Unfortunately the answer is obvious, and cringe-worthy: U.S. News & World Report National Liberal Arts College Rankings.

Claremont McKenna College has been rising on this list—and other lists—for some time now. The yearly reports have been big news on campus: we glorify falling admissions rates and drool when Forbes ranks us higher than Yale. We post on our Facebook walls about how we fared relative to other competitive colleges. We put flashy banners on our homepage telling us where we stand. The 5^th and 6^th lines of President Gann’s biography on the college’s website list the school’s ratings and its admissions selectivity ranking.

The administration is obsessed with our placement on an arbitrary scoreboard, and many of us students have joined the self-congratulatory bandwagon. We find ourselves today in an environment so focused on rankings that a senior admissions officer decided that a one-percent fudge was worth his career.

Shame on Mr. Vos, but he does not deserve all the blame.

Monday’s announcement was a wake-up call. Yes, these types of rankings games must be watched more closely. Yes, everyone involved should see the door. But the administration must also address the fact that the incentive to cheat at these games in our community seems to be unusually high. Beyond firing those responsible for cheating, the administration must address both the larger system of college rankings and its attitude towards our own ratings.

The college continues to insist on measuring itself by metrics calculated by people who have never eaten in Collins dining hall. We have an unusual and unhealthy obsession with moving up that list. It must stop now. If the administration continues to see us only in numbers, we will continue to bleed integrity. CMC will win the game. But we will lose ourselves.

Why would President Gann care what U.S. News and World Report thinks about our professors? The answer is simple: high rankings lead to better students, better professors, more money for the school and better jobs waiting for us after graduation. High rankings are good—and we can measure them. How can the college possibly be asked to ignore them?

It can’t really. Somehow, we have to attempt to strike a balance between caring and obsessing about our reputation as an institution. Unfortunately, this is an issue that every college community and every admissions department in the country must confront.

Why? Because the college ranking system is broken.

We know this intuitively. Measuring Harvey Mudd College on paper with Claremont McKenna on paper is like asking a blind man to compare apples and oranges. If a high school senior were to ask you which of the two schools she should attend, telling her the square footage of Kravis or the SAT score statistics of Mudd’s freshmen would be silly. Yet these are the very numbers that colleges around the country let rule the decisions they make at the very highest levels. These statistics are not inherently important; the ranking system makes them important. That’s ridiculous.

Once a school has been named among the top 20 schools in the nation, it should not be ranked against its peers. The differences between schools at this level come from the different focuses and strengths of each school. Publishing rankings only encourages an obsession with prestige: a gaggle of kindergartners standing on tippy toes trying to see who is the tallest.

Undeniably, the actions of anyone involved with this scandal are irredeemable and absolutely inexcusable.

But the admissions department was acting on the pressures it felt by the rankings fixation of this administration. “I put pressure on myself to drive up the rankings because it is in my office’s best interest,” Dean Vos told the Claremont Port Side in an interview in 2008, a year in which scores were inflated. This administration has created an environment that passively encouraged cheating.
But the administration was acting on outside pressures too—pressures caused by a broken ratings system that we know has no baring on the quality of this education. A solution, then, to properly address what happened will be complex.

U.S. News and World Report should admit that what it publishes is based on funny math from essentially all participants. And at some point, this college should stop sending data to institutions that rank colleges. More realistically in the short term, however, this administration needs to address its ranking mania. The resignation of Mr. Vos should not be the end of this fiasco. From here, the first step is to admit we have a problem.

I didn’t come to Claremont McKenna College because it’s number nine. I came here for the people, the classes and the professors. This won’t affect those things. But we must understand that it is worth reflecting on this situation further. For those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

And we are better than this, CMC.

You may have noticed that on January 18, Wikipedia and Reddit went dark and Google displayed a black rectangle over its normally colorful logo. These Internet giants—as well as hundreds of thousands of smaller sites—were protesting the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and its sister bill in the Senate: the Protect Intellectual Property Act (PIPA).

The first true digital protest was surprisingly effective. If social networks and search engines are good at one thing, it is reaching a lot of people quickly. On Wednesday, 7 million people signed Google’s anti-SOPA petition, 126 million people saw Wikipedia’s blackout page, and 8 million used the page to look up contact information for their representatives. It was almost impossible to use the consumer Internet on Wednesday without coming across something about this legislation.

Apparently Congress listened. Between Wednesday and Thursday, 15 members of Congress dropped their support for the bills, and 70 members went from undecided to opposed. Just hours after the protests ended, both bills were dropped from the Congressional voting schedule. Now, both lack the support to be considered again.

For now…SOPA is dead and buried. If lobbying were a beer pong game, Hollywood executives would be running a naked marathon around Silicon Valley.

The Internet got what it wanted, but the conversation is not over. It is worth reflecting on SOPA and PIPA for two reasons: 1) to understand why they are perhaps the worst pieces of legislation ever written, and 2) to understand why we sort of need something similar. Stay with me.

Let’s tackle point #1 first. SOPA, as written, would have destroyed the Internet. To tackle the widespread issue of digital piracy, we needed tweezers—not the sledgehammer that was introduced on the House floor. Either the person who wrote SOPA had a painfully vague understanding of what the Internet is, or he hated it and wanted to kill it. Probably both.

The bill as written would have allowed the Justice Department to remove any website that displayed copy-written materials from the domain name registry, without due process. There are two things wrong with this. First, the punishment mechanism is silly. To be clear, removing a website from the domain name registry will not stop people from accessing it. It will, however, make accessing it needlessly difficult. If Google were removed from the domain name registry by this law, a user would have to type in one of Google’s IP addresses (for example http://74.125.224.72/) in order to access the site. This means that the URL “Google.com” would take you nowhere, but “Google.com” would still be around. Clearly the person who designed this punishment was confused.

Second, SOPA’s punishment criteria are extraordinarily broad. Punishing websites for hosting copy-written materials would mean that websites who allow people to post things would have to start policing their users. Or—in a more likely scenario under SOPA—websites would have to stop letting users contribute content.

Think of a website. Seriously, think of a website. Got one? Good. Were you thinking of YouTube, Facebook, Google, E-bay, Amazon, Wikipedia, Reddit, Twitter, any blog, any porn site, or literally any website with an upload button or a comment box? That site would have three choices under SOPA: 1) try to stop it’s users from posting copy-written material at great cost, 2) face legal action from the government, or 3) stop letting their users from posting anything at all. In the best-case scenario, the Internet would change dramatically to skirt around this law. In the worst-case scenario, the Internet would become completely useless. Email? Good luck.

Imagine a law that forced Toyota to choose between policing drunk drivers and removing all the doors from its cars before selling them. This is the choice SOPA would give to Internet firms. Toyota would probably stop selling cars. Facebook would likely be a shell of its former self. Find me a modern law that is written more poorly than SOPA. I will be flabbergasted.

However—and this is a big however—it is important to understand that the original spirit of SOPA was a good one. Online piracy is a serious issue that requires a serious solution.

Technologies such as torrenting (which was sort of invented by a CMCer) have made it easier than ever to steal content (aka digital music, software, and books). Widespread theft has become a significant issue for the creators of content. By almost any estimate, we have swapped billions of dollars worth of content with each other. It does not seem like we are going to stop on our own.

Let’s use some of our Econ 50 knowledge for a moment. If the creators of content cannot get paid for their work, many will be forced to stop creating content (or only the wealthiest will be able to continue to create). If people are asking for payment in return from their work—and we are not giving it to them—everyone loses. Do not get me wrong; it is wonderful when people do things for free. Wikipedia rocks. But we cannot rely on the spare time of the smart and creative to fulfill our desire for good writing, software, television and music. If we try, we will end up with crap. A culture of theft will eventually lead to a culture filled with things that are worthless.

Ending Internet piracy is a noble goal, and one that should be taken seriously by the government. Not to say I wasn’t raging with you, but the piracy party must end. We really ought to be paying people for their work.

The shutdown of MegaUpload by the FBI on Thursday was justified. The site was willfully providing a way for people to steal content. Their intent was to steal. Therefore, in our society, they should be charged with breaking the law. I may not agree with the way the shutdown was handled, but it is time to realize that we can’t expect to be able to take what we want. The laws of our society have to apply to the digital space just as they do in the physical space.

Yes, it is true: the digital space we are creating is much different than the physical space we were born into. It has very different properties. For instance, you can copy something an infinite number of times for almost no cost. Our capabilities inside the digital space are much, much different than we are used to; even those inventing our capabilities still do not understand them or can predict what they will be.

Because of these issues, our values and laws have to be applied differently to the digital space. However, one thing is for sure: a system of laws must be created for the Internet. Users today are making questionable choices that clearly contradict our system of values. There are parts of the Web that resemble the Wild Wild West or Hobbes’ state of nature. It’s time to address Internet crime with legislation. That legislation, however, must be written by someone knowledgeable of the Internet and its purpose.

Writing laws for the Internet will be one of the great challenges of our time. I only hope we can do it before the 60-year-old technophobes in Congress pass something like SOPA.

In the last few days, I’ve used a mobile search engine to resolve a number of factual disagreements. One friend assumed that the GDP of China had exceeded that of the United States (nope), I called out my dad for turning right on a red arrow (as it turns out, this is legal in Washington State) and I lost a game of chess because my opponent got his pawn to the end of the board and gave himself a second queen (chess sucks).

Win or lose the arguments, I ended them with my fingers.

Five years ago these debates might have continued until we found a computer. Twenty years ago they could have lasted until we went to the library. But the vast majority of these arguments of the past fizzled out into “we’ll never know” or “let’s stop talking about this” or “hey a**hole, you can’t have two queens.” Today, I can quickly sift through a vast collection of information to find the answer, simply by reaching into my pocket.

This is not a passing trend. If CMC is anything like the outside world, there will be more networked devices on campus this year than last year. These devices will be more powerful than before, and cheaper too. Together we will create more data (this article is on the Internet!), and accessing and sorting that data will be faster and easier (Bing it!)

Not to get too “out there” on you, but we are on a path to the point at which accessing online data takes as much time as accessing it from our own memory. When we get there, the time you spent memorizing the periodic table in high school will be one-hundred-percent worthless—even for you, chemists.

We need to change how we do things.

First of all, don’t worry about learning facts. What is the atom structure of methane? Who is the chair of Pomona’s Lit department? How do I get to Los Angeles? Learning the answer to these types of questions was incredibly valuable in the past. When learning simple knowledge was hard, memorizing facts could give someone a huge advantage. Those with huge stores of facts in their brains could easily access that data and apply it to the situations they faced. Today, a critical mass of CMC students can learn the answers to these questions while in Collins, on their way to meet the chair of the Pomona Lit department or while their friend is driving to Los Angeles. Putting this type of information in your brain is increasingly useless. Stop doing it.

Instead, learn skills. Knowing when you need to seek out more information, where to find it, how to analyze it and how to explain it—these are the things that matter in today’s world. The same goes for the ability to play an instrument, write a compelling argument, and study for exams. These are skills. Probably most of what you do academically at CMC is learning this type of complex knowledge. Keep doing it! If you value your education and your time, take classes that emphasize learning new skills over memorization.

Hopefully taking some time to think about your relationship with information will help you spend your time more wisely. But students are not the only ones who need to adapt. Our professors do too.

This is an entrance exam to Harvard from the late 1800s. Without the Internet handy, this test would destroy me. Why? Because I have not spent any time learning how specific words translate into Latin or where rivers of the world originate. Having that information in my brain is close to worthless because I can learn it at a given moment with a few thumb flicks.

In the 1800s, Harvard University thought having this knowledge mattered. In 2012, Claremont McKenna College must realize that it matters much less and perhaps, doesn’t matter at all. Soon, we will command the entire collective knowledge of the human race with our fingertips (or our eyes, or our gestures or our brains). Professors need to help their students tackle the big picture problems, rather than mire them in the minutia. For the most part, they do a wonderful job of this, but most tests are wildly out of date: taking away our tools and asking us to perform fact-based tasks prepares us for the 1970′s, not the 21st century.

Last time I attended trivia night, I saw several people Googling answers under tables. Yes, they were cheating. But at some point, we won’t be able to stop them, and we won’t want to. During our lifetimes “searching it” will become the same as “knowing it.” We should accept that today.

On Wednesday, June 1^st, Claremont McKenna College launched an updated version of its website. The new site, still reachable at www.cmc.edu, replaced the old site in its entirety. It includes a number of new features but still provides resources such as a faculty directory and access to student email.

The change marks a big step in a long process of updating the web presence of the college.

The most obvious change is the welcome page, a page absent from the old site. This pre-home page  (which the user is first directed to) features a central image and a number of “gateways,” each linking to a different part of the site. Also included is a large “Discover CMC” button, linking to the completely redesigned homepage. Richard Rodner, Associate Vice President of Public Affairs and Communications at CMC said the central image on the page will change routinely.

The purpose behind the welcome page, and of the redesign in general, Rodner told the Forum, is to help CMC stand out among its peers.

“In benchmarking many other college websites, it was clear that—with few exceptions—they all looked very similar in structure and visual design,” said Rodner. “We wanted to significantly differentiate CMC’s new website.”

Anthony Fisher, the project’s head designer, agreed with that sentiment. “No one is doing this. We wanted to do something totally different,” said Fisher, in reference to the welcome page and other aspects of the site.

Mr. Fisher also emphasized the many roles of the website, which he thinks does a better job of delivering information and content to the college’s many audiences—including prospective students. “The new website is not only about design. It is about bringing a shift in how we present Claremont McKenna College and about making sure our online brand showcases the quality of our students, alumni, faculty and staff.” he told the Forum.

So far, responses from students have been mixed. Kevin Burke ’11, posted a pointed critique of the site on his personal blog. Burke, who has experience with web design and coding, writes: “while the new design is flashy, it’s not clear that it became more usable, which is disappointing.” Burke also refers to the welcome page as “a mess.” Other students have praised the change. Jesse Blumenthal ’11 wrote to his Twitter followers on June 2: “NEW: www.cmc.edu is a huge improvement over the old site.”

Although the new site went live on June 1, some aspects of the site are yet to be completed. Because department pages will be designed using input from respective departments, some pages may not be completed until the end of the summer. The mobile version of the site has yet to be launched and some technical issues are still being resolved as well.

Both Rodner and Fisher said that student input would continue to be important in the design of site. “There will always be challenges, perspectives, ideas, likes and dislikes to address, but this new website is a new beginning for CMC that I hope we can all embrace,” Fisher said.

However, the site will continue to evolve. Mr. Fisher says of the site, “Stay tuned.”

The Forum was there. Enjoy.

Enjoy:

Enjoy:

(contributing photographers: Sean McQueen ’13 and Andrew Jordan ’11)

(note: a few of the extra shots can be found here)

Enjoy this selection: