I hope these were not the “best” four years of our lives, but they may have been the most fun. You have to believe life gets better, but nothing will beat free Snack at 10:30 PM every school night. I’ll never forget the first time I went to snack. Prospie Josh thought he had floated himself into heaven. And it wasn’t even mozzarella sticks night. This was back when the fro-yo machine was always on and Gavin ruled the World Wok. I’ll miss Collins.

It’s one thing to say you will “miss” college and another to wake up Sunday morning after graduation, have to move out of your apartment, and start picking health insurance. I don’t remember high school graduation being this bittersweet, but that’s probably because I knew life would get much, much better in college. For many of us, the future is completely unpredictable.

I had a lot of ideas about what to write for a “Goodbye from the Class of 2010″ post. It’s my last written assignment for college, so there is a lot of pressure to not disgrace myself or give the anonymous commenters any reason to go on some crazy tangent. Speaking of which, someone should write a thesis about CMCForum.com’s anonymous-optional comment section. “Thesis ideas are everywhere.” Tangential advice: Don’t let anyone tell you your thesis is “more than just a paper.” It is just another paper.

I was going to work with friends to release a music video, That’s So North Quad, to chronicle the end of the college era. At least that’s what I tell people it would have been about. But our expectations were too high. We had a great script, but we didn’t write it down. No evidence. It would have been to the tune of a Broken Bells song remix. Or this song.

I was going to plan a senior prank, but the prospect of going to white collar prison scared me. I don’t believe they actually let you wear (and they definitely don’t let you pop) white collars in those places.

I was going to write a number of Forum posts (see list below) and I was going to compile “The Class of 2010′s Guide to CMC.” It would have come with a free CD-ROM version of That’s So North Quad.

I really wanted to make sure I passed down all the knowledge and information I had for the Class of 2014, but there’s only so much you can put into words. Too bad I gave up on CMCPedia.com. Maybe someone can get that going again?

I was going to write something like David Nahmias’ (CMC ’10) goodbye letter but took issue with the suggestion that I should pick up my own toys. Why don’t we just attach a claw to the gigantic Kravis Center crane and use that to solve the problem? Yeah, that would probably solve the toy litter problem, David.

On a more serious note, I’m a little concerned about how things at CMC are going to change in the future. For one thing, CMC is going to get a lot, lot richer. With money comes responsibility. Responsibility is a downer. As I wrote that sentence, a man walking with a baby in a stroller passed by our senior week beach house in Mission Beach. As he glanced at us, he noticed girls in bikinis, a keg, loud music, and people having a great time on our front porch. He did not look happy to have “responsibilities.”

Not sure what the future will bring, but John Faranda will keep us updated. And the Siegel Swimming Pool (where Phillips Hall currently sits) will come with a large trampoline.

I was going to write a goodbye article about graduating, life, etc. I had some thoughts about Claremont Confessions, CMC’s Dean of Students’ office, the RA system, and a multi-paragraph rant about the Admissions Office. But it doesn’t matter anymore. We’re finished with college. Time to move on.

We’ll miss you, CMC.

At the risk of breaking up the rhythm of this shoddily-written, nonsensical, unstructured goodbye post, I’ll divide the rest of this post into “Top Five Regrets” and “What I’ve Learned.”

Top Five Regrets

1. Not Coming to CMC Until Sophomore Year

Although my situation was unique, I feel bad for anyone who misses freshman year at CMC. Transferring to CMC as a sophomore (or worse, junior) puts you at an immeasurable disadvantage to the rest of the school.

2. Not Partying More

I went to Slippery When Wet at Mudd for the first time this semester. I went to my first Pitzer party a few weeks ago. I have never played Tuesday Night Beirut. I guess I fooled myself into thinking partying more would hurt my academic career at CMC. It’s just not true — nobody looks back at CMC and regrets not studying more.

3. Not Creating More Stuff

I started a website called Claremont Confessions last year. The name wasn’t my idea, but I take responsibility for the damage that ensued. I won’t go into details here, but you can see the Facebook group someone started in protest here and read a bit more about it here and here. What I regret is shutting down the site instead of using it as a springboard to launch a site that actually did something to bring the 5Cs together for more than gossip.

Another example is this website (cmcforum.com). I revived the site from its print deathbed my sophomore year, but didn’t act on or complete a lot of ideas for additional features for various reasons (couldn’t figure out how to implement it, would have taken up too much time, etc.). It was also impossible finding anyone willing to help. Thankfully, The Forum has gotten to the point where finding competent people to help, write, and run the site isn’t a major problem. I hope the site gets stronger, but as we’ve seen in the past and with any organization, one year of bad leadership could ruin it all. It might be a good idea to put some institutional controls in place for the future.

4. Drafts

Over the past couple years I’ve started drafts of articles I never published on this site. I regret not finishing more. Some were just a few sentences, most were longer. Here are some of my favorite unfinished drafts:

• “Top 10 CMC Moments in the Past Four Years”
• “What I’ve Learned About CMC’s “Problems”
• “Things I Thought I Was Promised When I Came to CMC”
• “Honnold Mudd in 2020″
• “Things I Didn’t Know About CMC”
• “Rants from a Nostalgic Senior, Part I”
• “How to Be a Good Professor at CMC”
• “Stop Whining, CMC”
• “Student Health Services Is Unhealthy”
• “The Case for the Block Plan at CMC”
• “You know it was a long night when…”
• “Computer Science Should Be Mandatory”
• “RDS Advertises on Facebook? Seriously?”
• “Ferris Wheel in North Quad”

5. Not Figuring Out What I’m Interested In

I am an economics major. I’m not interested in academia. I have a job next year in which the major appeal is having no specific focus or industry. I have interests, but I don’t have a calling yet.

What I’ve Learned

A few random thoughts:

• I agree with Patrick — leisure time in college is too valuable to spend too much of it studying. If you are at the very top of your class, I think you are doing something wrong. Or a Lit major. (That was a joke, Lit majors.)
• It’s strange that only a small number of students are allowed to e-mail the entire student body and are given no guidelines about what is or is not acceptable use.
• John Faranda and much of the Development Office are very good at their job; the Public Affairs office is not. Why don’t we have any CMC alumni working in the Public Affairs office? I bet their incentive would far exceed their salary.
• If you stop worrying about putting any information about yourself, your thoughts, etc. on the internet and start making sure that what you’re putting on the internet isn’t really stupid, you’ll be fine.
• As we’ve seen in the past few years, the print media is an industry prone to consolidation. As a microcosm, the Port Side, The Forum, and Claremont Independent struggle because our campus is too small to support three major newspapers.
• An unintentional offspring of CMC moving to Google for e-mail has been the widespread popularity of communicating through GChat. It could be improved.
• Our education system is incredibly inefficient. We spent 22 years learning what we could learn in far fewer.

The same night, the Pitzer Student Senate was throwing their biggest party of the year up on their campus. They brought in a great mash-up group, Super Mash Bros, which cost them $5,000. There were some other expenses and the whole party was probably close to $10,000. I’m sure it was a lot of fun. I wish I could have been there.

A few weeks before the Pitzer party, ASCMC got an e-mail from one of the organizers of the party. In the e-mail, the girl, a Pitzer freshman, asked ASCMC to help fund the party. After a few more e-mails, the same girl came to request money from the ASCMC Senate. The ASCMC Senate wound up giving $200 to the party (the Senate budget is ~$10k for the whole year and receives a few similar requests a week). Andrew Cosentino added another $300 from his SAC fund, bringing the total contributed from ASCMC to Pitzer to $500.

To put this in perspective, $500 is a substantial amount for ASCMC to contribute to Pitzer for a party that relatively few CMCers would actually attend. Pitzer has given ASCMC less than $1,000 this year and we gave them $750-1,000 for Kohoutek alone.The Super Mash Bros contribution of $500 was given based on the premise that CMC students would not be charged or turned away from the event. We didn’t anticipate many students going to the Pitzer party over the Wedding Party, but we wanted to make sure students had another option anyway.

The day of the party, some organizers of the party at Pitzer contacted ASCMC again. They wanted more money — the party had gone over budget and they would be in debt by over $2,000. They asked for another $500 from multiple people within ASCMC.

When they unexpectedly called me, I was changing into my suit before hurrying back to help set up the Wedding Party an hour before the dinner started. I was rushed, stressed, and wearing 48 hours of Las Vegas (what a week). The conversation went something like this:

Pitzer Girl: Hey, this is *****, we need $500 more for the Pitzer party tonight.
Me (confused): Uh, who told you to call me?
Pitzer Girl: Andrew said he couldn’t give any more money from his fund so we’re calling you for $500 more.
Me: …but we gave you $500 total. The party is tonight. It’s not reasonable for us to make a split judgment for $500 more right now, I’m sorry.
Pitzer Girl: If we don’t get $500 more from ASCMC, we won’t let CMCers in. Or we’ll charge them at the door.
Pause.
Me: …Oh?
Pitzer Girl: Yeah sorry, that’s the way it is.
Me: Alright then.
Pitzer Girl: ?
Me: We don’t negotiate with terrorists.

Epilogue: We took back the initial $500 commitment and married some people instead. Pitzer charged CMC students $5 each. Few CMCers showed up. Definitely not 100. They would have been better off with our $500 had they cooperated. (And I’m reminded of my Game Theory midterm…)

This account of the story is obviously supposed to make me and ASCMC sound cooler than we really are, but let’s ignore that. The real point is, Pitzer really tried to extort ASCMC. Not cool, Pitzer. If we weren’t like the America of the Claremont Colleges Consortium (or like Rome when Romans were super chill and running the world) and sly econ wizards (interesting fact: 11/18 of ASCMC’s Board are econ majors), we might have just given into Pitzer’s demands. But not on our wedding day. Not in America.

*Props to Andrew Cosentino ’11 for coming up with the idea for the Wedding Party and executing it beautifully. Also credit to Ben Kraus ’11 and the rest of ASCMC for help with planning and execution. I sincerely hope ASCMC’s next Board of Directors makes even bigger moves.

The first part is what happens when you take the number of words Professor Brock Blomberg says on the March 5th Mixtape, multiply it by where you would find the maximum of -x^2+102x+52, then subtract the number of Grammy Awards Lupe Fiasco has won, multiplied by the approximate number of decades B.o.B. has lived. Order of operations apply. Look to the north.

But it’s all in the second part, which was made popular in the 1980s by Eddie and further popularized by artists such as OutKast and Ludacris.

The first person gets two passes. The second person gets one.

Why write this now? Because very few people understand how ASCMC actually operates. Even though the organization serves over 1,100 people on a daily basis, the number of people who actually know “how things work” is only a couple dozen at most. So in the interest of a fair and transparent election, here’s “what I’ve learned.”

ASCMC, Inc.

Heggblade Conference Room: Where the Magic Happens

The Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College (ASCMC) is a 501(c)3 organization. In legal terms, that means we file our own tax returns, write our own checks, keep our own books, and are legally independent from the school.

What does “legally independent” mean? It means that ASCMC is responsible and liable for any events we put on, anything in the Forum (ASCMC’s official “newspaper”), and any internal controversies that arise. In the past, this has meant that students who take complaints about ASCMC’s actions to CMC’s administration have no recourse except with ASCMC itself. ASCMC is governed by its own constitution and bylaws, which also helps shield us from overzealous administrators (a future possibility; not a present reality).

Of course, the Dean of Students can still cancel our parties, the Dean of Faculty still chooses our graduation speakers (Kravis 2010!), and if ASCMC really screws up, the school could probably withhold student fees (but that would never happen).

Finances

Student fees are tacked onto tuition at $235 per year for every full-time student. 100 percent of that goes to ASCMC. Technically, it goes to CMC then to the ASCMC CFO in the form of a check for the full amount each semester. The CFO then takes that check down to the Wells Fargo branch in the Village and deposits it into our business account there. The CFO, President, and Vice President are signatories on that account so can deposit or withdraw money when necessary. Right now there is $177,740.54 in the checking account, but a lot of that is earmarked toward something or otherwise unreconciled. Like most corporations, money comes in and out so frequently that it’s hard to know exactly how much is available, but it’s always easy to get a general idea.

The Budgeting Committee (see Constitution) decides where the money goes. There a few guidelines such as a minimum allocation for Senate, but which fund gets how much is otherwise entirely discretionary. The Budget Committee also creates funds, such as a “Wedding Party” fund for special events and causes.

When someone spends money on an ASCMC event or approved expenditure, they save the receipts, submit a reimbursement form, and Chris writes them a check within a week or two. In extraordinary cases we’ll do a wire transfer or advance payment (for Lupe Fiasco’s fee, for example), but the policy is generally reimbursement only.

Positions

Before explaining the positions on the Board of Directors, I should mention that the “Powers and Duties” of each board member are very clearly outlined in the ASCMC Constitution. I should also say that those and the descriptions listed below describe the bare minimum that each board member must do. Everyone usually goes above and beyond.

Everyone on Board gets a stipend of varying amounts, which are listed in the Constitution. The President gets free room and board because of the opportunity cost of being an RA (generally, DOS will not let an RA be in a significant ASCMC position because of conflict of interest and time commitment issues). All board members traditionally get certain perks like mass e-mailing privileges and best seating for concerts they help plan. Again, if you’re thinking about running or applying for one of these positions, you need to read the Constitution to know what you’re getting yourself into.

Elected Positions:

President (Isayas Theodros)

The ASCMC President is responsible for the health of the organization. He presides over the Board of Directors meetings every week and represents ASCMC in discussions with the administration.  The President has many more responsibilities not listed here, but this is the short version. The President is almost always (and maybe always) someone who has been on the Board of Directors before because of the level of experience the job requires.

Vice President (Me)

The Vice President’s main responsibilities are running weekly ASCMC Senate meetings, appointing students to and serving on trustee, faculty, and college committees, and working with the President to ensure the health of the organization. Like the President, the Vice President is responsible for more than this, but I’m keeping these descriptions brief. Also like the ASCMC President, the Vice President is usually someone who has been on the Board before.

Class Presidents (William Robelo-Lara ’10, Tammy Phan ’11, Will Kahn ’12, Aditya Pai ’13)

The Class Presidents are all given the same basic responsibilities: represent and organize activities for their class. Each president is given a discretionary fund (this year in the range of $2,000-17,000) from which to spend on class activities. This year the junior class went to The Price Is Right, the sophomores had some “SophoWars” thing (I still don’t know what that was all about), etc. Additional responsibilities include running Monte Carlo (Junior Class President) and speaking at graduation (Senior Class President).

Social Activities Chair (Andrew Cosentino)

The SAC is the party planner-in-chief of ASCMC. The SAC is more or less responsible for making sure there’s something to do on campus every Saturday night. He or she usually manages a budget around $10,000 – 25,000 for the year.

Social Life Chair (Kenley Turville)

The SLC is responsible for throwing dry events on and off campus. For example, the Dodgers games, Hub Quiz, and Gossip Girl showings. The SLC’s budget usually matches the SAC’s.

Dorm Affairs Chair (Ben Kraus)

The DAC runs Dorm President meetings and oversees TNCs and other dorm events. The DAC also receives a discretionary fund around $8,000. Traditionally the DAC also helps the SAC with bigger events.

Appointed Positions:

Clubs and Organizations Chair (Johnny Ko)

The CO Chair or “the clubs guy” is most recognized for delving out funding allocations to clubs during budget hearings in April and throughout the year on a discretionary basis (with a $5,000-10,000 discretionary fund). The CO Chair also serves on the Budgeting Committee. The CO chair is vital in keeping the organization together as clubs receive a huge portion of ASCMC funding so the CO Chair has to keep in constant communication with club leaders.

Chief Financial Officer (Chris Jones)

This is the guy who writes the checks, manages the books, files the tax and legal documents, and knows what’s really going on behind the scenes. An extremely important position because we do not have the resources to pay a full time accountant (but we do have one alumnus CPA who volunteers a few hours now and then).

Executive Secretary (Cara Daley)

A great way to get involved in ASCMC, this job involves taking minutes at meetings and serving on a few internal committees. As with any position on Board, the Exec Sec can also step up and do other things within ASCMC, so don’t think it’s all taking notes and filing memos.

Other Positions

There are lots of other ways to get involved with ASCMC — Forum Editor and staff, Senators, Senate President Pro-Tempore, RA Liaison, Financial Advisor, Presidential Advisor — but I’m not going to detail all of them here. Of course, if you have questions, feel free to leave them in the comments.

Alumni tell me CMC has prepared me well for the journey, but have I really learned much since the 5th grade?  I have some plans, but I’ve never been more unsure of where I’ll be in five years.

Despite my personal confusion, I think I have a pretty good idea of where Claremont McKenna will be in five years. There are a lot of good “Decade in Review” articles and posts around the web lately, but I say those are written by people like Kevin Burke who can’t see into the future. Here’s what’s going to happen at CMC in the next decade.

2010:

• CMC amends the science GE requirements to allow computer science courses as an alternative option.
• The music video “That’s So North Quad” drops and takes the school by storm (just wait).
• I graduate.

2011:

• The Kravis Center opens.
• In his final act of bravery before graduation, the ASCMC Social Activities Chair will throw the largest CMC party ever in the middle of North Quad. There will be strippers, midgets, fifths, handcuffs, clowns on stilts, clowns on goats, Kanye West, and a 40-foot crane hanging a roasting pig over a spit. Epic. The next morning, a townie tied to a chair, gagged and missing his two front teeth, will wake up in the Appleby laundry room. Nobody will know how he got there. A Claremont McKenna water polo player will find the missing teeth days later at the bottom of the CMS pool. The townie will sue CMC for a few milli. In response and retaliation, the administration will cancel all ASCMC parties for the following three weeks.

2012:

• CMC announces a plan to tear down Ducey Gym and build a new gym in the “pit” across Claremont Boulevard. They have been doing this annually for years, but this time they “mean it.”

2013:

• The company that owns the College Park Apartments tries to found the sixth “Claremont” college, Upland College. The Consortium decides not to admit the school, so the company founds their own consortium — The Upland Colleges.  Holla.  The Upland Colleges will become renowned for their strict alcohol policies, degree in ergonomics, and loose women.

2014:

• An ambitious CMCer will hear about this thing called Claremont Confessions. “Sounds cool,” he says, so he brings it back. This time the site implements an anonymous video and hidden camera feature. I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.
• Chipotle adds a store to the Claremont village. In-N-Out Burger takes over for Bon Appetit at the Hub.

2015:

• A few weeks ago I said to President Gann, “Tear down whatever buildings you want and rebuild them, but don’t try to tear down North Quad.”  She laughed.  ”That’s what everyone tells me!” she said.  In 2015, she draws up plans to tear down North Quad as part of what she dubs “Ganny-Gann’s Masta Plan.”

2016:

• Facebook groups remain a vehicle to achieving powerful institutional change.  President Gann mysteriously retires following the creation of the Facebook group, “WE LOVE YOU NORTH QUAD – DON’T LEAVE CMC!” The Board of Trustees hires an Economics Professor (finally!), Brock Blomberg, to take her place.  The plans to tear down North Quad are dropped.
• ASCMC gets audited by the Internal Revenue Service. Uh oh. As the ASCMC CFO shreds files associated with line items for “Tropical Lei Expense,” “Cigars for Meetings,” and “Income from Extraordinary Sources,” a CMC alumnus who was appointed head of the IRS in 2015 calls off the audit.

2017:

• Newly appointed Athenaeum Director Ward Elliot reinstates the Madrigals tradition as his first order of business. The wassail will flow once again.

2018:

• Moose Halpern (CMC ’10), running on a campaign of “What up, chief?” is elected the youngest US Senator in California history.
• Scripps goes coed and quickly becomes the most competitive 5C school to get into. Mudders will cry. The Motley will stop serving “feminista” coffee.

2019:

• Henry Kravis bequeaths a large amount of cash money to CMC under the condition that we buy, restructure, and annex Pitzer with it, renaming the school “Claremont McKravis College” (see image).
• CMC will have the largest liberal arts college endowment in the world.

________________

I can’t predict what will happen beyond 2019 — CMC might open a water park in Montclair, the senior class might take over the Children’s School playground, the consortium might kick out Pomona College — only time will tell.  Who knows what’s coming?

As usual, campus security was riding around in golf carts, sprinklers were watering the grass and sidewalks, and sketchy black cats were scurrying through the bushes by the Athenaeum and Heggblade. The weather was 65 degrees and sunny by day and as cold as 40 degrees at night. And it was really, really quiet.

On Saturday around 5 PM, a few stranded East Coasters at the senior apartments grilled chicken and steaks, played Beirut, and blasted really loud music. Nobody complained.

As our freedoms reached the peak levels of our college years and we started making some poor choices, we thought, what if more people were here? What if instead of a couple dozen students who have no choice but to be here, 1200 CMCers stayed on campus for a day or two before going home?

Unfortunately, CMC closes all residence halls at 8 PM on the Friday at the end of finals week. My guess is it would be expensive to keep the dorms open an extra day — energy costs, liability insurance, cleanup costs, etc. would all add up. I think it’s worth it. Dorms should stay open until Sunday at 8 PM, not Friday at 8 PM.  And here’s what we could do with the extra time:

An All-Campus Game of Capture the Flag

Each dorm puts their flag in their main lounge (or dunk hoops) and receives a target.  If you capture a dorm’s flag, they are out of the game and your dorm gets that dorm’s target.  Every student is equipped with either laser tag guns, paintball guns, nerf guns, or water guns.  Obviously, each potential weapon has its trade-offs and would need to be laboriously debated at the Athenaeum before any decision is made.  There might be problems with 1,000+ students running around campus with fake automatic weapons, but let’s ignore that for now. Other possibility: North Quad vs South Quad.  Blowout After-party: Senior Apartments.

A Community Service Project/Day

I don’t really know what this would entail, but I’m sure we could figure it out.  Some companies have a policy that requires employees to take a day off from work to do community service.  Some companies do it together and all on one day — that’s the idea here, but with CMCers instead of a company. Instead of the townies coming to us, we’ll go to them for once. Blowout after-party: Scripps Pool.

Color Wars

If you went to camp, you know what this is. If you didn’t, read here. Dean Deb Wood will not be happy about this one; I doubt she went to camp. Blowout after-party: Green Beach.

Ski Beach Day

This year, the weather was perfect on the Saturday in question. It was 80 degrees and sunny mid-day. We would take buses up to Mt. Baldy, ski, then go to the beach. We’d probably have freshmen and sophomores go to the beach, then ski, and vice versa for seniors and juniors. Maybe we’d meet in the middle and rent out some huge restaurant/hall in LA for lunch for everyone. Pomona does this to a lesser extent already, why don’t we? Blowout after-party: Mt. Baldy

Camp-Out on Green Beach

We get like 500 tents and put them all over Parents Field in a circle. In the middle, we build a giant bonfire (the environment be damned). At midnight, everyone gathers around in pajamas and passes around a megaphone, giving toasts to the semester and throwing in symbolic pieces of the semester (my Business Law textbook, for example) into the flames. In between some of the tents, we’d have fires for marshmallows, etc. Blowout after-party: Parents Field

The Longest Boat Race in the History of Claremont McKenna College and the Entire World and the Galaxy and the Universe

From the Senior Apartments to President Gann’s front doorstep. It’s an idea that’s been thrown around a lot… let’s do it. Blowout after-party: Pam Gann’s Backyard

Runners-up: Huge snowball fight, carnival day, Joshua Tree trip, Mock Wedding, Hula Hoop Day, Rodeo Day, Catalina wine mixer, Cross the Border Day (AKA Tijuana Day), Dig a Tunnel to Scripps Day, Hug a Townie Day

Sure, institutional changes don’t happen overnight, and they don’t happen easily. Usually it takes a $200 million gift or a 25 percent decline in our endowment for things to change. Regardless, I’m graduating in the spring and plan on enjoying senior week while you all take finals. But if I were a younger man, I might fight for the right to capture the flag.

Top 20 things I would buy if I were President Gann* and had a boatload of money (in order of importance):

1. A new athletics/recreation center to replace Ducey.  Easily the most important thing for CMC right now.
2. A computer science professor (or two).  We only have one now.
3. A new website
4. More “networking” trips during breaks like the ITAB (Silicon Valley) and FEI (NYC) trips.  Both were some of the best learning experiences I’ve had in the past four years.
5. Renovations and furniture for the Hub
6. Renovations and furniture for the computer labs (better furniture, more screens, etc… check out the Mudd/Pomona labs and you’ll see what we’re missing)
7. Renovations and furniture for the Reading Room
   (Onto the frivolous purchases…)
8. Giant plasma screens and speakers all over campus broadcasting the same thing at all times
9. An elaborate mini-golf course between Boswell and Green
10. An outdoor pool for non-athletic use (Scripps is too far and has inconvenient hours for men)
11. A large outdoor hot tub at the Senior Apartments.  (Important: cleaned and sanitized daily, at least.)
12. A bronze statue of Donald McKenna outside Collins Dining Hall.  Oxidized to look old and grand.
13. A gold statue of Henry Kravis outside the Kravis Center.  Polished daily to look new and expensive.
14. Scripps College (just the students, the Motley, and the dining hall.  They can keep the other stuff.)
15. A lazy river from Kravis Center to Bauer Center.  (Important: shut off and emptied on Thursday and Saturday nights.)
16. High speed train from Claremont Boulevard to the top of Mt. Baldy
17. Chairlift (gondola?) from South Quad to North Quad
18. Pitzer College (KKR leveraged buyout style)
19. The Mudd Hole
20. Loanable go-karts (with front-mounted video cameras)

Other changes would include abolishing senior thesis, most GEs, and demolishing McKenna Auditorium and Ducey Gym.

*Henry Kravis, Robert Day, or any other super rich donor would do

Disagree? Did I forget something? Leave it in the comments.

This is sad for many reasons.  The most obvious reason is that CMC, a college only 63 years old, has few historic traditions as it is.  CMC has no geographic or architectural significance, no statues of our founders on campus, and now, almost no significant annual events.  Maybe the closest we come to a tradition is the Foam Party, and that isn’t even at CMC.  Madrigals were rare in that they not only involved students, but they were about holiday cheer, food, and song.  For 26 years, alumni, faculty, and students came together on a few nights in early December for a five-course meal, medieval-themed skits, and choir performance.

So what caused the Athenaeum to end the tradition?  According to Ms. Snortum, a few things made it difficult to keep the event going.

First, live traditional Madrigal music was hard to come by.  The Scripps Chamber Choir that performed at Madrigals for 24 years refused to do so two years ago when the new Director of Choirs, Charles Kamm, decided it wasn’t worth a week of preparation for Madrigals if CMCers weren’t respectful of the performance.  In addition, Dean Debra Woods at Scripps College, who was in attendance that year, wrote a letter to President Gann complaining about the drinking she saw at the event. Given all of this, the Athenaeum Advisory Committee — a group of faculty, staff and students — decided that Madrigals was going to be difficult if not impossible to continue.

Brad Walters ’08, ASCMC President at the time, fought to keep the tradition alive by reviving the event with 5C a capella groups instead of the traditional choir.  It worked for the first year, but it was not comparable to a real chamber choir.  Brad also e-mailed the school to ask them to be on their best behavior at the event. It worked; the tradition lasted another year.

The next year, ASCMC again hired some a capella groups to perform, but some dropped out at the last minute.  The music was pretty bad.  The alcohol problem got worse.  Many students decided to pre-game the event, showing up blacked out or worse.  Students were disrespectful to the Madrigal-themed servers, singers, and CMC staff.  A CMCer got so sick at his table that the table cloth had to be thrown away. After the event, glass bottles and handles were found under tables. Maintenance workers had to clean up the bathroom while wearing hazmat suits.

Personally, I had a great time at Madrigals last year and didn’t realize any of this was going on.  The description above describes a small minority of the audience, but a visible minority to the Ath staff.  While it’s one thing to have a good time, it’s pretty unbelievable that CMCers can’t even keep it together at a formal holiday dinner with alumni, faculty and staff.

That said, I don’t think students are entirely to blame for this. After all, I doubt incoming CMCers have changed that dramatically over the past 26 years — we didn’t come here as raging, disrespectful alcoholics. More likely, the controls that had been in place — the formality of actual Madrigal events and the self-policing by students that came along with it — left with the Scripps Choir. What is needed, then, (and what was attempted this year) is a joint effort by the students and the Athenaeum to bring Madrigals back and to maintain it as an annual tradition, before it escapes college memory:

• Make it clear to the students from the outset, as Brad did in 2008, that this isn’t another TNC. It requires the decency, if not more, that other Ath events receive.
• Then, at the event itself, just don’t let in students who can barely stand up and kick out those who are being disruptive. As we have seen this is a case where a few people can ruin it for everyone.
• Get a real madrigals choir to perform. In October, when ASCMC heard the Athenaeum actually canceled Madrigals this year, we offered to find outside groups to perform a real madrigal concert (we set aside $7,500 last spring for this purpose).  Willing to listen, David Edwards asked us to get some options ready.  We did, but by the time we did (two weeks later), he told us it was too late.
• Hold the Athenaeum responsible for hosting the event.  An issue was the Athenaeum made absolutely no effort to find an outside group.  When I asked Bonnie Snortum why the Ath didn’t try to find a group to keep the tradition alive, she told me they “aren’t really set up for that.”  But isn’t that what the Athenaum does — find outside speakers and performers to come to CMC? Her suggestion was that students should be responsible for that. No, the students are here to learn. That’s why our families are paying $50k+ to employ people like the Athenaeum staff, Dean of Students office, etc. to take care of student life and extracurricular matters. ASCMC plans parties*, and the Ath has made it clear Madrigals isn’t one. For more than two decades, it had been planned and executed in no small part by their staff, and it’s unfair to students to drop that responsibility now. If we’re willing to step up, so should they.

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*ASCMC does not just plan parties, of course. It does much, much more, but if the Ath wants us to take Madrigals as seriously as a regular Ath event, maybe they should as well.

Yes, we all seem to stretch the truth about what we did during the summer.

Here is an abbreviated guide to understanding what your friends really did this summer.

1. “I interned for a financial services firm in Hong Kong/Thailand/Dubai/Mother Russia”

What he really means is, “I partied, traveled, hugged elephants, only drank vodka because the tap water wasn’t infused with minerals, paraded around in madras shorts that screamed ‘Rich American’ as I wore a t-shirt that actually said ‘Rich American’ on it while I shouted ‘Seriously, I am such a rich American!’  Oh, and I occasionally made copies of TPS reports for my dad’s friend’s shipping company.”

2. “I stayed at home and studied for the LSATs/MCATs/GREs/GMATs”

“I got really, really good at playing Halo while naked, eating leftover casserole, chicken wings, and gogurt.  I also went to a Princeton Review class once a week… if I didn’t oversleep.”

3. “I worked in i-banking for <insert TARP company here>.  I worked 12 hours a day and sometimes hated my life, but I became an Excel and Powerpoint Queen and made some cash money”

This one’s pretty accurate.  Anything about how “the hours weren’t that hard” is probably a lie though.

3a.  ”I worked for a wealth management/real estate/bankruptcy trust/law office near home.  It was unpaid* but totally worth the experience and resume line.”

“I worked 10-12 hours a day filing papers and answering the phone, didn’t learn much on the job because I wasn’t trusted to do real work, but I read Perez Hilton and Drudge Report every day so I actually learned a lot.  I was also the head intern in charge of checking up on golf scores throughout the day for my boss.”

*If this person was really creative, he even convinced some CMC research institute to give him a stipend.

4. “I did auditing/consulting for <insert Big Three accounting firm here>.  I traveled to lots of client sites and partied it up with the other interns.”

This one is hard to make fun of… reasonable job, I guess. Moving along.

5. “I did outreach for a non-profit organization in Oregon dedicated to feline diabetes outreach.”

What she really means is, “At an organization dedicated to kitties, I spent a lot of time looking at LOLcats.  I got a solid $3,000 from the Kravis Leadership Institute to do this, so it was money well spent– thanks Henry! This also meant that the actual internship was unpaid so my bosses felt guilty about giving me work to do.  I occasionally got to the office by 10 AM and worked no more than three hours* per day.”

*The three hours were spent on Facebook and AwkwardFamilyPhotos.com

6. “I worked on an internet startup in Silicon Valley.”

Six months later: “The management realized that Google/Microsoft/Yahoo already did what they were trying to do, so the investors took their money back and shut it down.  I never really understood what they were trying to do anyway.”

7. “I took classes at the local community college.”

See #2; add: “and now I don’t have to take any BS joint science classes to get out of the GE requirement.  Sucka sucka.”

8. “I worked for a multinational conglomerate that required me to travel throughout Europe and Asia while making bank.  You might have seen me on TV if you were in Japan this summer.  You can find it on YouTube if you missed it.  Hold on… I’m getting a text from Silvio Berlusconi… he says he wants to party again.  Haha, bro-ski knows how to rage.”

Some people take the art of exaggeration too far.

My Fortune 500 CEO just told my secretary that he’d like me to come tell him how to run his company.  Such is the life of a summer intern, right?

But here’s the math just in case…

On the meal plan, you can choose from the 16, 12, or 8 meals per week options. The prices have risen ~4-5% per year in recent years, and in 2009-2010 the pricing schedule is as follows:

16 meal plan = $6055
12 meal plan = $5560
8 meal plan = $5185

Each plan comes with a little “flex money” that you can use at the school store on candy, snacks, soda, toothpaste, etc.  Let’s count that as cash back because many students use it on stuff they would have otherwise spent cash on.

So we’ll subtract flex money:

16 = $6055 – 160 = 5895
12 = $5560 – 120 = 5440
8 = $5185 – 80 = 5105

Based on these amounts and a 16 week semester, if you use all your meals (that’s a big “if”), each meal would cost:

16 meal plan = $5895 / 16 meals / 32 weeks = $11.51 per meal
12 meal plan = $5440 / 12 meals / 32 weeks = $14.17 per meal
8 meal plan = $5105 / 8 meals / 32 weeks = $19.94 per meal

Keep in mind that nobody actually uses 16 meals a week except Sean Wasserman, the CMS Water Polo starting goalie, because he is “The Body.” In fact, rumor has it that the dining hall discovered that almost nobody uses all 16 meals (those under that plan use 14 on average), which is why the price difference between the 16 and 12 plans is so low.

Alternatively, there’s the option to pay per meal as an outsider every time you go to the dining hall.  Those prices are:

Breakfast: $7.50
Lunch: $10.50
Dinner: $13.50

Bottom Line: It’s cheaper to just pay in cash (a la carte) every time you go to the dining halls than to get the 8 meal plan, 12 meal plan, or in some cases, any meal plan.