The misconduct of the senior administration official is both upsetting and novel in its character, but it is not entirely unprecedented. CMC isn’t the first school to try to cheat the system. The recent transgressions on the part of the administration fit in to a wider trend of schools bending to a tremendous pressure to rise in the rankings.

In a New York Times article, Richard Perez-Peña pointed to a number of other schools involved in similar scandals. Last year, Iona College of New Rochelle, New York admitted to lying about “graduation rates, freshman retention, student-faculty ratio, acceptance rates and alumni giving.”  Similar incidences were reported at both Villanova University and the University of Illinois. Even the United States Naval Academy has been accused of playing with their admissions figures. CMC may be the current focus of collegiate dishonesty charges, but there exists a clear problem in the industry.

Other schools hope to improve their rankings through more legitimate, yet decidedly underhanded tactics.  The Los Angeles Times discussed a few of these common tactics in a Wednesday editorial. Some schools, it explained, allow students to opt-out of releasing their SAT scores. One school, Baylor University, offered monetary incentives to retake the SAT after their acceptance in hopes that they might score better. We’ve seen CMC shape its policies around rank performance before: just ask any student who has been unable to join a class capped at nineteen students. In its evaluation, U.S News and World Report uses the number of classes with 1-19 students as a measurement of ”Faculty Resources” at different colleges and universities.

Rankings and statistics are often the standard by which prospective students compare colleges and the metric by which colleges judge their performance. It can be easy to get caught up in the numbers but, as the LA Times emphasized in their article, “Colleges and public schools are under pressure to look good, which means they must also ramp up efforts to ensure that’s done ethically.” We are talking about two big problems here.  First, it is essential that the higher education industry recognizes and addresses the existence of an unhealthy pressure for schools to try to game the rankings.  More importantly, CMC, and other schools like it, must put in place mechanisms to ensure that wrongful manipulation of data cannot happen again.

If there was any question that these shadowy strategies to boost one’s rankings simply aren’t worth it, CMC’s misconduct has already led to its removal from Kiplinger’s Best Values in Private Colleges list from the 2011-2012 year.  CMC had been ranked 18th on the list, a fantastic selling point for the school, but now its removal serves as a ringing condemnation rather than a sign of merit.

Let’s not forget, rankings matter, and in many ways the school has benefited from its increasing renown, including its impressive admission statistics. But it is clear that the higher education industry, including CMC’s administration, has developed an unhealthy fixation, and it is starting to hurt the students who should be its actual focus.

It is on the front page of the Education section of the New York Times. Publications like USA TODAY, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, TIME, Bloomberg, ABC, and countless others are all writing about us. Finally, people all over the country are talking about that “small, selective liberal arts college in California.”

Credit: hhsprincipalsoffice.wordpress.com

This is definitely not how I pictured it would happen.

Students and professors are shaking their heads in disgust, and Pomona students are preparing “S-A-T” chants for the next basketball game.

I am the first one to tell you that rankings matter. You may, in fact, recall the Forum article I wrote last fall in which I argued that CMC’s rise in the national rankings changed people’s perception about the school. Claremont’s ascension into the ‘elite’ tier of liberal arts colleges convinced many students who would have otherwise gone elsewhere to choose CMC. Perhaps you are one of them.

So, yes, rankings do matter.

Do they matter too much? What could drive a “senior administrator” to adjust already-great scores? There are many unknowns here, but one thing is absolutely clear: there’s no excuse for cheating. Period.

No increase in applications, donations, or rankings could possibly justify risking CMC’s reputation. Nothing can justify fudging the numbers at any time. The fact that the admissions office apparently did it for six years straight is truly disturbing.

Claremont McKenna prides itself as an institution that educates leaders. CMC graduates often go on to run for public office or lead successful businesses. Teaching ethical conduct, no matter the circumstances or competition, is one of the most important lessons a school can teach.

The blame game has already started. Former Dean of Admissions Richard C. Vos is no longer employed by CMC. Honestly, I don’t know who is responsible. Instead of calling for scapegoats, however, I am calling for answers.

The administration owes the Claremont community a further explanation.

Where is the transparency after-the-fact? The news broke after one vague email to the student body, and after 36 hours, the Office of Public Affairs has not released any more information except that the Dean of Admissions has been replaced. Trying to close the book on the issue with an email saying we caught the bad guy and hired lawyers won’t suffice. I understand that there may be legal reasons certain details cannot be revealed, but some very general questions need to be answered before we can move on.

I want to know how these discrepancies came to light. Why now? The administration apparently found out about this in January. Does that mean January 1st? Does that mean Monday morning? Does the timing of this incident just happen to be after applications have been turned in? Was there internal or external pressure to climb the rankings? Were there cutoffs the admissions department were told to meet? Were there incentives in place that may have motivated the individual to manipulate the scores? Most of all, I would like to know how this could have happened – for six years – without anyone else knowing about it at a college that is built on leadership, accountability, and integrity.

The fact that President Gann publicized this information is an important first step. This could have been swept under the rug completely, but it wasn’t. An official from Public Affairs has agreed to address the Student Senate next week. That is a crucial next step.

We need more information. We need to have an open discussion about what happened and how we can move forward from here. The best way to get past this is to understand it and learn from it. Transparency is the only way to end the speculation and conspiracy theories. Only shedding light on the issue will bring us closure.

Is this the end of CMC as we know it? No. Will future employers look at recent grads any differently? Probably not. But will CMC’s reputation be stained indefinitely? Maybe.

Current, future, and past students had nothing to do with this incident, but we now have to pay the price.

The pride that I have in my peers and professors at Claremont McKenna remains unchanged. My professors are no less brilliant, and my peers are no less amazing. The spectacular experience that I have had here as a student cannot ever be taken away from me. My future degree is not any less meaningful to me than it was on Sunday.

But we need information. We need answers.

We need to talk openly about this, because this matters. Yes, rankings matter. Ethics, however, matter more.

It isn’t fair. And it hurts.

Needless to say, this has been a rough couple days for CMC. Not only was the news surrounding the fudged SAT reports a poor moment for the administration, but it was also a difficult moment for the Claremont community. After all, we are the ones who love this place. We serve as its principal defenders and advocates. We devote inordinate amounts of time to explaining our institution to relatives and job recruiters– even strangers on the street.  It’s an incredible place, we argue. You’ve just probably never heard of it.

Now they have. It is a great irony that we receive so much attention for an issue that is so far removed from the hearts and minds of CMCers. Rankings are not necessarily what drove us here as prospective students, nor are they what we seek to take away with us as graduates.

I did not choose Claremont McKenna College for its name recognition; I came here in spite of its nonexistence.  I chose CMC because, despite knowing it was small and little-known, I had a feeling in my core it was worth the risk.

Let’s be clear: the unethical move highlighted in the press today was made by an administrator. It was one singular employee.  Perhaps he was moved deeply by his passions for the school, but nonetheless, his actions were his and his alone.  The bad news was honorably self-reported by the administration.

Our community, on the other hand, is innocent. This incident is by no means indicative of our school culture.  After three years here, I can tell you firsthand that Claremont McKenna College is not a hyper-competitive learning institution. The students here are scholars and leaders, not grimey grade-obsessed teenagers. Where I go to school, people do not try to sabotage their peers over grade point averages. Rather, they derive pleasure in seeing their peers succeed, in every venture.

The most important thing we can do as students in this moment is simple– we must defend the community we hold so dear.   Now is not the time for internal competition, rumors or conspiracy theories. We should take this moment to reaffirm our values as Claremont McKenna College’s finest, by supporting our classmates. This is an opportunity to reevaluate who we are as members of the CMC community. No matter what your major may be, we can all agree that, as students enrolled in this institution, we are part of an incredible organization.  This community is a caring one, founded on our ability to support each other regardless of our yearly U.S. News and World Report ranking. We do not find value in petty competition for competition’s sake. Claremont McKenna is better than that.

The CMC they’re writing about? That’s not my school. What happened this week– it is not who we are. Let them not extrapolate their opinion of our admissions office to that of us as a community. While it is clear that the administration needs to make some changes, it is important to remember that our college culture is not what is coming under fire.  Professors and students alike, continue your good work. Our educational policies are not the problem. Please don’t change a thing; you’re wonderful the way you are.

Here on the front lines in pleasant Claremont, California, one fact rings true: competition does not consume, nor define us. What happened on Monday is not reflective of our school community. Claremont McKenna College is a top-tier liberal arts college unlike any other in the nation– I maintain that opinion regardless of the news that broke this week.

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.

Both groups have eerily similar functions. The CPB is a board of elected officials that plans alcohol-free events and activities for students at Claremont McKenna College (CMC). Alexandra Cooke ’14, the current SLC chair, is required by the Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College (ASCMC) constitution to “coordinate non-alcoholic activities for the student body.” If you just did a double take, you’re not alone because CPB and SLC have essentially the exact same purpose. The only differences? CPB has deeper pockets, different funding sources and an unelected leader.

Jim Nauls helped bring Aziz Ansari to Claremont last spring

This article is not intended to disparage either Cooke or the current CPB chair Christina Khavarian ’12.  As dozens of airbrushed unicorn tattoos and decorated holiday cookies will attest, they have each done a fantastic job of keeping us entertained, happy, and well-fed inside and outside our Claremont bubble.

Still, from budget differences to election practices or lack thereof, it seems that the CPB chair and SLC chair are two positions that could easily be merged in order to truly benefit the students and be most effective. If combined, the new “dry chair” could pool monetary resources from two sources and avoid the inefficient overlap in positions that currently exists.  The position of SLC chair should be eliminated altogether and the CPB Chair should be elected by the students to allocate funds from both the DoS Office and ASCMC. This does raise a few problems: will ASCMC become nothing more than a glorified party-planning committee? Where will the money allocated to the SLC chair go? Because the CPB is not governed by a constitution, would the interests of students truly be spoken for?

Cooke sums up budgetary concerns perfectly, “The main differences between the two are simply where their funds come from and the sizes of the budgets. My budget comes from ASCMC and CPB’s budget comes from the Board of Trustees and is allocated by Jim Nauls in the Dean of Students Office.” Cooke notes that CPB’s budget is approximately 10 times larger than her SLC budget and reiterates, “I work for ASCMC and CPB works for Dean Nauls. While I have a constitution, an executive board and a budgeting committee to oversee how I spend my budget, CPB is guided by Dean Nauls.”

Don’t get me wrong, it is indeed admirable that CMC students (via CPB) are now in charge of allocating the funds the Dean of Students Office has appropriated for student activities, but it just seems convoluted to split funds (unevenly) between ASCMC representative Cooke and CPB’s 14-person board. CPB gets to sponsor the big names like Demetri Martin, take students to Dodgers  games, and bring Kogi trucks while Cooke only has the funds to sponsor No Shave November contests and cookie-decorating.

Then there’s the matter of the election process. As Cooke puts it, “ASCMC has a constitution that mandates the fair election of an SLC; CPB does not (yet).”

Indeed, this is how the election for CPB student representatives went in Appleby Dorm. Resident Assistant Jordan Santo ’12 asked his residents, “Who wants to be our CPB rep?”  Silence. “Seriously guys…someone…anyone?” Someone tentatively raised their hand, and thus, a new CPB representative was born!  It was hardly the best example of political activism at CMC, and while the process may not have been the same in other dorms, it’s hard to imagine that there was any hard-core campaigning going on.

Yes, Cooke ran unopposed, but she still had to make her future plans known and tell us what she intended to do as SLC chair.  Besides, a certain sneaky “Write-In” (John Faranda, perhaps?) gave her a run for her money by winning 27.37% of the vote. Students had to actively take thirty seconds out of their day to check boxes and that, my friends, is democracy.

While the individual members of the board were elected, Khavarian was chosen by Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Activities Jim Nauls and was not elected to her position.

In an earlier Forum article introducing CPB to the campus at large, Jim Nauls was quoted as saying “she will not have any more say in the events than other students on the board.”

CMC is all about choosing their leaders and controlling spending (trust me, I’ve seen Senate debate the merits of a various garden plants for over a half hour), and I find it hard to believe that this decision didn’t ruffle a few feathers. Yes, the idea of a CPB tyrant imposing miserable activities on sober students is preposterous, but shouldn’t the students have more of an active role in choosing who plans activities on their behalf?

When it comes to the CPB and SLC chair Cooke, the method of “divide and conquer” has become “divide and do the same thing with different funding and varying degrees of student input.”   Add to this the fact that there is very little if any communication between the two, and it’s clearly time to combine and conquer.

Though much of what we see from ASCMC as students are events like Monte Carlo or the “party inform,” ASCMC isn’t simply a governing body debating the merits of various themes (or so we hope).  As a group of leaders trying to create the best community for all of us, I believe ASCMC could get used to the idea of contributing what funding it previously used for SLC chair to CPB’s fund so we could benefit from both resources.

Cooke agrees that some cooperation could benefit both groups. “I think CPB and SLC have great potential to work together…the two groups should collaborate more, to maximize great events.”  If the SLC chair simply becomes CPB chair, eliminating redundancies and allowing for fair elections, CMC students can have the best of both worlds. Imagine a glorious campus where you can nosh on hand-decorated cookies while laughing uproariously at Demetri Martin. Dreams do come true.

Ultimately, both groups joining forces to accomplish the exact same thing can only create and fund even better activities for all of us. Personally, I’d like to see some collaboration or I’ll be forced to adopt the much less catchy slogan (my apologies to Patrick Henry), “Give me a fairly elected group of students with shared funding to provide booze-free entertainment, or give me death!”

While many students who came into CMC with strong backgrounds in their high school bands, orchestras or art programs have adjusted to CMC’s lack of an art program, some still ask for CMC to change its ways.

Sophomore Chelsea Durgin says, “Students would really benefit from art as an outlet to the stress of school… I think that a lot of students at CMC are extremely talented in the arts, but they can’t express themselves because of the CMC reputation.”

Devashish Dey performs at the Athenaeum (Photo by Warren Bessant)

For students from neighboring schools and artistically-inclined CMCers, the school’s image as a leadership-driven institution for go-getters has left its commitment to the art world by the wayside. CMC has abandoned some traits of average liberal arts schools and become the economics-oriented school that it is, but as Durgin says, this doesn’t mean that CMC students are devoid of any artistic talent.

The idea of pursuing art on campus has inched into the spotlight with the appearance of Stark’s new piano and with growing involvement with arts organizations at the 5Cs. Yet, some students still argue that CMC is not currently an art-friendly school and believe that there is a stigma associated with pursuing a degree in the arts.

Freshman Becca Rosenthal says, “At the very least we can start putting student artwork in Kravis, but ideally there should be an arts GE.” Those who are proponents of larger changes to CMC’s image like Rosenthal argue that the school could start embracing its liberal arts label by requiring students to study art.

For other students, calling Claremont McKenna a liberal arts school is almost a misnomer. CMC has a unique approach to providing students with a well-rounded education: we receive the benefits of a liberal arts school, yet we’re unlike any other. One of the things that sets us apart is a focus on creating leaders in business and the professions. Advocates of CMC’s leadership-oriented mission point out that our access to the resources at the other 4Cs – including arts programs like theater, music, studio art, and art history – allow us to bypass the implementation of our own arts program.

Indeed, those who actively pursue the arts have many opportunities, even as a CMC student, to be involved in the arts. A CMC-specific theater club Under the Lights allows students an outlet for artistic expression. Other 5C opportunities include taking part in KSPC, Pomona’s student radio station; an acapella choir like Shades; or Without a Box, the Claremont Colleges’ improv group. For those students willing to integrate with the rest of the 5Cs, the abundance of artistic opportunities on our neighboring campuses offer CMCers a chance to pursue their artistic passions with ease. The beauty of the consortium is that each of the schools can specialize in a few fields, instead of attempting to do everything at once, which would be redundant and ineffective.

Local band Songword performs at the Motley on Scripps College campus (Photo by Yuqiao Guo)

The accessibility of the other Claremont Colleges and their strengths in the arts balance out the unique liberal arts appeal of CMC. The administration faces a choice between encouraging the appreciation of art at CMC and offering art programs on CMC’s campus. But one thing is sure: when it comes to whether art should be more encouraged on campus or remain an untouched issue, Freshman Erika Sa says, “I want more!” The best resolution is for CMC to encourage students to appreciate and participate in some form of art, but continue to utilize the other art programs in the Claremont Consortium instead of devoting resources and time to building a new one at CMC. In other words, take advantage of the resources that the consortium offers.

CMC students’ interest in pursuing art academically is less common perhaps than at other 5C institutions. Appeals for drastic changes to CMC’s academic focus seem to be coming from a unique group of students who would like CMC to acknowledge the importance of art by offering art programs on campus. However, this desire does not seem to apply to most students and thus no change will likely be made.

But CMC students as a whole do not disregard the arts entirely. The claim that students don’t care about art because CMC is a school focused on a couple of strong programs is simply not true. It is true, however, tacking on an art department to CMC’s academic offerings would not increase the benefit to CMC students enough to justify the cost. It would be both widely beneficial and much easier for the student body to simply ask CMC for more on-campus practice rooms or to see more student-made art in the hallways of our dorms. Adding small things like pianos or providing an area just to hang out and play music would give CMC some artistic flavor of its own. We don’t have to drop our reputation as a school of industrious students in order to appreciate the arts – we can embrace it without becoming a run-of-the-mill liberal arts school. With the new piano in Stark and the ever-growing involvement of students in artistic programs on and off campus, it seems like we’re on the right track.

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.

That’s why it seems so silly that, during two days before classes start, probably the biggest arrival day for returning students, ID cards can only be reactivated for a few hours. Over winter and summer breaks, most ID cards are deactivated, and must be reactivated at Story House. One problem: Story House is only open from 10am-3pm on those days. I’ve spent more time than that on a Daily Show bender. Story House hours don’t seem like much of a problem until you arrive at 3:30pm and don’t have a place to sleep that night.

With a little rethinking, activating cards can be made far more idiot proof, and, as an idiot, I would love to see that happen. For those of us who drive to school or take a particularly long flight, a five hour window during the middle of the day can be a difficult target, and the options for those who miss it are limited.

During the day, it’s easy to get a hold of an RA or find a friend to let you in, but at night? Not so easy. I’ve faced a locked front door late at night and I bet I’m not the only one. At that point, you meet a pretty nasty dilemma: risk pissing off the sleeping Resident Assistant, calling Campus Safety or sleeping in a bush. And if nobody answers your phone call, that bush starts to look pretty cozy. If not for a couple of night owl friends, I would have faced a pretty interesting night.

By keeping Story House open for just a few more hours during the two days prior to classes restarting, we can make the whole process a lot easier. Students can afford to arrive a few hours later, and RA’s can rest easier.

Keeping Story House open isn’t free, but changing around the hours doesn’t have to come at a significant cost to the school. Currently, Story House is open for five hours in the middle of the day, when traffic is probably going to be the slowest. By shifting those hours to later in the evening, say 3pm to 8pm, Story House can ensure that more students will be able to reactivate their cards before it closes and nighttime arrives. Sure, arriving at 7am and not getting into your room until 3pm is inconvenient. But, arriving at 3:30pm and realizing you don’t have a place to sleep that night is much worse. The administration could also give Story House two days off during the middle of the semester in order to allow for extended hours when it really counts.  At the end of the day, even if keeping the card reactivation station operating for longer does cost a little extra, that’s price worth paying.

It seems that most students plan their return trips more effectively than I have, and we don’t see an epidemic of lockouts during the days before the semester officially starts.  For the most part, students are going to be able to find a way to get by without their cards for a night, but a simple change can remove a bit of the travel stress from move-in day. Every little bit helps.

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.

This loss to Iowa State, combined with a 34-point beatdown of rival Oklahoma, make it difficult to determine just how good Oklahoma State is.

It was a dark and stormy night. Somewhere in the world, anyway.

I, the college football enthusiast, pored over the latest edition of the BCS standings and tried to use it to rank my Nightcap Bowl Mania Confidence Page (you can register for free for a chance to win a $50 prize or T-shirt here. Fore more info, check out the facebook page). I thought about all the ways it attempts to rank teams that might never play each other. What exactly is a strong loss? How should margin of victory be adjusted for home-field advantage? What’s worse: an early loss to a team with a bad record or a late loss to equal competition? And what in the world are the agendas of the poll voters?

The list of questions is endless, and the BCS standings aim to reveal the answers. But the real question is: Who cares?

I realized that I could break down rankings as much as I liked and never uncover much. Politics and inordinate emphasis on wins and losses, rather than actual performance, would always keep me from answering the question I really care about, the one I imagine most of you would probably like answered as well. Between two teams, who’s better?

It’s all fine to compare teams by resume to determine which are most worthy of playing in better bowl games. But a team’s profile – headlined by its wins and losses – explains what has happened each time a team has stepped on the field. It’s great at predicting the past. However, there’s a lot of randomness involved in who wins and loses any given game.

I decided to create a rating system that cuts out all the garbage and is based entirely on performance. My model is built on three pillars: efficiency, tempo, and opponent strength. I crunched some numbers for every game this season between FBS teams: all 15 weeks, all 120 teams. For each game, I quantified each team’s performance by fitting it to the following scenario.

Team X played at some level against Team Y. Now they’re playing at the same level in a hypothetical game against a team that is the national average at everything, Team Z (roughly Washington State). Evaluated on a per-possession basis, how many points will Team X’s offense score on Team Z’s defense, and vice versa?

It was a fairly extensive undertaking, but I am stoked with the results. So here’s my Top 25, based entirely on performance and completely adjusted for schedule strength. All of this was analyzed game by game; I took no shortcuts. I’ve shown records here for fun, but the other numbers you will see are offensive points per 100 possessions against Team Z and points allowed on defense per 100 of Team Z’s possessions. Enjoy!

E.J. Manuel's Florida State Seminoles are much more dangerous than their 8-4 record shows.

1. Alabama Crimson Tide (11-1, 7-1 SEC): 351, 44
2. LSU Tigers (13-0, 8-0 SEC): 418, 66
3. Wisconsin Badgers (11-2, 6-2 B10): 471, 155
4. Florida State Seminoles(8-4, 5-3 ACC): 292, 101
5. Oklahoma State Cowboys (11-1, 8-1 B12): 409, 144
6. Stanford Cardinal (11-1, 8-1 P12): 422, 152
7. Oklahoma Sooners (9-3, 6-3 B12): 303, 110
8. USC Trojans (10-2, 7-2 P12): 322, 129
9. Georgia Bulldogs (10-3, 7-1 SEC): 261, 107
10. Arkansas Razorbacks (10-2, 6-2 SEC): 406, 168
11. Texas A&M Aggies (6-6, 4-5 B12): 334, 141
12. Oregon Ducks (11-2, 8-1 P12): 339, 144
13. Michigan State Spartans (10-3, 7-1 B10): 254, 110
14. Michigan Wolverines (10-2, 6-2 B10): 339, 156
15. Florida Gators (6-6, 3-5 SEC): 283, 133
16. Virginia Tech Hokies (11-2, 7-1 ACC): 263, 127
17. South Carolina Gamecocks (10-2, 6-2 SEC): 226, 113
18. Boise State Broncos (11-1, 6-1 MWC): 332, 166
19. Clemson Tigers (10-3, 6-2 ACC): 357, 181
20. Vanderbilt Commodores (6-6, 2-6 SEC): 259, 132
21. Missouri Tigers (7-5, 5-4 B12): 261, 133
22. Miami Hurricanes (6-6, 3-5 ACC): 339, 179
23. Kansas State Wildcats (10-2, 7-2 B12): 320, 173
24. Nebraska Cornhuskers (9-3, 5-3 B10): 342, 186
25. West Virginia Mountaineers (9-3, 5-2 BE): 315, 174

But this is only the beginning; with efficiency and tempo stats in hand, this model can predict future games as well. Bowl season is right around the corner, so without further ado, I present performance-based bowl predictions for 2011-12.

Never heard of Western Michigan? Don't worry; Alex Carder should sling the Broncos to a surprise victory over Big Ten foe Purdue.

• Temple 31, Wyoming 13
• Utah State 44, Ohio 35
• San Diego State 35, UL-Lafayette 27
• Florida International 29, Marshall 17
• TCU 29, Louisiana Tech 20
• Boise State 45, Arizona State 33
• Southern Miss 27, Nevada22
• Missouri 24, North Carolina 20
• Western Michigan 37, Purdue 31
• Louisville 19, NC State 17
• Toledo 35, Air Force 33
• California 31, Texas 28
• Florida State 21, Notre Dame 13
• Baylor 55, Washington 44
• BYU 38, Tulsa 28
• Rutgers 20, Iowa State 17
• Mississippi State 24, Wake Forest 20
• Oklahoma 48, Iowa 20
• Texas A&M 47, Northwestern 23
• Georgia Tech 23, Utah 21
• Vanderbilt 30, Cincinnati 20
• Illinois 24, UCLA 23
• Auburn 24, Virginia22
• Penn State 24, Houston 20

'Bama and LSU are as evenly matched as they come, but the rematch will belong to Trent Richardson and the Tide.

• Georgia 17, Michigan State 16
• South Carolina 23, Nebraska 21
• Florida 27, Ohio State 21
• Wisconsin 41, Oregon 32
• Oklahoma State 39, Stanford 38
• Michigan 24, Virginia Tech 23
• Clemson 42, West Virginia 39
• Arkansas 44, Kansas State 34
• Pittsburgh 27, SMU 12
• Northern Illinois 42, Arkansas State 29
• Alabama 11, LSU 9

We’ll be keeping track of the model’s success here at the Claremont Sports Connection and come back after bowl season with a recap. But if you can’t wait until then, or you want to show me just how wrong I am, you can lay down some picks against me and the rest of the Nightcap team! Send us an email at talk@claremontsportsconnection.com and we’ll get you set up in no time, or you can go to the google docs survey, which takes you to the ESPN Page, or go to our facebook page for more information. But remember, bowl season begins Saturday, December 17, so don’t wait! Enjoy the bowl season!