The Student Life (2025)

03/12/2024

In the era of hyperfixation on gender in sports, black women are bearing the brunt of analysis and scorn. Naomi Locala PO ’25 analyzes the continued project of dehumanization of black female athletes through Imane Khelif, a boxer with Differences in Sexual Development (SDS) whose genetic information was leaked and resulted in attacks from voices that work to devalue Black female athletes’ success.
“Public hyperfixation on the physical characteristics contributing to athletic success disproportionately affects Black women,” Locala wrote, “Explaining their success as an anomaly rather than a product of talent or hard work.”

03/12/2024

Many students enter into science majors out of curiosity about our world and their place in it. Gabriel Brenner PO ’26 discusses recentering scientific learning around human experience, and physics professor Elijah Quetin’s efforts to do just that.

“Quetin’s observation resonates with my journey to majoring in physics,” Brenner writes. “I remember first being captivated by physics not because of equations, but profound questions: What makes the universe tick? How do we exist within this vast, mysterious system? Yet my early coursework often felt like solving intricate puzzles with no room to marvel at the larger picture.”

“‘The knowing that truly matters doesn’t reside in encyclopedias, hard drives, universities, corporations or textbooks. It lives in human souls, collectively,’ Quetin said.”

03/12/2024

Physicist Charles Falco delivered a lecture at Pomona College’s Benton Museum of Art on Nov. 10. Falco presented the Hockey-Falco thesis, which posits that Renaissance masters like Lorenzo Lotto and Hans Holbein used optical tools to achieve their realism. Artists were using sophisticated optical techniques nearly 200 years earlier than previously thought possible.

“We’re not saying optics is the only way to get perspective right,” Falco said. “Optics is the only way to get perspective wrong.”

Misaligned vanishing points off by exactly three degrees and slight distortions in paintings are examples of the metaphorical “fingerprints” of optical tools.

“It’s remarkable that the instruments that made the photorealistic paintings possible themselves left subtle, quantifiable, clues of their use in the images themselves, which enabled us to know nearly all the properties of the instruments they used,” Pomona physics and astronomy professor Dwight Whitaker said.

(Words by Gabriel Brenner | Photo Courtesy: Benton Museum of Art)

01/12/2024

Dr. Ali Behdad, UCLA literature professor and director of the Center for Near Eastern Studies, gave a talk titled “The Right to Look: Photography and Colonial Vision” on Nov. 14 at Pomona College’s Rose Hills Theater. Behdad argued that the very origins of photography in the Middle East were created to uphold a colonial relation of power, specifically by the British and French empires. The event was organized and moderated by Nadia Hsu PO ’27, board member of the Pomona Student Union (PSU).

“Photography as an art form can be a tool of surveillance and a tool of resistance, both of which can be weaponized to represent a ‘truth,’” Zyad Sibai PO ’25, co-president of PSU, said.

Behdad argued photography as medium that cannot be neutral and often reproduces colonial dynamics and narratives. He said it is the responsibility of the viewer to scrutinize images depicting colonial violence today, especially among the social media cycle.

“One of the things that Dr. Behdad emphasized was how really pervasive Orientalist narratives still are. We need to not look at Orientalism and colonialism and their visual products as only objects of study, only things distant from us.” Hsu said.

(Words by Audrey Green | Photo Courtesy: DJ Posillico)

01/12/2024

Is living with the results of the 2024 election as painful as cutting off your own foot with a rusty saw in a grimy bathroom? No, and that’s a weird analogy? Horror columnist Niko Kay Smith SC ’25 doesn’t care, and explains why “Saw” (2004) provided the escapist self care he needed the weekend after election day.

“The lack of torture p**n doesn’t stop the first ‘Saw’ installment from giving us some of the most iconic and sphincter-tightening scenes in horror history,” Smith writes.

“Most enduring is the ‘reverse bear trap’: in a flashback we meet Amanda, a previous victim of Jigsaw’s targeted for her drug addiction (Jigsaw is for that one). Her punishment is a headset locked to her upper and lower jaws, which will rip open in 60 seconds if she doesn’t find the key to unlock it.”

“Doesn’t it feel nice to be stressed about fake problems instead of your own? The insane plot twists, pigs-in-wigs jumpscares and Shawnee Smith’s eye-acting will keep you so on the edge of your seat, you’ll forget you live in a country where the majority of citizens voted against your human rights.”

01/12/2024

Chat-GPT is ubiquitous in the academic scene, creeping into essay writing, brainstorming, and problem sets. As much as 86% of students admit to using the program, but Alex Benach PO ’28 argues that the staggering environmental costs of generative AI are not worth the ease that AI provides.

“it is our responsibility as consumers to demand better. Those who have a vested interest in the planet and the climate’s continued health have a moral imperative to oppose generative AI, at least in its current unsustainable form.” Benach wrote, “We can, and must, advocate for increased sustainability practices when it comes to AI and increased transparency regarding energy sources as well as overall resource consumption.”

01/12/2024

On Saturday, Nov. 16, Dede Carranza CM ’25 tied a Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) record, reaching 2,121 career digs in a tight SCIAC final loss to La Verne. Entering the tournament as the No. 1 ranked team in SCIAC after beating Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) in the semi-finals, the Athenas succumbed to the No. 2 Leopards in three sets.

“[The Leopards] were playing really good defense,” Hayden Lin CM ’28 said. “[They] were able to convert those digs into kills efficiently.”

However, despite the loss, the Athenas still booked their ticket to the NCAA DIII tournament. After beating Transylvania University, the Athenas will square off against Emory College in the second round.

01/12/2024

The 5Cs have planned a power outage for Dec. 1 aimed at expediting the construction of the Claremont McKenna College Robert Day Sciences Center, which will house the college’s new Kravis Department of Integrated Sciences. The outage will occur one day before the senior thesis deadline at CMC and a handful of days before finals week.

“This time was selected by the Consortium and considered a variety of factors including when Southern California Edison, the power company, would be available for the work,” CMC’s Dean of Students team said in an email to students.

Margo Cohen CM ’25 said that she believes that the outage is a nuisance, but not a major obstacle. Cohen, who is writing a yearlong thesis, must submit the first chapter of her thesis the day after the outage.

“Not everybody is impacted by it, but there certainly is a good amount of people who are,“ Cohen said. “It just requires for people who are impacted to manage time really, really well and know exactly what you need to do before that Sunday.”

(Words by Kahani Malhotra and Rhea Sethi | Photo Courtesy: Claremont McKenna College)

30/11/2024

In the wake of the presidential election, Claire Welch SC ’27 discusses the politics of language. Making references to the witches of 1970s Italy and a secret language in Hunan, Welch posits language as a tool towards liberation.

“What does it mean to be a woman? A daunting, colossal question, arguably unanswerable in its scope,” Welch writes. “All I know is that on the morning after the election, I felt more connected to this intangible idea of womanhood than ever. Words of wisdom, words of consolation — the language of my loved ones felt hearty and tangible to me.”

“From Argento’s allegory of witches to the caring words of Italian classmates, in the aftermath of the election I was struck by how our forms of resistance — that of women, people of color, immigrants, suspended students and more — are so tightly bound to the language we wield.”

30/11/2024

At Pitzer’s Benson auditorium on Nov. 18, Gazan poet and incoming visiting English and World Literature professor Yahya Ashour read excerpts of his collection “A Gaza of Siege and Genocide.” The collection features poems Ashour wrote since his exile from Gaza after the beginning of Israel’s intensified military assault on Gaza. In his poetry, he parses through the violence by centering the experiences of Gazans, including his own.

“Growing up in Gaza and living there my whole life except for the last year, I was always wondering, ‘How could anyone survive the siege without poetry?” Ashour asked. “Without reading poetry? Without writing poetry?’”

The audience was silent for 30 minutes as Ashour read each poem in uninterrupted succession. After the reading, he spoke with Pitzer English professor Brent Armendinger about his writing process and mentorship from other Gazan poets.
“I hope students think about the ways that poetry can address issues in a way that is meaningful and perhaps otherwise difficult to communicate,” Ashour said. “Poetry is not only about beauty. It’s something that can be used to build awareness and solidarity as well.”

(Words by Charlotte Hahm | Photo by Charlotte Hahm)

30/11/2024

We all smell the fruity vapors emanating from the bathrooms, tasted a strangers v**e juice circulating through the tight confines of public transportation and looked with disgust. Parker DeVore PZ ’27, admits that va**ng is culturally lame, a pariah and ci******es under-developed little brother, but argues this doesn’t have to be the case. Va**ng, it can be regulated and gain back some of it’s cultural cachet could serve as a safer alternative to the mass harm that ci******es inflicts
“ Ci******es are linked to more than nine million deaths every year. Vapes, more specifically EVALI, have been linked to 68 deaths ever, all within a few months, and 80% of those EVALI cases linked to fake THC cartridges.” Not to say that this is conclusive, or that v**es are safe. They are not. Full stop. You shouldn’t feel good about va**ng, but think about it this way: There is no proven link between va**ng and cancer. Ci******es enjoy no such accolade. So maybe it’s okay to feel a little better about it.”

30/11/2024

On Saturday, Nov. 16, the Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) women’s soccer team won a thriller against UC Santa Cruz in the first round of the NCAA Division III tournament. Tied after 110 minutes of regular play, perfect penalties from Maxine Davey PO ’25, Ella Endo PO ’25, Taylor Marshall PZ ’26, Spencer Deutz PZ ’25 and Vivian Rojas Collins PO ’27 were enough for the Sagehens to prevail.

“For the entire 110 minutes, I had full belief that we were gonna win,” Rojas Collins said. “So it wasn’t very hard to keep going.”

Unfortunately, the Sagehens were unable to recreate the magic the following day, falling to Trinity 3-2 in penalties despite outshooting their opponent 21-5.

30/11/2024

The research of an assistant professor at Harvey Mudd College recently received a $799,343 three-year grant funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) under the Biden administration.

Dede Long, assistant professor of economics at Harvey Mudd College, is a co-principal investigator (PI) on the federal grant. According to Long, the grant is highly competitive and has an acceptance rate of around 12 percent.

PI David Kling, an economist at Oregon State University, is leading the project to develop a model for assigning an economic value to forests by analyzing market and non-market benefits. Doing this will help capture the importance of forests to economists and policymakers, Long explained.

“Understanding the real value brought by the environmental goods and services like biodiversity could help us to inform policy decision-making,” Long said.

(Words by Chloe Eshagh | Photo Courtesy: Harvey Mudd College)

30/11/2024

On Nov. 15, Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Colleges Recreation hosted the annual 5C5K Wellness Fair. The 3.1-mile race began at 12 p.m. on Zinda Field, taking participants through all five of the Claremont Colleges before concluding at the Wellness Fair outside Roberts Pavilion, which featured booths led by students and local businesses.

“I think that [the race] was really great because we all did it here at the 5Cs,” participant Jonathan Hernandez PO ‘28 said. “We all sort of knew each other and we were very supportive of each other and that was something I really appreciated about this particular 5K.”

Participants and attendees also expressed appreciation for the Wellness Fair. Booths centered around mental and physical wellness and offered things like facial mask supplies and acai from Ubatuba.

“There’s a heavy workload with being a student and people just have life going on, so it can be hard to juggle all of it,” Elisa Laloudakis SC ‘26, who ran the facial mask booth, said. “It’s important to prioritize yourself and engage in these small but fun activities.”

(Words by Audrey Park and Ellie Lakatos | Photo by Ellie Lakatos)

22/11/2024

From Nov. 15 to 17, “The Play That Goes Wrong” turned Pomona College’s Seaver Theater into a whirlwind of laughter and chaos. The comedy-within-a-comedy follows a theater group’s attempts to stage a murder mystery. As everything that could possibly go wrong does, the play spirals into hilarious disaster: forgotten lines, collapsing sets, plot absurdities and nonstop mayhem.

“I enjoy how utterly nonsensical it is in terms of [how] most of the things that go wrong could have been solved in the real world if these people had ever rehearsed … in the story world of the play,” Stella Adler SC ’27, one of the play’s technicians, said. “The suspension of disbelief and the ridiculousness of it all … I highly enjoy [it].”

One of the show’s standout moments was the dramatic collapse of the upstairs platform set. The chaos began when a gardener-turned-guard dog knocked down its supports, triggering a chain reaction of destruction.
“When the set started to fall apart, it was an incredible piece of theater craftsmanship,” Grace Trautwein SC ’28 said. “I… really liked the scene where they kept repeating over and over the exact same language.”

(Words by Ananya Vinay | Photo by Sarah Ziff)

22/11/2024

LinkedIn, widely used by students to connect with peers and potential employers in their industry, fosters a competitive culture complete with a professional linguistic bent. Students noted that LinkedIn sometimes feels more like another form of social media, where users curate resumes as part of their online persona.

“As someone that has not worked for a large, internationally known company like many other students at the 5Cs have, I’m more anxious about how others perceive me and the value I can bring to jobs even though I have a strong breadth of experience,” Ava Hinz SC ’25, managing director of Pomona Consulting Group, said.

Some expressed discomfort with the inauthentic tone of professional networking on LinkedIn, though some find motivation in LinkedIn’s environment.

“I would look on peoples’ LinkedIn and see all these internships and research and all these experiences that I didn’t have, and that gave me a lot of anxiety,” Kaili Shoop PZ ’27, a member of Pitzer Investment Society, said. “But for me, it was like a wake up call. So now, I got a research opportunity and I got an internship, but if I didn’t see all of those people getting those experiences, I don’t think I would be in the position I am in today. But, it is a bit unhealthy to think that way.”

(Words by Audrey Green | Photo by Shixiao Yu)

22/11/2024

In sports, it’s never over until the whistle blows. Georgia McGovern CM ’24 discusses how European club Bayer Leverkusen has mastered the art of the comeback. Leverkusen, known for their dramatic affairs and late goals, have scored 17 goals past the 90th minute and 34 goals past the 80th, en route to winning the German Bundesliga and attaining a 51-game unbeaten streak.

22/11/2024

Pomona College has hired Olivia Calvi as the lead deputy Title IX Coordinator for the Title IX and Campus Advocacy, Resources, Education and Support (CARES) Office.

Calvi has a Master’s degree in social work from the University of Montana. She previously worked at the counseling center at The Webb Schools in Claremont, where she advised the LGBTQ+ affinity group and taught curriculum centered around healthy coping mechanisms, identity and intersectionality and comprehensive s*x education.

In an email to TSL, Calvi said that the most important aspect of supporting survivors in her role is facilitating a space for individuals to have a sense of agency and autonomy throughout the Title IX process.

”In this work, I prioritize creating space for survivors where they feel heard and know that they can safely share their story—space that allows them to take ownership over their situation and reclaim what is helpful for them to claim.”

(Words by Macy Puckett | Photo Courtesy: Pomona College)

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