8:27 Procrastination: See the Campus Debate

8:27 Procrastination by Abhi Nemani — May 10, 2009 at 8:27 pm | 1 comment | | Print

This week we’ve seen new issues from both the Claremont Port Side and the Claremont Independent. The monthly (-ish?) campus magazines constitute the poles of campus debate, with CI offering sharp libertarian arguments and the PS advancing progressivism–and given my history, I won’t add any adjective here. The ideological contrast, nonetheless, is readily apparent on national politics issues–for example, compare the CI’s gushing profile of Texas Governor Rick Perry with the PS’s defense of Obama’s socialist bro-hug. On campus issues, the difference is more in focus than in preference. The CI seems to cover college administration issues–Pomona’s short-lived ban of two CMCers, Questbridge, and DoS’s “diversity training”–and the PS sticks to student body activities, such as ASCMC Committee selection and the rivalry. This all is overstated and anecdotal, of course, but you can see for yourself with the images below. I used wordle.net to analyze the campus section’s of the CI and the PS visualize the most popular terms in “word clouds.” See for yourself, and if you’re bored, you can make your own (maybe procrastinate writing that term paper by pasting in your notes–chalk it up to creative inspiration time).

Claremont Port Side
Campus Section, May 2009

Claremont Independent
Campus Section, May 2009