious and it sort of motivates me to try harder,” Donson said.

Previously, Hyperschedule was funded by the Associated Students of Harvey Mudd College (ASHMC). ASHMC rescinded the funding after the Spring 2024 semester — they suggested that due to the website’s widespread use across the 5Cs, funding should come from a broader 5C source, according to Ongarjvaja.

Donson took on much of the work in securing funding for the group. Donson attended numerous meetings and sent countless emails to student governments and other groups across the 5Cs. Eventually, Hyperschedule secured

SASHA MATTHEWS • THE STUDENT LIFE

funding from HMC administration.

“In that period, the day-to-day was pretty stressful because we didn’t know where money was coming from,” Donson said.

With funding secured, the trio has shifted their primary focus to fixing bugs — adding code to ensure dates export properly to external services like Google Calendar or fixing login issues after The Claremont College Services (TCCS) made changes that impacted some users’ access. The maintainers also validate and correct data about courses that often come in with errors on the site such as incorrect course times and dates.

The group plans to implement server backups so the site can continue to run if issues on one server arise.

“We’re just aiming for more and more reliability, error logging and a small bit of new features,” Xu said.

Users can report bugs they encounter on Hyperschedule’s GitHub page, a website platform that allows developers to store, share and collaborate on code. Beyond reporting issues, users can submit pull requests, allowing them to suggest and contribute code that maintainers can review and implement to fix bugs.

“We are looking for things we can improve on, so we do want people to make reports,” Xu said. “The people who do submit issues, we are grateful for.”

Arts & Culture

PAGE 6 LOST IN TRANSLATION

November 8, 2024

NOTES FROM SPAIN

Wolf hats and word fumbles Making it to Morocco CLAIRE WELCH One Wednesday this September, I found myself standing in front of a room of 34 fifth grade students, wearing a furry wolf hat and holding a giant plastic flower.

My goal for that week’s Chinese class, shared by my teaching partner, Emma Wei SC ’27, was to teach the seasons of the year.

We’d strategized, planned, located props, rehearsed our lines and even assumed the personas of cartoon animals, all in preparation for this single 45-minute class.

All of that planning, only to stand up there looking out at a sea of enthusiastically confused children.

Every Wednesday Emma and I, alongside the rest of our Foreign Language Teaching Clinic class, take a bus to Chaparral Elementary School to teach Chinese language and culture to Mr. Dahl’s fifth grade class. As the semester has progressed, we’ve built a whole universe for these children to learn within: our class mascots have families and friends, the Jade Emperor often comes to visit and our activities include elaborate storylines of prison breaks and ancient dance troupes.

Yet despite all this planning, sometimes our lesson simply doesn’t land. On the bus ride back to campus those days, I sit with the uneasy feeling that our efforts are fruitless. There’s no way these children are going to actually learn how to speak Chinese in 45 minutes — so what’s the point?

If you’ve never been humbled before, try teaching a class of students exclusively in a language they don’t understand. In moments where the activity just isn’t landing, or when our words seem to be falling on deaf ears, it’s easy to fall into the pit of self-doubt.

On the bus ride home from teaching our students about seasons, I got a notification that there’d been an earthquake in the Annapurna region of Nepal. As

we crossed Foothill, my mind wandered back to my days of walking home from teaching at a Nepali elementary school at dusk, shouldering a backpack full of textbooks, flashcards and lesson plans.

In 2022, as the pandemic finally felt like it was coming to a close, I graduated high school and my family moved from Hong Kong to Washington, D.C. Just as I felt like the ground was crumbling under my feet, I reconnected with an old friend who’d found a way to trade her time and effort for free lodging in a Himalayan village.

Two months and one teaching certificate later, I trekked my way through the Annapurna region of Nepal to the small village of Tolka, where I began working as an English liaison and librarian at the local government school.

Every morning I would meticulously plan out my lessons, and yet many evenings my walk home was filled with all the mistakes I’d made that day — every moment where I’d looked out to find a sea of blank, confused faces.

Many volunteer programs, like those in Chaparral and Nepal, tend to frame their mission as “giving back to a community.”

Standing in front of a classroom waving my plastic flower wand at confused children, I often wonder what exactly we “give” when we are “giving back.”

What am I giving these students when I stand up there teaching them how to say “summer” in Mandarin?

When I look back at the languages of my childhood, I see a similar world of confusion.

Between Hong Kong’s streets of Cantonese, my grandmother ’s Tagalog, my parent’s English and my school’s Mandarin, I spent many an hour staring blankly up at adults as their words fell on my deaf ears.

Navigating the world of linguistic disorientation often left me feeling alone and incompetent.

ALEXANDRA GRUNBAUM • THE STUDENT LIFE

With the gift of retrospect, however, I’ve come to understand that without all those hours of sitting there confused, I never would’ve been given the access and ability to move between these languages and the worlds that they hold.

When babies first learn to speak, they babble. Walking around Tolka with my beginner’s Nepali, I babbled with the determination of a newborn crying through a long haul flight. I pointed at every object; I conversed with first graders; I carried around a notebook where I recorded every phrase I heard.

Initially, my feverish desire to learn Nepali was inspired by the practical access that a language can give you. With no English speakers in sight, I craved the ability to voice my feelings, ask for food and water and give instructions to my students.

What was I given? With relentless practice, babbling became stilted conversations, which became invitations to tea.

Over tea we discussed food, and suddenly I was spending my evenings with students’ families, planting potatoes, milking yak and swimming in the river.

“A different language is a different vision of life.” If you’ve ever seen the cult classic film “La Dolce Vita,” or thrown yourself into a new language, you’ll understand exactly what the director Fellini meant with those words.

Learning Nepali not only gave me a new way to communicate, but also allowed me to see and interact with the world through a new medium. This new world was not my own, but was given to me by all the people who held my hand as I babbled, guiding me through the confusion.

45 minutes a week is not nearly enough to learn how to speak Mandarin. Over the semester, Emma and I have learned this the hard way. Yet somehow the more I realize this, the more I see the value in teaching our class.

What have we given them?

I think back to last week, when we taught the class about food from different Chinese-speaking regions. Ira, a native Chinese speaker in the front row, jumped out of his chair with excitement when we showed pictures — “That’s my food! I’ve eaten all those foods!”

Ira’s tablemate is Sebastian, a soft-spoken boy who’s rarely comfortable participating. “That sounds really good,” he whispered, looking up at Ira. “I’d like to try it.”

Claire SC ’27 has thoughts.

PARISHI KANUGA Spain and Morocco are just eight miles away from each other, making Morocco a classic spot for Spanish tourists. Ever since I decided to study abroad in Spain, Morocco has been my top destination for a weekend trip. So, this Halloween weekend, four of my friends and I decided to ditch the costumes and head to Marrakech.

On paper, our plan could not have been more perfect. We found a three-day desert tour with food, housing, tours and transportation all covered for $100 a person. It sounded too good to be true — but it almost wasn’t.

Obstacle after obstacle on our journey to Morocco nearly made me lose sight of our end destination and ruin the trip for myself.

Our Ryanair flight was out of the Malaga airport, around 2.5 hours away from where we were staying in Seville. We left our residence 45 minutes before our bus was scheduled to arrive. Little did we know, a bus strike in the city had resulted in abhorrent traffic, making us miss our bus.

After stressing and deliberating on next steps, we decided that the best move would be to split an Uber to Malaga. While this definitely hurt our wallets, we had already spent so much money on flights that we figured it was a sunk cost.

We made it to the gate just in time, ready to finally relax after the hectic ride to the airport.

Boarding started. Each of us scanned our passes and headed onto the plane — until my friend was stopped by a gate agent.

The flight was overbooked, and since she’d checked in last, she’d been bumped. We were in shock. After planning this trip for weeks and looking forward to it for months, getting blocked at the last moment felt like a punch in the gut. I decided to stay back with her; I didn’t want to leave her alone in the new city.

The scariness of the situation made it truly feel like Halloween.

In the hour that followed we talked to Ryanair staff, cried, called our parents, planned a hypothetical weekend in Malaga and communicated our situation with our tour company in Marrakech.

We realized that this was the only weekend that would work for both of us to go to Morocco, and discussed whether we still wanted to make the trip happen.

Our tour to the Sahara Desert would leave at 7 a.m. the next morning. The next flight to Marrakech landed after that. How would we possibly meet up with our tour group in the middle of Morocco?

We went back and forth, ran through our pros and cons, and decided that we weren’t going to

STELLA ROBINSON • THE STUDENT LIFE

let Ryanair’s shady behavior stop us from having a weekend of a lifetime.

We booked flights that would land the next day in the afternoon and were able to book a taxi from our tour company to meet up with our group wherever they may be.

After waking up bright and early and enjoying a delicious brunch in Malaga, we headed back to the airport, hoping the déjà vu of our earlier stress wouldn’t carry over into the boarding process. Luckily, we made it on board without any issues.

We were elated to land in Marrakech 1.5 hours later. Then, like clockwork, another hurdle: the immigration line zig-zagging across the whole room. By the time we reached the front three hours later, it was dark outside.

We finally made it past immigration, met up with our driver, Abdu, and braced ourselves for the 6 hour drive ahead. I had Abdu play some of his favorite Moroccan music so that we could really celebrate the moment. After all, we’d reached Morocco against all odds!

At 2 a.m., we reunited with our friends in their hotel room in Boumalne Dades, Morocco. With only 2 days remaining of the trip, we wanted to make the most of it.

The next two days were absolutely incredible. We drank loads of mint tea, got to see a carpet making cooperative, ate delicious pomegranate, visited the Dadès Gorges and rode camels and ATVs in the Sahara desert.

But beyond the activities and even beyond the great company, it was ultimately my mindset that let me enjoy the trip. Even though we had lost out on some time, the extra money we had spent to make sure we got to Morocco made me want to savor every moment to its fullest extent.

I want to apply this mindset, of really savoring every trip for what it is, to every excursion going forward.

So what has this taught me about study abroad travel? First off, no matter how cheap or expensive, or long or short, a trip is, try to be as present as possible. Second, check in early to your Ryanair flights!

Columnist Parishi Kanuga CM ’26 is studying abroad in Seville, Spain this semester.

‘The Day After’: Talk discusses the 2024 Trump win ISABELLA ZHU On Nov. 6, the day after former President Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election against Vice President Kamala Harris, Pomona College faculty, staff and students gathered in Frank Dining Hall’s Blue Room to hear politics professor Susan McWilliams Barndt’s talk, “The 2024 Election: The Day After.”

Four-time winner of the Wig Award for Teaching and expert on American political thought, McWilliams spoke as part of the Dean of College Speaker Series.

The room overflowed with attendees. Some sat down on the carpet while others leaned against the wall and listened solemnly.

McWilliams began by acknowledging that it was too early to speak with certainty.

“Political theories are good at helping you think through slowly,” McWilliams said. “Whatever I can do or say in this speech, I can’t fix where most of you are hurting or scared and I can’t tell you that it’s wrong to be hurting or scared.”

In her analysis of the election prior to the Harris campaign’s loss,

COURTESY: POMONA COLLEGE On Nov. 6, Pomona politics professor Susan McWilliams Barndt spoke about Donald Trump’s 2024 election win and the shortcomings of Kamala Harris’ campaign.

McWilliams said she had overlooked the impact of economic pressures and everyday struggles of average Americans on the outcome. She suggested that the defeat of the Democratic Party ultimately laid in their failure to address working Americans’ concerns.

She cited a recent CNBC report showing the average age of U.S. homebuyers is now 56 — a record high — due to dwindling pensions, economic instability and stagnant wages.

“In the last decades for most Americans, work has become ever more perilous and precarious.

Regular employment has been displaced by the gig economy — a jazzy way of saying irregular employment. Fewer Americans than ever have pensions of 401ks,” she said.

McWilliams noted that those in higher education aren’t exempt from this economic precarity.

“Here at Pomona, we rely more on temporary faculty than we ever have and those faculty are strung along year to year, underpaid relative to their highly specialized skills and not being able to plan their lives more than a few months in advance,” she said.

As a member of the Pomona’s ad hoc Budget and Inflation Advisory Committee in 2023, she said a quarter of the faculty privately shared their struggles to make ends meet while long-standing staff salaries barely matched minimum wage.

“The increasingly two-tiered American economy is leaving more and more people behind than it raises up and no amount of celebrating the stock market or discussing Goldman Sachs economic politics will speak to that reality,” McWilliams said.

She lamented the missed opportunity for the Democratic campaign to highlight how Gov. Tim Walz, D-Minn., is one of the only vice presidential candidates to have never owned stock.

“One provisional consideration is that the Democratic candidates

may have been speaking the language of the people who live at the top of the hill and it did not resonate with the people who are working hard and exhausted trying to pay their rent checks,” she said.

In this vein, McWilliams discussed a relative success in Arizona the night before: Ruben Gallego’s Senate victory. Gallego’s lead advisor, Chuck Rocha, was the only major Democratic campaign advisor who was not college-educated. His campaign appealed to Latino voters as members of the working-class community, rather than solely as members of a minority group. “[Gallego’s] campaign consistently ran up against the national Democratic establishment that wanted him to fight on elite culture tones instead of on working-class modalities,” McWilliams said.

“There is a big education gap in the electorate. Only 35 percent of adults in the U.S. have college degrees. Simple mathematical matters: You cannot win by speaking to college-educated interests.”

McWilliams then addressed most voters’ alienation from elite ideologies and institutions like the 5Cs. Only a tiny percent of Americans graduate from exclusive small liberal arts colleges.

“One of the hazards of working here or going here is that we have outsized cultural power because we believe that everyone in society is chasing the cultural and educational prizes that we have obtained by virtue of being here. We think that more people think like us than do or have the sense of opportunity and possibility that we try to cultivate here,” McWilliams said.

However, McWilliams felt that the virtue of liberal arts colleges could be endangered by the Trump administration.

“There is a lot of energy to humiliate and downgrade institutions like this. I don’t think anyone should be naive — schools like this one will not insulate you or be insulated from whatever happens next,” she said.

She mentioned Pomona’s dependency on Pell Grants and the possible repercussions of potential federal stipulations.

“If we were to lose federal funding for things like Pell Grants, would we continue to have a Pomona with a relatively equal number of families with financial aid and families who pay full tuition?” she said.

A majority of Americans were in favor of progressive policies but only when those policies were not presented alongside party or candidate names, McWilliams noted. She highlighted progressive policy wins in red states: Missouri voters had voted to back the state constitutional amendment to end the abortion ban and voted to raise the minimum wage and paid sick leave while Kentucky voters rejected an amendment for school vouchers by a substantial margin.

“This, provisionally, might have something to do with the fact that the majority of American voters see Democrats merely — not entirely wrongly — as defenders of the system that is broken and not working,” McWilliams said.

She introduced the term “political sectarianism” as a more fitting concept than political polarization in contextualizing the results.

“Vast majorities of Americans can find some common ground,” McWilliams said. “However, there’s a tendency of political groups to align on the basis of moralized identities rather than shared ideas for policy preferences.”

McWilliams observed that Democrats often operate under a misguided assumption that nonwhite voters primarily identify by their race or ethnicity. Notably, 14 percent more Hispanics voted for Trump compared to 2020.

“Those assumptions have been really baked into democratic strategy and policymaking such as presuming Latinos are all really concerned with immigration, which is a very racialized assumption.”

When asked whether the Democratic Party would make substantial changes in their campaign

strategy, McWilliams referenced Lynn Vavreck’s theory of calcification.

“When things are close, neither the people who have won by a little [nor] the people who have lost by a little have an incentive to change their strategy. The real question coming out of this election is, ‘Have Democrats lost by enough to change their strategy?’”

Attendee Silas Mihm PO ’28 said he felt disappointed with the results in his home state of Georgia. He described the poverty in rural counties near his hometown and said that Harris could’ve appealed more to the working class.

“I realized that even though the economy wasn’t a salient feature for me at the time, it illuminated some of the problems with Harris’ campaign,” Mihm said. “Some voters were voting for Trump not because he was a good candidate but because they felt desperate.”

Attendee Alex Benach PO ’28 described feeling anger and fear following the outcome.

“It’s gonna be a long four years of organizing, tactical opposition, advocacy and mutual aid,” Benach said. “It’s gonna be a fight that should rest on the shoulders of people who are privileged. I hear discussions about how we’ll be okay because we’re in an elite institution in a blue state but we need to look out for the noncitizen students, low-income students and students that will be deeply affected by policies especially if institutional support and resources could go away.”

Referencing novelist Kurt Vonnegut, McWilliams concluded by calling the 7C community to insist on our common humanity.

“In a nation and world where so much wrong is done under the cover of bureaucracy and impersonality and distance, we have a rare and special — and maybe even sacred — capacity on this very small campus to treat each other with individual recognition and personal generosity,” McWilliams said. “I want to call upon you, my colleagues and students, to join me in holding a belief in mutual humanity.”

Arts & Culture

November 8, 2024

PAGE 7

SCIENCE AS A HUMAN ENDEAVOR

How biophysics is pushing the boundaries of science GABRIEL BRENNER In the basement of the Estella Laboratory at Pomona College, the newly established McCluskey Lab is pushing the boundaries of biophysics — exploring the microscopic forces that shape life itself.

As a biophysicist in the lab, I blend principles from physics — such as energy, motion and forces — with biology to understand how physical laws govern the behavior of biological molecules like proteins and DNA. Assistant professor of physics and astronomy Kaley McCluskey, who leads our lab, explained our research. “[It] integrates a wide variety of disciplines in both physics and biology, including molecular biology, polymer physics, optics and

recently, even machine learning,” McCluskey said.

By drawing from these diverse fields, we are pushing the boundaries of scientific discovery. My labmate Jacob Zhang PO ’27 aptly explained the discipline.

“If biology, chemistry and physics are all ‘working together’ inside our bodies, why shouldn’t we work together in the lab? I propose a new Pomona College campaign called ‘Build The Tunnel’ to fund the construction of a tunnel between Estella and Seaver,” Zhang said.

One exciting project we are working on is studying a critical process in SARS-CoV-2, the virus responsible for COVID-19, called ribosomal frameshifting. This process allows the virus to produce the proteins it needs for survival

SHIXIAO YU • THE STUDENT LIFE

by causing its protein-making machinery to pause and shift slightly during the translation of its genetic code.

To study this, we use tools such as magnetic tweezers and a total internal reflection fluorescence (TIRF) microscope, the latter of which we built ourselves. Assembling the microscope required careful attention to ensure the light was properly directed. This step was critical because the accuracy of the setup determined how clearly the tiny molecules we’re studying could be observed.

The process took hours over many weeks but we managed to stay energized. One of my favorite moments in the lab was when we named the lasers in the microscope after Star Wars characters: Yoda (green), Princess Leia (infrared) and Darth Plagueis the Wise (red).

Riley Foard PO ’26, a student in Pomona’s 3-2 Plan in Engineering Program who helped build the microscope with me, shared how he first became interested in biophysics.

“Although my last formal biology class was six years ago, Kaley’s research on biophysics, particularly TIRF microscopy, was just really, really cool,” he said. “I remember telling her, ‘I haven’t taken a bio class since my sophomore year of high school,’ to which she responded, ‘Same!’”

During the building process of the microscope, we faced numerous challenges that could not be solved by any one person alone.

Zhang recalled struggling for days to drill precise holes into glass with a laser cutter.

“After exhausting all options, I realized I needed help,” he said.

It was then that he turned to a chemist with an underwater drill that produced the perfect holes.

This moment was a reminder that sometimes the key to solving a problem is recognizing when to ask for help.

This collaborative spirit was a driving force throughout the entire building of the microscope. Our excitement peaked when we took our first image with it. “[It] meant so much,” Riley said. “I remember FaceTiming our [former] senior thesis student, Yaru Luo PO ’24, who was on a grad school tour at the time, as we all crammed around the image on our computer. Seeing a concrete result of our tedious optical designs was incredibly fulfilling.”

Once the TIRF microscope was built, we were eager to begin using it to study the frameshift element (FSE) in SARS-CoV-2’s RNA. Imagine trying to manipulate a single strand of spaghetti without breaking it — that’s essentially what we were doing with molecules far smaller than the width of a human hair. Using magnetic tweezers, we pulled and stretched the FSE to observe how it folds and changes shape under different conditions.

But before we could study the FSE, we had to build it. Constructing a biological molecule is no simple task. It involves synthesizing specific RNA sequences, which requires knowledge of molecular biology.

Isabel Burger PO ’25, a molecular biology major working on the FSE for her senior thesis, has spent weeks managing these sequences.

“The FSE project has involved a lot of troubleshooting and those challenges have made me more

aware of the perseverance and focus required for long-term research,” she said.

Meanwhile, the other senior thesis student in the lab, Nhi Doan PO ’25, is working on optics and machine learning in the microscope that will improve our ability to capture images of molecules more efficiently.

Traditional microscopy struggles to detect multiple molecules emitting similar colors, but Nhi’s work with machine learning will help us capture clearer images without extra equipment.

“While I’m smitten with optics, I also find myself wondering about the biological microcosmos our microscope will help unravel,” Nhi said.

As we continue our work on the FSE, we’re excited to explore how it switches between two distinct shapes. By applying different forces with magnetic tweezers, we can observe how the FSE behaves in each shape. This knowledge could lead to better antiviral treatments and deepen our understanding of how life’s basic molecular processes work.

“I’ve worked with RNA, TIRF microscopy and magnetic tweezers before, but never all three at once,” McCluskey said.

Science is collaborative, not a solitary pursuit. Alone, we would have struggled, but together, we’re doing biophysics.

At the McCluskey Lab, we’re integrating interdisciplinary perspectives to tackle big questions, one force at a time. We’re not just uncovering the molecular mechanics that shape life, we’re helping to redefine how scientific discovery happens in the 21st century.

Gabriel Brenner PO ’26 loves exploring the human aspects of science.

‘An evening with Pae White’: the artist behind CMC’s Qwalala AMELIA BERTSCH The paths that link Claremont McKenna’s (CMC) Mid Quad dorms converge at Pae White’s “Qwalala” – a meandering wall of colorful Murano glass bricks, first unveiled in Sept. 2023. At 5:30 p.m. on Nov. 6, students, alumni and Claremont residents alike gathered under dark skies for “An Evening with Pae White,” a special reception of Qwalala, one of CMC’s public art pieces.

The glass that makes up Qwalala seems to entrap organic, smoke-like forms that come alive when the underfoot lighting glows after dark.

The white bricks toward the bottom of the structure give way to bright, vibrant colors, giving the illusion that the sculpture is floating.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the simple module of a brick, the basic brick,” White said. “But to introduce this idea of a storm — this is like the module of a storm, this kind of chaos — is used in this really practical way. And this instability is happening, but it’s contained. So to have this kind of module of energy as something you make architecture with, is something I was really interested in.”

White spoke about her journey in the art world through subjects and mediums. She has explored many dimensions of artmaking, from clockmaking to textiles.

A Pasadena native, White seemed comfortable at CMC’s Athenaeum

— she received a bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts and Art History from Scripps College in 1985. After receiving her MFA from ArtCenter College of Design, she studied sculpture at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Skowhegan, Maine. Her work is featured in Oslo’s opera house and the Berlin Airport —she has even been asked to design the seat-pattern for Los Angeles’s Metro bus lines.

Her personal whims and interests are reflected in her work: She has a reputation of exploiting seemingly mundane subjects, like popcorn and crabs, within unconventional mediums. White separates her work in two categories: large scale public projects and more intimate, studio collaborations with fabricators at art centers around the world. Qwalala toes the line between the two.

In 2017, White was invited to the island of San Giorgio Maggiore off San Marco, Venice, where she had the liberty to create anything she wanted. Inspired by the Venetian tradition of Murano glass work, she decided to create “Qwalala.”

“You can see the footprint [in San Giorgio Maggiore] is the same footprint in Claremont,” White said.

She drew inspiration from the pale greens, blues and yellows of the Roman glass palette.

“I had also gone to a museum and seen some Roman antiquities

out of glass. I was very interested in [the Roman glass] palette. So I kind of made this selection, from this palette, from this exhibition I had seen, and then we just started developing this piece.”

White sought to create an organic, flowing feeling. During the design process, she became worried that the viewer could only experience “Qwalala” from afar, and may feel confined due to the fact that one could only walk around it, not through it.

“I didn’t want the viewer to be trapped in this very long piece, so I knew I wanted to make doorways, but all the solutions coming up were very expensive,” White said.

“I ended up visiting a friend in the Yucatan, and we went to some Mayan ruins, and there was this very beautiful simple doorway that we adapted to this piece.”

By walking through the “doorway” of the piece, one interacts with the work as White intended. “{Qwalala] is vibrant and fun to look at,” Parie Kumar CM ’28 said.

“When I’m walking back to Benson [Residence Hall], cutting through the sculpture makes me happy.”

This feeling of soft transition along with the piece’s color palette reminded White of the changing of seasons, which is why she originally called the piece “Pomona” to invoke images of the namesake goddess of the harvest. “Pomona” just so happened to be a vulgar

piece of Venetian slang, so White had to fight to call the piece “Pomona.”

When CMC acquired the piece, White agreed to change its name from “Pomona” to “Qwalala.”

The name refers to a river on the Northern coast of California. White thought that the soft consonants of the word mimicked the rolling form of the sculpture. It also did well to ease Claremont McKenna’s reluctance at installing an art piece named after Pomona College.

“What I really liked in the quad [at CMC] is that when I was playing around with the footprint, there were two pathways coming from the dorms that intersected in the perfect place for these doorways,” White said.

The doorways got a lot of use

the night of White’s talk. Carrying plates of cheese and crackers, viewers walked the length of White’s glowing installation, pondering the materials and meaning. Viewers buzzed with energy, entranced with the architecture and all its smoky details.

“It’s very refreshing to look outside my window when I’m doing homework and see the sculpture,” one Mid Quad resident, Martina Bernheim CM ’28, said. “I think it really adds to the vibes of the school and it’s interesting to see.”

At night, Qwalala takes on a dreamlike blur. “[In Venice] the piece wasn’t open at night, and we never had the budget to do lights, so it was always kind of a fantasy,” White confessed. “So come here and see this is beyond my dreams.”

COURTESY: CLAREMONT-MCKENNA COLLEGE “Qwalala” artist Pae White spoke about the piece and her artistic journey in a special reception on the evening of Nov. 6.

Susan Rice on foreign and domestic policy challenges today ANANYA VINAY On Nov. 2, U.S. diplomat and former Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice spoke at Pomona College’s Bridges Auditorium about foreign and domestic policy for the seventh annual Payton Distinguished Lectureship.

Rice has held various positions as a diplomat, including assistant secretary of state for African Affairs, national security advisor and head of the Domestic Policy Council. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times and a member of the Aspen Strategy Group, the American Academy of Diplomacy and the Council of Foreign Relations.

She recently published a memoir “Tough Love: A Story of the Things Worth Fighting For.” Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr introduced Rice. “[The memoir] beautifully sets up the philosophy by which she writes, ‘I still believe the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice, but no one’s going to do the hard bending, if not you,’” Starr said.

Rice, in conversation with associate professor of politics and international relations Mietek Boduszyński, first discussed her path to public service. After fighting for the Union in the Civil War, her great-grandfather Walter Rice was able to pursue higher education and went on to establish the Bordentown high school. The school educated generations of African Americans before the federal desegregation of public schools.

Despite facing racial discrimination in the job market, her father,

Emmett Rice, became a professor at Cornell University and later the second black governor of the Federal Reserve. Her mother, Lois Dickson Rice, lobbied for the Pell Grant, supporting college access for low-income students. “[My parents] showed us a path … one that didn’t prescribe how we were to serve, but that in one form or fashion, the expectation was that we would do something that would be a benefit to more than just ourselves,” Rice said.

Rice recounted her role in the Biden administration’s efforts to pass legislation regarding civil rights and policing. After the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act stalled in the Senate in March 2021, she helped craft a broad executive order which set new federal standards for the use of force and chokeholds, added restrictions on no-knock warrants and established a national registry

for police misconduct.

“We did implement a sweeping change that mirrored the George Floyd legislation to a large extent for federal law enforcement … but we were lacking the legislation to make those same things mandatory at the state and local level,” Rice said.

Rice identified political polarization as the biggest threat to U.S. foreign policy. Regardless of the outcome of the 2024 election, she said, we must work towards a more unified democracy. “[Political polarization] makes us very vulnerable to these [foreign] influence operations that we see every day in our social media,” Rice said.

“We … have a fundamental problem within our body politic that we have to wrestle with, and … it’s taking on new and potentially more insidious forms.”

She argued that the United States currently lacks sufficient regulation

SARAH ZIFF • THE STUDENT LIFE Susan Rice, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, spoke at Pomona College’s Bridges Auditorium on Nov. 2 for the annual Payton Distinguished Lectureship.

to address the sweeping effects of artificial intelligence (AI) on both domestic and foreign policy.

“The national security challenges, not only in terms of competition with players like China, but also in terms of how [AI] impacts our competitive advantage, our military edge, our intelligence gathering and analysis,” Rice said. “It just permeates so many things, and I think it’s absolutely going to be one of the greatest challenges of the next two to three years.”

Rice took a strong stance on defending Taiwan, emphasizing its critical role in the production of semiconductors, which are used for everything from household products and large language models.

While the One China policy, which recognizes one sovereign China, encompassing Taiwan, is officially upheld by the United States, Rice pointed out that the United States also maintains a strong unofficial relationship with Taiwan, which entails defense commitments. She cautioned, however, that maintaining strategic ambiguity may become infeasible.

“President Biden has been strategically unambiguous in ways that have caused some of his aides and advisors to try to rein him in,” Rice said. “He’s been clear that we would defend Taiwan against China. I don’t think [we’ve] ever had the luxury of caring less about Taiwan … So I think we are increasingly not going to be able to be ambiguous … Nobody wants a conflict over Taiwan.”

Attendee Mai Hoglund PO ’28 was surprised by Rice’s framing of

AI as a global issue.

“I hadn’t thought of AI as a foreign policy issue before … especially the connections she drew between the issues AI causes and the way the Taiwan conflict impacts that,” Hoglund said.

The discussion shifted to contemporary global humanitarian conflicts.

While there is bipartisan recognition of the essential role of U.S. assistance in bolstering Ukraine’s defense, some lawmakers, such as Vice President-elect and Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, argue that a negotiated settlement will eventually be necessary. Rice, however, emphasized that Ukraine must approach any negotiations from a position of strength — which demands continued support.

“You want to go to the negotiating table from a position of strength, and that’s not where Ukraine is,” Rice said.

Rice suggested that the outcome of the U.S. presidential election could significantly impact Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s approach to the ongoing conflict in Gaza and the broader region.

Rice’s discussion took place three days before the election, so she spoke about the presidential election in hypothetical terms. She explained that in the event of a second Trump presidential term, Netanyahu might feel emboldened to expand military actions in Gaza and elsewhere, given Trump’s prior support for aggressive measures such as strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.

“If Trump were to win, I think, I fear that Prime Minister Netanyahu would assume that he can continue the war,” Rice said.

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How ranked choice voting better serves us all ALEX BENACH In 1915, the town of Ashtabula, Ohio, became the first city in America to adopt ranked-choice voting (RCV). RCV is an electoral process in which voters rank the candidates on the ballot from most to least favorable. It was repealed there in 1960 due to an effort by Republican party officials to increase representation and diversify their local governments.

RCV has had a long and controversial history in the United States, where efforts to install it have always been met by fierce opposition. If no candidate reaches 50 percent of the vote share, the candidate with the lowest percentage is disqualified and the votes for that candidate are tabulated with the voter’s second choice. This process of elimination continues until a candidate reaches a majority of the vote share.

RCV allows voters to express their true preferences and allows candidates to address issues pertinent to voters. Proponents of RCV point to events like the election of Mary Peltola — the first Alaskan to be elected to the House of Representatives since 1972 — in 2022. As Deb Otis, director of research and policy at FairVote, said: “[Alaska voters] elected Mary Peltola to the House, who is considered one of the most moderate Democrats in the House in a race that included a couple of real hardliners who would not be considered moderate by any definition.”

Without RCV, a more extremist candidate that would have failed to represent the consensus voice of Alaskans, and accurately represent their interests, would have been elected.

RCV is already taking a foothold in some jurisdictions, such as New York City, Minneapolis and San Francisco, as well as Maine and Alaska, which use RCV for all federal and state elections. Ranked choice voting is on the ballot across America this year in states such as Colorado, Nevada and Oregon.

But for America to have fairer and less polarized elections, it must be adopted on a national level.

RCV has been proven to elect candidates who better reflect voter interests and are more moderate. In this sense, RCV combats extremism in an age of increasing political division. Studies show that the United States is polarizing much faster than other democracies. Further, there is a deep divide when it comes to trust in the American government,

with a Statista poll finding that 61 percent of Democrats say they trust the government and only 26% of Republicans say they do.

In a two-party system, in which candidates must take exceedingly polarized and fringe stances to win their races, extremism is bound to spiral out of control. That is why moderate candidates, both Republican and Democrat, are faltering. In Wyoming, Liz Cheney, a moderate Republican who stood up to Trump in the wake of January 6, was defeated in her primary by Harriet Hageman, an extremist Republican endorsed by Trump with Cheney garnering 28.9 percent of the vote compared to Hageman’s 66.3 percent. On the other side of the aisle, Democrat Jon Tester of Montana, a moderate Democrat who has centered his campaign around Montana-based issues, lost his reelection bid on Tuesday to Tim Sheehy, a far-right Republican,

also endorsed by Trump.

The era of issue-based campaigns and loyalty to a candidate over a party is largely gone and is something that can effectively be brought back by RCV. We are better served when candidates cater to constituent needs and craft campaigns centered around improving the lives of the people they are running to represent than pledge allegiance to their party lines. RCV allows a return to issue-based campaigns and strengthens our democratic institutions by making it more difficult for reactionary extremist candidates to win.

Further, RCV empowers independent and third-party candidates, providing more options in a moment in which Americans are overwhelmingly dissatisfied with the two-party system. 63 percent of U.S. adults agree that a third political party is necessary. But, with the current set-up of elections, people

often settle for the Democratic or Republican candidate in fear of not wanting to waste their vote.

RCV rids the voter of this burden and allows Americans to express their true preferences. RCV also minimizes the spoiler effect of third parties.

The spoiler effect has long plagued our two-party system dating back to 1992 when Reform candidate Ross Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote, aiding Bill Clinton in his path to the White House over incumbent George H.W. Bush, spoiling his chances of reelection. And in 2000, Ralph Nader, the Green party candidate, took votes away from Al Gore in key states such as Florida, which Gore only lost by 537 votes, handing the election to George Bush.

However, the implementation of RCV would allow those who align most with candidates such as Nader to vote for them without the

worry of empowering the candidate they are least aligned with.

RCV has been criticized by both Democrats and Republicans. Republicans fear it would create an electoral landscape that they could not win in. Democrats cite concerns regarding the complexity of RCV and the overall challenges that would be associated with it.

But RCV has been implemented successfully at state levels and this should give us hope. The current draconian system does not have to be the end-all-be-all. We can, and should, advocate for a system that is more democratic and better serves us. Until the U.S. adopts RCV nationwide, our republic will remain flawed, divided and anti-majoritarian.

Alex Benach PO ’28 is from Washington, DC. He looks forward to the day he is able to rank his choices for elections up and down the ballot.

SASHA MATTHEWS • THE STUDENT LIFE

How maternal healthcare fails Black women CHOLE GILL Pregnancy is often romanticized in our society, depicted as a beautiful and natural experience for all women. However, for my mother, a biracial woman of color, it was the opposite — marked by severe complications, dismissive doctors and emotional trauma.

For her and countless other Black women in the United States, this agonizing experience serves as a testament to the profound impact of racial biases in Black maternal healthcare.

Independent of wealth or status, the healthcare system continues to fail Black women. Black mothers and their newborns have higher mortality rates than those

of other races or ethnicities.

Serena Williams, a world-renowned athlete, nearly lost her life due to dismissive medical treatment throughout her pregnancy. Despite her status and money, she had to persistently advocate for herself to receive the care she deserved. In Amy Schumer’s book “Arrival Stories: Women Share Their Experiences of Becoming Mothers,” Williams wrote:“Giving birth to my baby, it turned out, was a test for how loud and how often I would have to call out before I was finally heard.”

How can we claim that the field of medicine is advancing when Black women continue to face preventable maternal health

crises due to systemic and implicit biases within the healthcare system? It is unconscionable that the country has a maternal mortality rate several times higher than other high-income nations.

Black maternal mortality is a very prevalent crisis.According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Black women are three times more likely to die from a pregnancy-related cause compared to white women in the United States. With a statistic that significant, it would be ignorant to claim that this issue is not one of racial bias. Black women also endure additional pain during medical procedures, as their suffering is routinely minimized or ignored. The ten-

dency to blame Black women for this outcome deflects attention from the structural issues within healthcare.

While failing to address systemic racism and disparities in the healthcare system, detrimental maternal outcomes are often attributed to personal failings.

Studies have shown that Black women are less likely to be taken seriously when expressing medical concerns and experience delays in care compared to white women. A study in 2016 found that medical providers endorsed the false belief that there is a biological difference in pain tolerance between white and Black women.

In today’s volatile political cli-

SASHA MATTHEWS • THE STUDENT LIFE

mate, the fight for Black maternal health could not be more urgent.

For Black women, who already face a mountain of challenges related to their maternal mortality, threats to reproductive healthcare rights puts them at even greater risk. With more restricted options for women in general, the inequities and the risk of adverse health outcomes faced by Black women are further intensified.

Black-owned birthing centers, such as Kindred Space LA, offer a safe space for Black women in need of maternal healthcare.

These birthing centers create a supportive and community-centered environment. Black mothers can feel heard and supported by the midwives and doulas who provide personalized care on a patient-by-patient basis. This creates a calm and unique experience compared to the hectic and impersonal atmosphere of most hospitals.

In an interview with midwife Kimberly Durdin, she explained the importance of giving birth in whatever environment feels safest for the patient: “For some people, that’s the hospital … But others are internalizing that something bad is going to happen to them, because of all the statistics and stories.”

As we strive to protect and expand reproductive rights, we must prioritize maternal health policies that explicitly address racial and intersectional disparities. This includes advocating for comprehensive state and federal policies that explicitly address the needs of Black women without bias, in turn addressing the vulnerabilities Black women face. To achieve this goal, Black women must have a voice in policy decisions, medical research and the construction of an equitable healthcare system. By addressing these structural issues, every woman will have access to safe and compassionate care.

As a college community composed of many future healthcare providers, there is a loud call to advocate for developments like Kindred Space LA and push for healthcare policies that support birthing options based on equity and cultural understanding. Supporting these developments isn’t solely about reducing disparities, but honoring every woman’s basic right to safe maternity care.

My name is Chloe Gill PO ’24 and I am a Senior at Pomona College. This piece is very important to me because my mother experienced this issue first-hand.

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JADA SHAVERS Last spring, when I was searching for an anthropology senior thesis, I found a flier posted at Scripps College detailing a fully funded research project in Senegal, Africa, guided by a Scripps professor. We all know the difficulty of finding any internship, so when I finally received a “Congratulations” email, I did everything to ensure that I would get the most from the opportunity. What I know now, however, is that it was all a waste.

Let’s go back to the beginning.

Nicole Richards was leading the research. As a visiting professor, the fact that she got enough funding and support from Scripps to bring students to Senegal was impressive.

According to her LinkedIn, she has a Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Southern California and an M.A. in Black Studies from Columbia University. Given that she taught classes on Black queer studies and reproductive justice, her knowledge base seemed expansive.

Additionally, the research was conducted in partnership with Rose Pan African Education, an organization that Richards built herself. The program aims to bring students, writers and educators to Senegal, Rwanda, Benin and Ghana for study exchanges. There are subprograms such as Immersion Writers, Decolonizing Education, Introduction to African History, Mental Health and Wellness – the list goes on.

Six months later, I landed in Senegal accompanied by three other Scripps students whom I had only met once before. One of the students was trapped in the John F. Kennedy International Airport because Richards had booked the wrong flight and refused to help secure another so I didn’t see her for another two days after my landing.

We then spent 11 days there confused as to what we were doing.

What is the research? Where are we staying? Who are we meeting today? Are we meeting anyone today? Why have we spent the first three days at the beach, two hours away from Dakar? Why did we never learn Wolof?

When Richards finally answered the questions about research, she proceeded to list three different research projects — none of which coincided with the ones she had told us before. And, turns out, she had pitched us all different projects.

It quickly became clear that we would not be conducting any research.

But, I mean, what’s so wrong with sending students to Senegal for maybe not studying abroad but at least cultural exchange? While it was confusing and disorienting at first, we still met amazing people and learned about a new city that I had never been to before.

I was able to make peace with my senior thesis withering away, until two days before our flights back to the States, Richards left us.

I mean completely left us with nowhere to stay, no one to translate

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SHIXIAO YU • THE STUDENT LIFE

dreds of dollars less than promised. The message became clear: We boarded a plane home and the “care” was never going to come.

The worst part? Richards disappeared from Scripps College and they refused to tell us any information about it because of a NDA contract. Any mention of her as a professor is gone.

Moral of the story: Scripps is failing to support and keep their students safe. From the Motley suddenly closing to ambiguous free speech emails to policing at Denison, the facade of student support is crumbling. Hiring a professor with such a diverse set of expertise as Richards but failing to check her reliability when taking students abroad unveils the fragility of the image that Scripps is promoting but failing to uphold.

I’ll admit, it’s not entirely Scripps’ fault that Richards acted in the way that she did. I think we were all shocked by her behavior. The whole research project seemed interesting and she’s a Scripps professor who should have been evaluated as an adequate educator. How could they have known that she would abandon us?

Unfortunately, looking back, the signs were overwhelming.

and no way of getting from one place to the next. At the very least, how were we supposed to get to the airport?

Fed up with our questions and confusion, she abandoned four students. Using the excuse that we are adults capable of caring for ourselves, she completely ignored the fact that we were in an unfamiliar place and traveling under the impression that food, housing and transportation were covered.

None of us came prepared to navigate a new environment completely alone.

Put simply, she lied to us. To everyone.

Reaching out to the U.S. Embassy, Scripps and our worried parents, the last two days of the supposed “research trip” were a scary blur.

After all of this, Scripps promised to reimburse us for the unexpected expenses as well as emotional support. Unfortunately, as soon as we got on a flight to the States, Scripps’ support similarly abandoned us.

Conflicting emails made separate reimbursement promises that left each of us confused and desperate for an answer. After constant pestering, checks arrived two months later, delivering hun-

Towards the end, I think Richards started to use my thesis for her own descriptions of the trip.

We should be able to trust the people our institution hires. We should not be left in the dark and see the institution — my school — protect someone who abandoned us in a foreign country. Scripps continues this pattern, hiring around-theclock security at Denison Library to protect the school from its own students. Scripps’ public actions, along with my experience, show what their definition of student support is: protecting their own image even if it meant leaving students scrambling for safety halfway around the world.

Where does that leave us, the students who went on this fraudulent and bizarre trip? Confused.

Disappointed. Still in need of a thesis project.

I guess, next time double-check that the internship is reliable and led by someone who can be trusted.

Or maybe just don’t trust Scripps.

Someone just had to question it.

All information was sporadic with promises that were often unfulfilled. The flier initially detailed a focus on Black girlhood, environmental activism and spiritual practitioners — assuming that somehow those all correlate.

Later, I received an email explaining a thesis of “Senegalese young adults’ coming-of-age experiences on Goree Island.” A working project makes sense, but I quickly found myself leading the research with Richards asking for my approval on interview questions.

It only continued to spiral.

Richards and I needed approval from the Institutional Review Board, an ethics board composed of Scripps members who ensure that research follows specific rules and regulations. It was May, we were leaving in two weeks and we had yet to receive approval, meaning that whatever “research” we would’ve done in Senegal would have been unethical, invalid and unsupported by Scripps.

No one — especially the Scripps’ admin who supported the research project — cared enough to question these big promises. I was relying on this project and I think I was the only one truly fighting for it to make sense.

Jada Shavers SC ’26 is from Portland, Oregon and is currently studying abroad in Denmark. She is eternally grateful for the three other people she traveled with and is still hoping that Scripps College will reimburse the remaining $2,000 that was promised.

Akshay’s Crossword: Anxious Akshay Seetharam

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24. Haw’s59 partner 38. *What you hopefully know 25. Bloc of docs by now 42. Tardy 28. “Get the toast show on, ___” 43. Issa of “Barbie” 31. Boat propellor?

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Play the TSL crossword online at bit.ly/anxious8! Be sure to upload a screenshot of your completed puzzle above for credit.

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PAGE 10

Opinions

November 8, 2024

In Trump’s America, the future is dire for women rhetoric about treating women like sexual conquests and For those of us who grew up other harmful ideas normalize with Donald Trump, Nov. 6 was women’s subjugation. These a reminder of waking up to his men have a very strong appeal presidential nomination in 2016 to young men, as evidenced in — flashbacks of panic on social the voting data from this week’s media, followed by years of #Me- election.

Too stickers, women’s marches According to a voting data and pussy hats flooding our Insta- report by AP, 52 percent of men gram feed. Today there’s a similar ages 18-44 voted for Donald deluge of infographics, Robert Trump — Trump garnered 59 Frost quotes and Twitter posts as percent of white men’s support, we reel from the election results. and 47 percent of Latino men. In Our generation has, unfortu- a post-election wave of online nately, become desensitized to misogyny, political commenthis media frenzy. We’re accus- tator and self-proclaimed incel tomed to Trump’s blatant bigotry, Nick J. Fuentes tweeted “Your starting with his “grab them by body, my choice. Forever.” the pussy” comments, the Jan. This cultural and political 6 insurrection shift towards conand his incrediservatism, along bly denigrating with the signifThis cultural and comments about icant blows to Kamala Harris. political shift towards women’s rights, It’s difficult is a dark omen. conservatism, along to feel the tanIf America conwith the significant gible effects of tinues along this political elecpath, it will lead blows to women’s tions, especially to a dark future of in a country as rights, is a dark omen. gender discrimibig as the UnitIf America continues nation and womed States, on a en’s suppression. along this path, it personal level.

As an Iraniwill lead to a dark B u t wa t c h i n g an-American who Kamala Harspent the first future of gender ris’ concession nine years of my discrimination and speech at Howlife in Tehran, I ard University women’s suppression. know what that on Wednesday, future looks like. as the camera Iran is consispanned to the tently cited as one women and girls in the crowd of the most dangerous countries with tears in their eyes, I felt a for women in terms of gender painful twinge in my heart. parity, opportunities, educaD o n a l d Tr u m p ’s t r i u m p h tion and health. An enforcer of sends a clear message: Americans gender apartheid, the Iranian would rather have a convicted sex government restricts women’s offender for a president than elect rights to marry or divorce, cusa woman. tody rights and the mandatory The past eight years follow- enforcement of hijabs in public ing Trump’s first term have seen spaces. many setbacks in the women’s The Mahsa Amini protests of rights movement: the effort to 2022, an uprising sparked by a ban birth control pills and other young Kurdish woman’s death forms of contraception, endan- at the hands of Iran’s Basij over germent of LGBTQ+ rights and an improper headscarf, overmost notably — the overturning whelmingly centered women’s of Roe v. Wade. rights in the Iranian people’s In the Trump era, a wave of liberation movement — their fundamentalist conservatism has slogan is “women, life, freeseized the sociocultural moment. dom.”

The recent trend of “trad wives” What Iranian women are on TikTok is a clear example, fighting for is the freedom of the influencers of often religious ordinary. The freedom to wear background (particularly Mor- whatever they want; hold hands mon) promoting a traditional with their boyfriends; kiss in lifestyle. Ballerina Farm is one public. “My Favorite Cake,” a such “trad wife,” filming herself film by Maryam Moghadam and making chocolate from scratch Behtash Saneeha, captures the while nursing eight children on a tyranny of everyday life in Iran. farm in Utah — one of her posts The story follows an elderly garnered upwards of 2 million woman Mahin (Lili Farhadviews on Instagram. pour), widowed for 30 years, There has also been a trend in search of a new boyfriend. of alt-right male-supremacist As it’s illegal to date in public, influencers online, such as An- many widowed elderly citizens drew Tate and Joe Rogan, whose have little choice but to live

TANIA AZHANG

COURTESY: NATE GARCIA

alone. But Mahin fearlessly visits parks and restaurants to find a new love.

The film broke Iranian censorship laws by portraying Mahin in her home without a headscarf, and in scenes where she and her love interest Faramarz (Esmaeel Mehrabi) dance and drink wine. There is also a scene where Faramarz takes Viagra. Moghadam and Sanee-

ha were banned from leaving the country upon the release of the film.

This is what happens when women’s decisions about their bodies, their partners and their lives are policed. When legislation limits access to abortion and contraception, to marriage and divorce. When one’s existence and activities in public could mean their death at the

hands of police.

The increasingly visible misogyny and continued encroachment on women’s freedoms is familiar to me. If America continues its current trajectory, our future won’t look so different.

Tania Azhang PZ ’25 is Managing Editor of Arts & Culture and Opinions. She is tired of crying over images of devastated young girls.

COURTESY: BRETT SAYLES VIA PEXELS Woman displays “My Body is not Govt Property” at protest.

Sports

November 8, 2024

PAGE 11

Making waves: First-year Tommy Matheis shines on Sagehens swim and dive team

COURTESY: POMONA-PITZER ATHLETICS US junior national diver Tommy Matheis PO ’28 earned SCIAC Athlete of the Week in back-to-back weeks after breaking the Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) record in the 3-meter dive on Saturday, Nov. 2.

SHEA JOKO Tommy Matheis PO ’28 loved the water long before he arrived at Pomona College and joined the Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) swim and dive team. Taking on diving when he was just 12 years old, Matheis has since become a national competitor and a key asset for the Sagehens.

Hailing from Rancho Santa Margarita, California, Matheis joined Mission Viejo Nadadores Diving, one of the highest-ranked club teams for the sport in the country. He began his training for high diving in 2022, performing feet-first dives

from 15 meters. After competing in Park City, Utah, Matheis was selected for the USA High Diving Junior National Team. He went on to represent the United States in 2022 at the World Championships in Montreal, Canada, as well as at the 2023 Pan-American High Diving Championships in Lima, Peru.

“I would definitely say those trips were some of my most formative experiences for my diving career, as a result of getting to train with some of the best divers in the world for my age group,” Matheis said.

According to Matheis, these

trips not only left him with increased skills and experience but also unforgettable memories.

“My most memorable experience was diving from the ceiling rafters in the indoor pool in Lima,” Matheis said. “It ended up being almost 16 meters, and the platform was held on by a tow cable.

It was definitely scary but very memorable.”

This week marks Matheis’s second consecutive week of being named SCIAC Athlete of the Week. He set a school record in the 3-meter dive scoring 391.28 points on Saturday, Nov. 2 during P-P’s

209-71 win against Cal Lutheran.

Matheis also won the 1-meter dive with a score of 375.98. A week prior, Matheis qualified for the NCAA Division III West Regionals thanks to his 318.08 finish in the 3-meter.

Matheis lends immense credit to new diving head coach Miguel Rodriguez, who started with the Sagehens this season.

“He is constantly making sure that all of the divers are well-prepared for meets, and pushes us to be the best divers we can be,” Matheis said. “Whenever we may be struggling during practice, Coach Miguel does his best to tell us exactly what we need to do to improve.”

Rodriguez said he has loved seeing Matheis’ growth as the season has progressed and looks forward to continuing to help him grow as an athlete.

“He stands out because he is able to take corrections and execute them,” Rodriguez said. “We have mainly worked on getting him to spin faster and go higher off the board and he has executed all corrections.”

Another impactful character in Matheis’ diving experience has been fellow Sagehen Liam Hochman PO ’26. Matheis praised Hochman’s mental game in attempting challenging dives. “[Hochman] never seems fazed by attempting something harder than he’s ever done before, and for that, I admire him as a diver,” Matheis said. “He has been pushing his limits a lot lately during practice and attempting some really hard dives and his progression is definitely visible.”

Hochman also spoke highly of Matheis, emphasizing his work ethic that he said will bode well for future success as a Sagehen.

“Although Tommy is a freshman, he is intent on beating people and setting records at this moment,” Hochman said. “I’m sure he will grow a lot as a diver because he practices his hard dives every day.”

According to Hochman, Matheis has proved to be a powerhouse off the diving board as well.

“He works hard in his classes as one might expect and constantly exudes positive energy,” Hochman said.

As a first-year, Matheis may still be finding his way around campus, but he’s found a sense of home at the college and on the team.

“After discovering the Pomona-Pitzer swim and dive team, I immediately became aware of what to me seemed like a perfect balance between some of the best academics in the country and great athletics, all only an hour away from home,” Matheis said.

Matheis explained the welcoming presence and support the team has provided, both in and out of the pool.

“From the moment myself and the other freshmen arrived on campus, everyone on the team has been there for us,” Matheis said. “Whether it be giving us advice for classes, their opinions on the best dining halls, or even drives to Target when we need something.”

Although the season had just begun, the swim team’s annual biathlon — which consisted of swimming 1,000 meters, running two miles and swimming 500 more meters afterward — proved to be one of Matheis’ most memorable moments.

“I’m not a swimmer, so I didn’t have to do it and I got dead last, but the experience of surviving it with the entire team made it something I won’t forget,” Matheis said.

As the team looks forward to its rivalry meet against Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) on Friday, Dec. 6, Matheis said he hopes to achieve a top-three finish in the 1 and 3-meter boards at the SCIAC Championships. He is also striving to qualify for the NCAA nationals after achieving regional qualification.

“Each season only a limited number of divers advance from regionals to nationals,” Matheis said. “So I’ll be training to make sure I get one of those spots.”

Athletic presence in political commentary: Welcomed or shunned?

JUN KWON & OLIVER SCHOENING In the past few years, athletes including Colin Kaepernick, LeBron James, Megan Rapinoe, Kevin Durant and more have spoken up on political issues, offering a unique perspective that is heralded by some and criticized by others.

TSL sports writers Oliver Schoening PZ ’27 and Jun Kwon PO ’28 debate whether it is professional for athletes to share their political views, or rather pipe-down and focus on their athletics.

In a 2018 segment of her show “The Ingraham Angle,” Fox News pundit Laura Ingraham rebuked NBA player LeBron James after he publicly denounced then-President Donald Trump during a televised interview on ESPN. While on air, Ingraham infamously went on to tell James to “shut up and dribble.”

Since then, the phrase has been used primarily by right-wing journalists and content creators to criticize athletes who have spoken out against social and political issues including American presidential elections and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Dating back to Muhammad Ali’s protests against the Vietnam War’s conscription and Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ raised fists on a 1968 Olympics track podium, sports have long been a forum to highlight important issues.

However, unwavering advocacy and involvement haven’t been sheltered from negative responses. Media pundits and news are often the first to criticize athletes for speaking out against issues ideologically antithetical to certain parties or policies.

While Ingraham and media outlets like Fox News continue to criticize professional athletes, history has shown that it won’t stop them. Many athletes have used their platform to champion issues of social injustice and politics, influencing fans to mobilize around a cause.

According to Schoening, while Ingraham was immediately slammed across social media for her commentary widely seen as racially charged, athletes still have a lot to consider before making political statements. They represent their teams and leagues, and carry responsibilities and obligations that to many, hold greater importance than expressing personal opinions.

In 2016, then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Kaepernick decided to take a knee during the national anthem in order to protest

the discrimination and police violence against people of color in the United States.

“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses Black people and people of color,” Kaepernick said, defending his actions.

Reactions were mixed, with some applauding Kaepernick for his bravery in taking a stand against what he saw as institutional racism in the United States whereas others accused him of disrespecting the country and the flag.

Regardless, the fallout of Kaepernick’s decision to protest was swift and immediate.

Kaepernick opted out of his contract at the end of the year, and despite a statistically solid season as he battled through injuries, Kaepernick remained unsigned through the 2017 NFL season and has not played on an NFL team since.

Kaepernick’s story serves as a cautionary tale for many athletes.

In a profession where a career can end abruptly due to injuries or a myriad of other factors outside of an athlete’s control, there is a lot more to take into account than a political statement. While Kaepernick has been able to make the best out of his situation, becoming a social activist and signing book deals, other athletes might not find themselves so lucky.

It might seem selfish, given the lavish lifestyles that many athletes enjoy, but professional athletes are ultimately employees like everybody else. There are countless stories of people being fired or facing discipline in the workplace for political comments, and athletes should not be considered any different. Besides, athletes are perhaps even more disposable than a typical person in the workforce. The average career length in the NFL is just 3.3 years, and the NBA average is just slightly longer, at 4.5 years.

While these professional athletes may feel an obligation to use their influence to speak out, their first priority should be to ensure that they make the most out of a career that can change in an instant. Athletes work their whole lives to accomplish the goal of playing professionally, and there is little sense in throwing away a lifetime of work in order to make a political statement that may very well fall on deaf ears.

Kwon has a different take. For Kwon, disagreements will inevitably occur in topics as polarizing

as politics. Of course, thousands of athletes stand on different ends of the spectrum across many issues. However, stigmatizing and censoring the athletes’ abilities to engage in discourse over said topics will only lead to a decline in civic engagement and valuable discussions.

It’s time to accept that, as fans, athletes reserve the right to express their political opinions.

Fans can support or condemn the athlete, but stripping political expression from athletes is a dangerous precedent for influencing generations of passionate voters.

According to Kayla Malek, PO ’28, a point guard on the Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) women’s basketball team, free political expression, even in sports, is crucial.

“I think every private individual should be able to utilize their platform because, as a society, people should be able to form their own opinions,” Malek said.

Athletic involvement in social and political issues raises awareness for issues that may not have been previously exposed to a larger audience, including league officials and fanbases.

Charlotte Patel, PO ’28, a power forward on the P-P women’s

basketball team, recalled her faint memory of Kaepernick’s headlines during the controversy.

“I think that if athletes cannot voice their opinions because of the system or the league that they’re a part of, then that’s the suppression of their free speech and their rights as American citizens,” Patel said.

Returning to Kaepernick, even now, there is debate over whether one should stand for the national anthem. The question that one must ask, however, is, does kneeling for the national anthem justify the treatment that Kaepernick received from the league and its fanbases?

One may say Kaepernick’s decision to kneel during the pledge was too polarizing. Some seemingly less polarizing issues, like the endorsements of Donald Trump from 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa or of Kamala Harris from LeBron James, still receive incredibly large amounts of backlash.

Talbott Chesley PO ’28, a center on the P-P men’s basketball team, shared that contentions of fundamental values should not justify limitations on political expression.

“Though I may not like Bosa’s

endorsement of Trump, following the same line of thought, you have to let people have their opinions, and just because they think differently does not mean they should be forced to keep quiet.”

Disagreement is inevitable but, in most situations, necessary. When athletes take stances on issues fans disagree on, the unfortunate consequence is a reactive flinch resulting in hatred and criticism. Instead, fans and officials should look to understand and empathize.

Political endorsements from professional athletes will not swing the needle enough to influence elections and trends. Still, they will surely increase awareness and exposure, which can lead to further research and civic engagement.

Athletes are humans with lived experiences that inform their political and moral compasses. It would be unfair for fans and league officials to request that they detach themselves from every connection to their culture, heritage, and life to simply “shut up and dribble.”

As long as athletes stay human, it will be impossible for sports to be completely neutral of political statements. It will only be a question of how much fans embrace its shared presence.

SASHA MATTHEWS • THE STUDENT LIFE

Sports

PAGE 12

November 8, 2024

Athena’s clinch SCIAC title in fashion, besting Bulldogs in 3-0 sweep ANEESH RAGHAVAN O n S a t u r d a y, N o v. 2 , t h e Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) women’s volleyball team cemented their spot as SCIAC regular season title winners with a sweep of the Redlands Bulldogs.

CMS entered the game with a 13-1 record in the SCIAC as they prepared to face off against Redlands who held a 4-9 SCIAC record. Despite the distance in the teams’ standings, according to libero and defensive specialist Dede Carranza CM ’25, the Athenas treat every match as equally important.

“I think it’s definitely just taking it one game at a time,” Carranza said. “Not overlooking anyone, and just making sure we’re preparing well and taking care of our bodies, showing up to practice with our new perspective.”

The first set started with Redlands taking an early 8-3 lead with kills from several outside hitters. However, CMS quickly responded with setter Georgia McGovern CM ’24 making strategic assists to Brooke McKee CM ’26, Shae Delany CM ’27 and Dani Beder CM ’25 for crucial kills. A ten-point rally saw the Athenas turn the set on its head, going up 18-9, before eventually winning 25-16.

CMS did not let up in the second set thanks to a stream of steady kills from McKee, aces from McGovern and a few key blocks from Beder that kept the Athenas in the lead.

CMS was in sync and in rhythm on the court, taking an early 10-5 lead, which soon doubled to 20-8. The set finished at 25-11.

A c c o r d i n g t o D e l a n y, t h e Athenas’ on-court chemistry and work ethic off the court has helped propel them to success.

“We have a really good team culture that we’ve worked really

hard on,” Delany said. “We all love each other, so it’s really fun to play with each other the whole time.”

Refusing to go down without a fight, Redlands fought back in a competitive third set, taking a 5-4 lead with kills from outside hitter Avery Aminoff and aces from middle blocker Makaila Brooks.

However, CMS proceeded with another commanding lead with kills from setter Anna Ryan CM ’27 and middle blocker Lauren Parker CM ’25 to complete the sweep with a 25-11 win.

Beder, McKee and Delany led CMS with 12, 10 and seven kills, respectively. Additionally, Bender had kills on her first eleven attacks, finishing 12/17, while McGovern had 36 assists and recorded her 200th career ace.

In a one-sided victory, CMS led Redlands in every statistical category, with more points, kills, aces, blocks, assists and digs, showcasing CMS’ skill, depth and versatility on both sides of the ball.

CMS had 46 kills with 10 errors compared to Redlands with 18 kills and 13 errors.

After clinching the regular season title, Solvej Eversoll CM ’27 explained that the team continues to look forward but also wants to focus on enjoying time together on the court.

“We also don’t want to overlook all the small wins,” Eversoll said.

“We’ve been trying to just stay in the moment and have fun with every game.”

After this win, CMS is now 19-4 (14-1 SCIAC), and is ranked #12 nationally per the AVCA Coaches Polls. Looking forward, a Sixth Street rivalry match with Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) looms on Friday for CMS, before the SCIAC Tournament on Nov. 14 and 16.

EVELYN HARRINGTON • THE STUDENT LIFE Brooke McKee CM ’26 launches a spike during the Athenas’ SCIAC clinching victory over the Redlands Bulldogs on Saturday, Nov. 2.

Claremont-Mudd-Scripps

Athletes of the Week Riley Capuano CMC ’26 Los Altos, CA Cross Country

Riley Capuano CM ’26 earned a SCIAC Athlete of the Year accolade after her first-place finish at the SCIAC Championship meet on Saturday, Nov. 2 in Brea, California. Capuano’s win helped the Athenas to their 14th straight SCIAC title and also landed her a placement on First Team AllSCIAC. Capuano was also named Athlete of the Week on Oct. 7 for her 15th-place finish at the Paul Short Run in Bethlehem, PA. As a sophomore, she finished third in the SCIAC Championship meet and won track and field Newcomer of the Year. Before her many accolades at ClaremontMudd-Scripps (CMS), she attended Los Altos High School in Los Altos, California. CMS will compete again at the NCAA regionals in Portland, Oregon on Saturday, Nov. 16.

Friday, November 8 Volleyball @ Pomona-Pitzer

CMS

Men’s Basketball vs. Linfield University Saturday, November 9

Men’s Swim and Dive @ Caltech Women’s Swim and Dive @ Caltech

PO ’27 Irvine, CA Soccer

Football vs. Cal Lutheran Volleyball vs. Occidental

Friday, November 8

Women’s Swim and Dive vs. Division III Shootout

Men’s Water Polo vs. Redlands

Women’s Soccer vs. TBA (if P-P advances) SCIAC Tournament

Football @ Redlands

Women’s Swim and Dive vs. Division III Shootout Volleyball vs. Claremont-Mudd-Scripps

Men’s Swim and Dive vs. Division III Shootout

Men’s Swim and Dive vs. La Verne and Occidental @ La Verne

Senior Staff ANNABELLE INK, Senior News Editor NITYA GUPTA, Junior News Editor MYLES KIM, News Associate MAYA ZHANG, Arts & Culture Editor

Sports Calendar

Sunday, November 10 Women’s Basketball vs. UC Santa Cruz

Women’s Swim and Dive vs. La Verne and Occidental @ La Verne

THE STUDENT LIFE NICOLE CEPEDA, Copy Chief ANDREW YUAN, Photo Editor ESHA CHAMPSI, Photo Editor SASHA MATTHEWS, Graphics Editor

Keyon Namdar PO ’27 was one of two Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) soccer players to be named to the All-SCIAC Second Team on Wednesday, Nov. 6. Namdar started all 16 games for the Sagehens this year, and scored eight total goals including the game-winning goal against Whittier on Saturday, Oct 26. He scored two goals against Cal Lutheran on Wednesday, Oct. 16, his personal ingame goal record this season, and has also racked up four assists this year. Before coming to Pomona College, he attended St. Margaret’s Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano, California. The Sagehens drew their last game of the season against Occidental 1-1 on Saturday, Nov. 2, finishing the season 4-8-4 overall and 2–7-3 in SCIAC.

Women’s Basketball vs. UC Santa Cruz

Men’s Water Polo vs. Caltech

Saturday, November 9

EMMA CONSTABLE, Creative Director JAKE CHANG, Production Editor NIA CARROLL, Production Editor MADELEINE FARR, Copy Chief

Keyon Namdar

Men’s Soccer vs. TBA (if CMS advances) SCIAC Tournament

Men’s Swim and Dive vs. Division III Shootout

P-P

Women’s Soccer vs. TBA (if CMS advances) SCIAC Tournament

Pomona-Pitzer

NADIA HSU, Arts & Culture Editor AARON MATSUOKA, Opinions Editor ADAM AKINS, Opinions Editor CHARLOTTE RENNER, Sports Editor

Editorial Board ANSLEY WASHBURN, Editor-in-Chief JUNE HSU, Managing Editor TANIA AZHANG, Managing Editor OTTO FRITTON, Sports Editor MAC KELLEY, Sports Editorial Assistant BEN LAUREN, Special Projects Editor DANIA ANABTAWI, Special Projects Editor

MARIKA AOKI, DEI Editor ROYSTONE VARUMA, DEI Editor ANDREW PALMER, Business Manager DHRITI SONTHALIA, Business Manager

SERENT ARPAT, Social Media Manager

TSL’s Editorial Board consists of the editor-in-chief and two managing editors. Aside from the editorial, the views expressed in the opinions section do not necessarily reflect the views of The Student Life.

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