The event was run by ASCMC Student Life Chair Mohammad Abdul-Rahim ’15.

ASCMC’s Chief Financial Officer, Kevin Sullivan ’12 noted that the original target, set in September, was a $4000 expense.  A few weeks before the party, in late February, party planners realized it was going to cost more than expected and adjusted target expenses to around $8000.

To account for the unexpected extra $12,000 in expenses, Sullivan explained that the lighting for AN21’s set cost $6000 more than anticipated and that the artist fees to bring AN21 were $2,000 more than originally expected. Additionally, ticket revenues were $6000 lower than expected, with about 400 fewer tickets sold than initially intended.

Overall, the White Party resulted in a $20,000 net expense: roughly $36,200 in total expenses while the total revenue was $16,200.

Last year’s ASCMC sponsored concert featuring LMFAO resulted in a $25,000 expenditure, and the year before that Lupe Fiasco’s performance ended in a $50,000 expense. Though each year marks a decrease in expense, the high annual cost raises the question of whether or not this type of event should continue on or, at the very least, be scaled back.  “The White Party was a very expensive success,” said ASCMC President Aditya Pai ’13.  ”It provided great benefit to students, but at great cost. The question going forward for everyone to consider is whether the benefit justifies the cost – or whether we should pursue other options.”

ASCMC conducted a poll to gauge student body’s response that indicated that over 60% of all respondents considered White Party among their top two favorite parties of the year.

“Undoubtedly the White Party was a success,” said Steven Limandibhratha ’14, Social Affairs Chair (SAC), “According to the responses on the survey, over 30% placed the White Party as their favorite party of the year, and over 60% placed the party in their top two parties.

A Breakdown of the White Party Expenses, Totaling Around $36,2000, Provided to the Forum by ASCMC

“Regarding the significant expense of the party, I believe working with the new board, we will be able to reduce these expenses in the future,” Limandibhratha commented,

When asked if the party was worth the money, freshman Liza Farr responded, that depends on what one’s priorities are. “White Party was really fun, a bunch of people went out for it and danced like crazy in a cool location with awesome lights and a fantastic DJ,” she said. “However, it did cost [ASCMC] a lot of money while it didn’t seem all that different from any of other, much cheaper parties.  I don’t think it was worth the immense amount of money spent on it.”

I love this school. Coming here was probably the best decision I ever made. The great thing about Claremont McKenna is that it is not like anywhere else I could have spent these four years. It is fun and exciting, but it’s challenging me and pushing me towards my goals at the same time. In the end, I have learned, it’s the little things that count —  it’s the little things that make me look around several times a week, even nights before midterms, and think, “I love this place.”

It’s not just about the Athenaeum and the small classes, and the fantastic faculty. Here are 10 additional things that make me wish I could stay at CMC for a lot longer than four years:

1)   Snack and Tea

CMC loves feeding me; I love being fed. Every afternoon at 3:00, I have a platter of brownies, cookies, and rice krispies, and an array of tea facing me. And every night at 10:30, I am welcomed by the sweet, sweet smell of snacks like mozzarella sticks and pizza bagels. How do you say no to that?

2)   Subsidizing

Whether your friends want to go see Bon Iver or spend a day at Disneyland, get ready to pay half of what you would otherwise. Want to work for a non-profit this summer, but afraid you can’t because you need to make some money? CMC has you covered. What’s great about a small school is that we use our endowment to make sure that your four years here are about you doing what makes you happy.

3)   Pirate Party

Maybe it’s because it’s this weekend, but Pirate Party seems too quintessentially CMC to leave out. It’s an entire day of inflatable bounce houses, obstacle courses, burgers, and sunshine. It’s a day party to end day parties — and best of all, it’s during alumni weekend, so your fun never has to end.

6)   John Faranda

7)   Winston Churchill Society

Fine attire, fine drinks, and fine cigars — all enjoyed with the company of the finest professors and students. Winston Churchill Society is CMC epitomized. It’s a night of gallivanting in conversation with professors about their research, their classes, and their lives. Show up, mingle, and you might just learn a lot more from your professors than you can in just class time.

8)   Idea Night

They say it time and again on tours and brochures, but at CMC, your ideas matter. Here’s how I know: Every year, on the same stage as Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, and Dan Savage, CMC puts up its own students to talk about their own ideas. Whether it’s eating bugs, annexing Canada, or creating profitable philanthropic models, there’s a lot to be said about a school that will place you and your ideas on this pedestal.

9)    The Fountain

Everything about the fountain is a CMC hallmark. There is, of course, your freezing-middle-of-the-night birthday ponding and your run of the mill nice-day-dip-your-feet studying, but there’s no moment in a CMCer’s career (or so I hear) like Thesis Party. There is nothing quite like dancing in a fountain with your classmates, each of you clutching a school-sponsored bottle of champagne as you celebrate turning in your senior thesis, and with it, the most successful, happiest four years of your life.

10)    They send you a card on your 21^st birthday

Nothing screams “college” more. CMC cares, and on the momentous occasion of your full adulthood, they’re right there to celebrate with you.

You stand on the cusp of one of the most important decisions you have had to make yet. When you’re deciding where to be for the next four years don’t forget to think about what you want to remember from these four years, and what kind of people you want to be around. Then just trust me: Come to CMC.

The messy paint job was a result of the previous night’s Thursday Night Club (TNC), a weekly party sponsored by CMC’s associated student government, ASCMC. The event, which boasted a DJ, beer, and of course, bottles and bottles of paint, was open to students from all five Claremont Colleges and took place at CMC’s eastern tennis courts.

Even without the addition of paint, TNCs have a reputation of leaving behind quite a wake of debris. Director of Facilities and Campus Services (Story House) Brian Worley explains, “Each party has its own gestalt in the aftermath.”

But the paint party had a gestalt all its own. Worley remarked that in all his time at CMC (5 years, to be exact), he had never seen a “Paint Party” TNC requiring a comparable clean up effort. The clean up, which began the next morning, has meant repeated power-washings of cement sidewalks and the repainting of benches near the tennis courts. Over a week later, the clean up is still incomplete.

Students Enjoying the 2010 Paint Party (Photo by Andrew Jordan)

PAINT IT RED

This is not great news for ASCMC—and its budget. So far, Facilities has billed ASCMC for $612 worth of damages from Thursday’s Paint Party, but the final tally could be upwards of that.

Alexandra Cooke, former ASCMC Student Life Chair and current Dorm Activities Chair, led the Paint Party planning efforts and said the event cost ASCMC about $500 to host. When combined with the damage costs, this means ASCMC is paying over $1,100 in student funds for one night of brightly colored debauchery.

The cost of the paint itself–about $300–is the average cost of throwing a regular TNC, estimates Cooke. “We were willing to spend more on a 5C TNC,” she explained, “because there will be more people in attendance, and therefore, more people enjoying the event.”

Cooke notes that the outcome of the Paint Party shouldn’t be a shock to anyone at Story House or in the Dean of Students office. She says ASCMC made clear the details of the event to both Facilities and Assistant Dean and Director of Student Activities Jim Nauls.

“They understood the nature of the event,” said Cooke, “and that there would be damages. If there had been adamant resistance, we would have taken that into account and restructured the party or reconsidered the theme.”

Indeed, the aftermath of the Paint Party is somewhat unsurprising. The combination of free booze, paint, and college kids does not bode well for cleanliness. However, in previous years, the party was more successful at managing to limit destruction to campus property.

Worley recalls a Paint Party held a few years ago in McKenna Auditorium, where the party sponsors laid out plastic sheeting throughout the enclosed space. This meant paint-splattered surfaces could be balled up and thrown away, without causing any damage to the wooden floors and walls.

According to Worley, Story House offered the party sponsors a water hose to facilitate clean-up during Thursday’s party, but no one from ASCMC ever retrieved it from the offices. Cooke noted that in the future, ASCMC will look into the possibility of a “clean up/wash station” for party guests to de-paint before leaving the venue and heading home.

BILLS, BILLS, BILLS

While the paint damages are certainly costly, some of the most expensive TNC-related charges ASCMC has paid have been the result of stolen campus property or the removal of furniture from a party space—both of which count as vandalism, according to Story House.

In January of last year, Story House charged ASCMC over $355 in damages for “several lights” missing from Fawcett Hall’s first floor lounge following a TNC event. For the same event, Story House billed ASCMC for $144 for 8 building attendants to return all lounge furniture from outside the building to its proper place.

The 2010 Paint Party Tarp (Photo by Andrew Jordan)

“If the damages are in a dorm where TNC takes place,” says Cooke, “then ASCMC will be charged. If the damage is in a dorm that wasn’t where TNC was located, then the dorm is charged.”

This school year, the most expensive single charge for a TNC event has been $428 worth of carpet damage in CMC’s newest dorm, Claremont Hall. The figure includes the cost of replacing the damaged carpet as well as the cost of hiring a professional carpet cleaning company to remove the stain.

In some instances, it is difficult to attribute costs directly to the party sponsors, and Story House’s billing policies have come under fire by students at ASCMC.

Jessica Mao, former ASCMC President, expressed frustration over the billing system, saying, “I think there needs to be a more structured system of payment and damage disputing between ASCMC and Story House. It seems ridiculous to have this accumulation of bills happen every few years when both sides could easily do a better job of sorting them out.”

With the ASCMC Financial Advisor now acting as a direct liaison between students and Story House, says Mao, “charges that don’t seem accurate can be caught right away as opposed to 2 years after a party happened.”

Worley understands the difficulty in ascribing damages to students. He offered the example of damage from a 5-College event held just after the Paint Party on Saturday, March 31. On Sunday morning, broken bottles littered the street between CMC and Scripps College, which co-sponsored and hosted the party.

“I don’t believe we will be billing anybody for the broken glass because it was just random acts that were done,” says Worley. “It wasn’t something that you can directly attribute to the party per se. In the case of the paint, it obviously is directly attributable to that.”

PAY DELAYS

While students may have their beef with Facilities over billing policies, ASCMC does not have a particularly stellar track record in paying up to Story House. Worley explains that, in past years, ASCMC has been tardy in paying for damages. and the costs lag over into the next fiscal year. In other words, students have been sacked with paying party damages for which they might not be responsible.

“The previous year’s billing wasn’t paid,” says Worley, “and that saddled the next year’s ASCMC budget with the major amount of money to come out of their funds that really had to do with the previous year.”

In May 2011, the total charges to ASCMC amounted to just over $9,864, which included charges for the entire school year as well as leftover charges from previous years. After ASCMC successfully disputed several charges, Facilities settled for $5,000 in February 2012.

This situation is not ideal for either party. The college loses thousands of dollars, and ASCMC is left to foot the bill racked up by graduated classes. Because neither Story House nor ASCMC sets a hard and fast deadline for repayment, the system leaves much room for error in attributing costs to students.

In the meantime, Story House and ASCMC are working to clarify the muddier parts of the process . “We’re trying to move forward to make sure that billings are done in a timely manner and payment from ASCMC is in a timely manner as well,” says Worley.

WORTH IT?

For students, the money going toward damages in the aftermath of a party depletes funds that might otherwise be used for putting on student events—not cleaning up after them. Students have responded by launching campaigns to encourage party clean-up, but none have seem to stuck.

The heaviest of costs, however, are not a result of a few red cups. To limit the cost of damages may be a matter of changing campus culture and perhaps making visible the monetary effects of stealing a chair from Claremont Hall or breaking windows in North Quad.

“Sometimes we become a little concerned that we’re facilitating inappropriate behavior,” says Worley. He elaborated, “We’re cleaning up messes that maybe ought to be seen for a little while rather than hastily cleaned up like it never happened. I become a little bit concerned about that, but again, our charge is just to make the campus functional and presentable.”

And the Facilities crew is working to do just that. Ironically or not, Story House is just a few coats of paint away from restoring campus back to normal.

This is the clue for the third Golden Egg worth $50:

Hurry before someone else finds it!

*Note: You will be only allowed one guess every half hour, so think your guesses through.

Happy Easter everyone!

He started by mentioning that his primary role is to elevate the quality of faculty and academic programs at CMC. He then stated that over the last six or seven years, in his role as the Dean of Faculty, he has hired roughly 40% of the current faculty members as the college has experienced high faculty turnover. For the upcoming academic year, Hess mentioned that the college engaged in a strong amount of hiring. (See below for a list of the departments with new hires.) He stressed that he is looking to hire faculty to encourage margins of development in areas where the college is not particularly strong, such as languages and sciences.

Hess then discussed the external review process for the academic departments and the various programs the college is looking to expand. The external review process occurs for each department every six or seven years and highlights specific improvements which should be made to advance that particular department.

According to Hess, the external review process of the Philosophy department determined that CMC currently has the best Philosophy department in comparison to any liberal arts institution.

Furthermore, CMC is extending the Yonsei-CMC summer program for another six years, with the hope to place students in internships in Korea in another two years. This summer, the college is also hosting a travel trip to Rome. Hess also noted that CMC wants to ensure the Silicon Valley Program is a 5C program. Four Pomona Students participating in addition to the 14 CMCers for next year; Pomona and other 5C alumni are helping out with the program.

He also mentioned that CMC is looking to add another ITAB networking trip, in addition to the current trip, to provide more students with opportunities in Silicon Valley.

In the near future, the college plans to establish a South Asia presence, particularly in India. CMC has been recruiting Indian students heavily, and President Gann visited India over winter break with the hope of establishing internships and course offerings for CMCers.

For the summer, the college has paired up with several NGO’s in India to offer social entrepreneurship internships. In the future, Cynthia Humes, a Religious Studies professor who has lived in India, may possibly teach a half-credit course. This opportunity will be subsidized heavily; the college is raising funds in South Asia to make the price modest for CMCers.

Dean Hess ended his talk focusing on entrepreneurship and the manner in which the college is trying to increase the academic presence in this field. CMC wants students of all majors to have some experience in entrepreneurial programming in the future. The college is trying to compliment the work done by the KLI and the RDS to extend entrepreneurship education to all students.

New hires:

Robert Day School: Hired two now professors. One of the professors will teach a course on economic development, and the other professor will offer a course on finance.

Literature Department: Hired a professor from Harvard to teach a course on British Literature.

History Department: Hired two new faculty members to teach courses on 19th century western history and environmental history, respectively.

Keck Science Center: Hired three faculty members to teach courses on Environmental Science, Chemistry and Biology respectively.

Furthermore, a professor from the University of Munich has been hired to teach Holocaust Studies in the John Roth Chair, which alumni of the college provided funding for. The college has also established the Cook Chair in honor of Scott Cook, the co-founder of Intuit, which will be filled by a new faculty member from Cal Tech to teach behavioral psychology and economic decision-making. Next year, the college is looking to hire faculty to teach Korean Politics, Brazilian History and Portuguese at the 5C’s, which will allow students to learn Portuguese after Spanish, if they so desire.

The final vote was 10-1.  The lone dissenter was Vice-President Miles T. Bird, who took to his personal Twitter account to voice his complaints – tweeting “#teammiley.”

The concert will be held on Saturday May 5, the last Saturday before finals week. ASCMC President Aditya Pai ’12 justified the scheduling decision as being “beneficial to everyone. Finals week is stressful, and we feel that 115 decibels of pure, unadulterated teen pop would help ease tensions.” In order to reach the maximum number of listeners, the concert will be held on Pomona’s Walker Beach, with all speakers facing towards Honnold-Mudd Library.

In order to subsidize the cost of tickets to CMC students, ASCMC will be hosting the first annual Henry Kravis Leadership Auction, which will feature priceless CMC artifacts. Items up for auction include Jim Nauls’ caps lock key, Professor Brock Blomberg’s aviators, and Professor Ward Elliott’s fishing hat. The auction will be held at the Athenaeum this coming April 4, in lieu of the Robert Gates event.

What brought about the decision to open-up TNC to the other colleges, as TNC has traditionally always been a CMC-only event?

Cooke: Over the past year, there has been a decrease in attendance at TNC’s, as Campus Security would not allow non-CMC students to attend the parties without a guest pass. The process was such that CMC students would have to register their friends in time for the party. TNC has always been a CMC only event; however, this rule was never strictly enforced until about the past year. Clare Riva ’13, the last DAC, had been working with the Dean of Students to make it easier for other 5C students to attend TNC’s and they were in the process of formulating a new system which allowed for greater attendance at TNC’s. In the past, such decisions have been mainly under the jurisdiction of the social chairs and have been supported by the rest of the ASCMC Executive Board. While we want to preserve the tradition of TNC being a mostly CMC party, we recognize that CMC students all have friends at other colleges that we want to be able to come and enjoy the party with us.

What is the new system of the guest list policy?

Cooke: One TNC a month will be opened up to the 5C’s, where any Claremont College student will get in with their school ID. At the CMC only TNC’s, a guest list policy will be implemented.  A Google form will open up every Monday to Thursday (noon) where CMC students can register guests from another 5C by submitting their name and student ID number. This will add the Claremont student to the guest list and the student will be able to check in with Campus Security at TNC to gain admittance.

What are the main concerns of the administration regarding this change?

Cooke: The Dean of Students Office is unwilling to make TNC a 5C event every week. The main reason is that we do not have large enough spaces to hold 500+ events every Thursday night. Dean Spellman is allowing one 5C TNC per month with 2 kegs, which is an increase from the single keg allowed at CMC only TNC’s.

In your new role as the DAC Chair, what other changes would you like to see for the forthcoming year?

Cooke: This year one of my main goals in terms of party planning will be to revive TNC. Alumni and upperclassmen always talk about how TNC was well attended, had great music or bands, was held at diverse locations, and rivaled the Saturday night party. I will be talking to past social chairs and looking into how they structured their events to figure out how to make TNC more epic, so to speak. I want to make sure that the CMC party and social culture from the past is preserved and not lost.