I am quite fond of the quirky questions that we got asked in the CMC application. Reading some of the frankly genius retorts gave me that warm feeling of being completely outclassed by plenty of my peers. However, when I checked the 2009 application, those quirky questions are exactly the same as when I applied in 2008.

I know we are not the most creative school. We all remember the new and improved CMC website, which garnered the impressive C- grade from EDU Checkup. However, maybe we should adopt a more progressive attitude when it comes to encompassing technology. A look at Tufts’ admissions website fills me with a sense of shame when compared to our beloved one. Tufts’ site has vibrant titles and  a nice, simple layout. Compare this to the bland reality of our own (although the faces of Claremont McKenna idea is good). And what’s this…Tufts doesn’t have both an “Apply” tab and an “Admissions” tab? How will we ever click back and forth?  Their website also shows that Tufts understands technology and social media. There are signs for Facebook, Twitter, podcasts, and of course the YouTube videos.

Maybe CMC doesn’t have to be as progressive as Tufts, which is known for its quirky applications, but we should add something new to our application. We would be able to learn something more about future CMCers rather than the drivel that is normally spouted in college admission essays. Who knows, a more cutting edge admissions program may result in a higher application rate, which could only do good things for CMC. An appreciation for the new and the fresh, rather than comparing ourselves to the old Ivy League style schools, will create a much stronger and I feel more interesting brand image for CMC. Let those colleges be the symbols of tradition and decorum; we shall be the vanguard of progress, creating leaders who know how to lead in the modern world.

Leks Psychas '10 (left) and Moose Halpern '10 (right), the creators of Jam and a Half

This week’s CMC Celeb comes to you in the form of a dynamic twosome: Moose Halpern and Aleksis Psychas. With their blog Jam and a Half, these two seniors have established themselves as CMC’s go-to source for awesome music. If their eclectic taste in music doesn’t win you over, then their undeniable hilarity will.

Moose is an Economics and Psychology dual major who is reppin’ his hometown of San Diego hard. He is the Manager of McKenna Auditorium (shoutout from Moose to Chair Specialist, Dan Lockett) and the President of the Claremont Connection Club, despite the fact “[they] have yet to hold an event.” When he’s not finding crunchy beats, he is also a CMS sports enthusiast and is the third baseman for the CMC Regulators baseball team (yep, same team as last week’s CMC Celeb). Leks, hailing from Gainesville, Florida, is a busy dude majoring in both International Relations and Economics. He is an RA for the Senior Apartments and is a Student Director for the CMS Intramural Athletics Program. Moose and Leks have shared their passion for music since rooming together during their freshman year at CMC. Not only do they love finding music, but they have tried their hand at making their own too.  According to Leks, “Way back in the day Moose bought me a ukulele and I bought him some bongos in hopes of making the funkiest two-man band ever seen.” Although the two-man band never exactly came to fruition, they have tapped into their creative juices with Jam and a Half.

CMC students are not the only readers of Jam and a Half. People from all over the world (as shown in the map above) are taking music suggestions from Moose and Leks.

“The Six”

1. What are the top 5 most played songs on your iTunes?

Moose:

1. Brokedown Palace, Grateful Dead
2. Watching the Wheels (Acoustic), John Lennon
3. Incarcerated Scarfaces, Raekwon the Chef
4. Distant Lover, Marvin Gaye
5. Sunshine, Lupe Fiasco

Leks:

1. Fool for a Lonesome Train, Ben Harper
2. My Song, Labi Siffre
3. Minha Galera, Manu Chao
4. Comme Des Enfants (Le Matos Andy Carmichael Remix), Coeur de Pirate
5. Atliens, Outkast

2. What is your quirkiest quality?

M: I do color commentary for the radio broadcast of all Stag and Athena basketball home games.

L: Sometimes I turn into a thing known as Leksasaurus and kind of rampage around with my really small arms and huge head.

3. What do you consider your greatest achievement?

M: Understanding my lack of self knowledge.

L: Being better than anyone I’ve ever met at Mario Kart. Kidding. Probably having a college experience that has so far lived up to every expectation.

4. What is something that you learned from your family?

M: You can make a difference in this world and you do it every day in the lives of your family.

L: That the most important things never change.

5. If you could be a character from any book, movie, or TV show, who would you be?

M: Sodapop Curtis from the Outsiders (the book, not goofy-ass Rob Lowe in the movie)

L: I would be Zain Jamal, a mythical Indian god who is currently blessing us with his presence.

6. What is your favorite unknown tidbit about CMC?

M: CMC employs the three-time National Boxing Champion of Syria, Bassam Frangieh.

L: Dean Castro is a beer connoisseur and brews a beer that has been ranked among the best in SoCal.

Where did the idea originate from to make a music blog?

M: Finding jams and sharing music with friends is something that we have been doing for years, but Big Leks certainly gets credit for starting up the site. He is a super hacker.

L: Moose and I both had pretty defined musical tastes when we were first roommates back in freshman year. But we always both liked some joint songs, and those songs were always “Jams and a Half,” songs that no matter the genre, artist, or style, it’s just good music. Our music styles have shifted, but we still have a core group of music we love. Earlier this year we made the blog to share good music and to learn more about quality music out there.

What were you setting out to do when you created Jam and a Half?

M: The idea we had is that at first it would just be a fun way for me and the Big Man Leks to share the music we love with our friends and family all over the world, and in time it developed to get everyone involved sending us the best music from far and wide.

L: The goal of the blog was to create a site for good music where Moose, myself, friends, and randos would have a place to talk about the music they loved and why they loved it.

Where do you find all of the songs that you post about?

M: The only songs that make it to the site are “Jam and a Halfs”, not just jams.  There is no criteria or genre that a song has to fall into, it just has to be great.  Normally the way I know I should put something up is if it strikes a strong personal chord with me.  If a song makes me feel inspired to share it with the world I’ll write a post–simple as that. Most times it just happens in the moment.

L: We find our jams from all over the place: random gems from our iPods, music blogs, friends, family, guest bloggers, or just hearing songs while walking through North Quad. There’s always good music being played somewhere.

What kind of music do you mostly post about?

L: We’ve posted on all types of music, ranging from House to Hip Hop to the world’s first music video. The artists with the most posts are Outkast and Manu Chao and we hope to mix it up as much as we can. It’s all about what music we’re feeling at that moment.

What distinguishes you from other music blogs?
L: I think the main thing that distinguishes our blog is that elephants are among our biggest readers. Naw, just kidding. I think the biggest difference with our blog is that we have no rating system of 1-10 points, 1-5 stars, etc. The music we post is, to our ears, good music, so no need for ratings.

What do you guys have in store for the future of Jam and a Half? Are you going to continue it after you graduate?

L: We have a lot in store for the next couple months and beyond. We’re going to organize a Jam and a Half party in the apartments. We already got a sponsorship with Red Bull for the party, so we’re excited about that. I think we’ll definitely keep it going next year, and the longterm dream, at least for me, would be to start Jam and a Half Records, a label featuring great music from across the world.

Although Moose and Leks are doing a great job, they do not want to be the only ones posting songs that make them groove. Moose says “[his] true hope for the blog is to get as many people involved as possible. There are so many folk out there who are passionate about music the way [he] and Leks are and [he] would love to hear their favorite songs and insight too.” They have already had other contributors including Aleks Lyng, Zach Ainsley, Griffin Halpern, and Adam Johnson, but are hoping that with a growing community of writers, Jam and a Half is sure to keep rolling for years to come. Check out the blog and if there’s a song you would like to contribute, send the guys an e-mail at jamandahalf@gmail.com, and they will “hack the mainframe and put it up.” You can also join their Facebook group to be updated about Moose and Leks’ most recent musical findings.

CMC Celeb is a weekly feature of the Forum that profiles interesting CMC students, finding out everything from what makes them tick to what’s in their iTunes library.  Ever wanted to know more about someone on campus?  Suggest a name anonymously here…we might just make them a CMC Celeb.

Beyond satisfying the typical requirements of an elite liberal arts college, CMC deserves a president who thoroughly appreciates and is committed to what makes it special: its unique brand of liberal arts education and the intimate, nurturing atmosphere that it affords.  Crucially, this requires professors and administrators to interact with students at more than a formal level. Yet I don’t know anyone who thinks Pam Gann knows their name, let alone them as a person. Maybe it’s different for the ASCMC crowd or the hyperactive on campus, but it seems that us mere mortals don’t register on her radar.

As a part of being on the football team, I’ve been forced able to go to the IRanWithGann event the past three years at CMC.[i] Besides getting an awesome selection of free t-shirts, this has also illuminated Gann’s relationship with the student body. First of all, this is one of the few times each year that I see her walking around on campus—let alone talk to students. More damningly, at the 5K, her conversations with students always seem to be of the “What’s your name/major?” variety. You’d think at some point she’d run into a student whose name she already knew or whose major she actually remembered. It’s hard to escape the feeling that she’s there to check a box (“See Board of Trustees! I told you I care about the student body!”) rather than have a genuine interaction with students.  Perhaps, though, this is just me being biased.

I suppose that could be forgiven. Over the past four years, my love for CMC has outgrown my demands for what it does for me. But more disappointing, I don’t see that same love of CMC, that wholehearted embrace of what makes the school special, in Pam Gann.  It may sound corny, but when she talks about the school, I don’t see a twinkle in her eye. Gann speaks highly about CMC, but her comments often feel like they would fit any elite liberal arts college. She praises our small classes sizes, our great professors, our selectivity, but always seems to miss the part about things that make CMC special.

In her first convocation, Pam talked about the how CMC fits into the broader higher education landscape and the importance of branding in “outrunning” the competition. This would have been a perfect place to talk about CMC’s unique attributes. Glaringly, though, she doesn’t even allude to the special character of the school. The implication is that we’re a liberal arts school like any other, struggling to (1) to be within the group of “brand name” colleges and universities; and (2) to compete effectively within this “brand name” group for students, faculty, and resources. The same speech would have worked at Amherst, Williams, or even Pomona.

At this point in the conversation, a voice of reason will often say “Yeah, but at least she’s raised a lot of money.” That is true. But money is not raised in a vacuum, and one person is not responsible for all of an institution’s fundraising success. Furthermore, our alumni population is getting older. It seems reasonable to think that older alumni 1) have more money since they’ve been able to work more years and 2) are more likely to donate money because, to put the matter bluntly, they want to have an impact on something they care about before they die. The steady increase in annual donations in the chart below seems to evidence this story. There is more volatility after Pam becomes president, but there isn’t a marked increase in donations over the trend line.

At a personal level, I don’t have any particular problem with President Gann. She hasn’t done anything outrageous or grossly failed in her duties as president. But CMC is much more than a typical liberal arts college and deserves much more than a typical president. At a dinner honoring Gann for her ten years of service to the College this past December, former CMC president Jack Stark thanked her for what she didn’t do: change the character of the school. But I think CMC deserves better. CMC deserves a president that doesn’t make its students question whether the president cares about them. CMC deserves a President that is firmly committed to keeping CMC a special place.

Pam Gann, simply put, fails those standards. For that dinner honoring Gann, the administration tried to film a series of students being asked questions about Pam Gann’s life and what they thought about her. According to Dean Huang, they had to scrap the project, however, because apparently not enough students said nice things. To me, that’s pretty damning. Out of a school of 1200+ students, we couldn’t cobble together enough pro-Gann students to make a two-minute video. Perhaps, I’m going a bit overboard, though, and you feel that Pam Gann actually does a decent job as president. But shouldn’t CMC, as our government department would say, strive for excellence?

Caption: This graph shows the total amount of alumni giving that went into the operating budget in a given year. It notably excludes large donations that go to things like a new buildings or a new Robert A. Day Master of Finance program. Those large gifts often take multiple years to negotiate and structure and thus are affected differently by factors like the economy, alumni aging, or a new president. The purpose of this graph is not to prove that President Gann fails as a fundraiser. Rather I am merely trying to show that under this basic fundraising metric she does not surpass the trend. Following her inauguration in late 1990s, support from alumni giving has mostly kept with its rising trajectory set by earlier presidents. Thus, deciding whether President Gann is doing an exceptional job fundraising depends on the degree to which she impacted recent large donations. But to answer that, we’d need to look inside Robert Day’s head, which I, unfortunately, do not have the ability to do.

I got to look up at this every day-- the dome of the Capital building.

If you don’t know much about the program, here are the basics:  you work for 40+ hours a week at an internship of your choice.   You also take two seminar classes in the evenings once a week, usually on a Monday and a Thursday (no TNC, sorry). You write a semester-long research paper with minimal guidance on any topic under your major-related sun.[1] The internship, two classes, and paper total to a full semester course load.

I don’t think I need to tell government majors why they should do DC.  You applied to CMC because there was a Washington Program.  You’ve known you’ve wanted to work on the Hill/State Department/Human Rights Watch since your eighth grade field trip.  You read Politico Click religiously and you don’t plan on making a huge mistake. Seriously, this is your paradise.  You will love it.  Start working on your application NOW.

However, if the idea of casually bumping into John Boehner/Steny Hoyer doesn’t make you pee your pants, never fear.  I highly encourage non-majors to apply for the DC program.  Let’s face it.  Government spending amounts to +40% of GDP.   This means the government can wreak some serious havoc in your future career field, but you’re going to be a much more attractive job candidate once you understand how that works.

Sam Bastien, CMC ’11, is an economics-accounting major with a financial economics sequence.   After CMC, she hopes to work in finance, not government.  Attracted to the opportunity for work experience, she decided spend the fall 2009 semester on the Washington Program.

Most of her fellow bankers-to-be told her she was crazy.  “Some of the other economics majors questioned my rationale for going,” she told the Forum, “After all, I would fall behind in my finance classes.”

She got an internship at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where she was the only undergraduate intern.  “After the financial crisis, you have to realize that the federal government can make a huge impact in the world of finance if it chooses to do so.”  Her job focused on regulatory financial policy analysis and she was tasked with research projects on hedge fund legislation.  She attended House Financial Services Committee hearings and witnessed the “intense” testimony of Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner on financial services reform and TARP.

Abby Woodruff, also CMC ’11, is a dual psychology-government major.  In DC, she worked at the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, affiliated with the American Psychological Association.  DC may not be a natural choice for psychology majors, but Abby believes they should consider it, “If you want your research to affect change, you need to go out there and learn how change is actually made.”  Congress votes on bills with major social implications on a daily basis.  In order to create the best policy possible, committee members consider expert testimony from psychologists.  But after her time in DC, Abby noticed some of the shortcomings of the system, “There is a great deal of psychological research out there, but most of it isn’t being used. Lawmakers love to hear about the relevant research, but there aren’t a lot of people devoted to bringing it to policymakers in ways they can use it.”  For future psychologists, this step can be the key to helping people on a large scale.  It’s one thing to put your research in an academic journal to further future research, but it’s a whole different contribution to bring your research to policymakers and influence the way government affects our lives.

Any downsides?  Although Gov 20 is the only prerequisite, in reality Professors Spalding and Haskell teach the classes assuming you know more than “the basics.”  Since most of the program participants are government or international relations majors, they’re usually right.  But the limited class selection has discouraged some from applying in the past, and proved challenging to non-majors who choose to go in spite of this fact.

Looking back?  In the long run, missing out on a few finance classes was worth the valuable work experience.  Employers have rewarded Sam for her interesting, if unusual, choice.  Sam recently received a coveted summer job offer in Sales and Trading at RBC in New York, “My internship at the SEC and my research on hedge funds came up a lot in the interview.”

Career Services is currently searching for a replacement and has hired on an interim Assistant Director, Jason Jeffrey, to fill her position. Jeffrey, who will take over the sponsored internship program, starts at CMC on January 11.

After Dean Huang’s interview with (and ultimate decision to decline an offer from) Amherst earlier this semester, not to mention his replacement as Dean of Students by Mary Spellman, Beth Ricca’s departure rounds out something of a tumultuous semester for the administration.

The Search Committee for the Dean of Students, which has solicited applications for the position since Lieber’s decision to step down, has narrowed the number of candidates to four. They include Senior Associate Dean of Student Affairs at Bowdoin College Margaret Hazlett, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students at Claremont McKenna College Jefferson Huang, Senior Associate Dean of Students at Amherst Charri Boykin-East and, finally, Dean of Students at Georgetown University Law Center Mitchell Bailin.

“The goal is to have someone as soon as we possibly can [to fill the position],” said Tekla Harms, Professor of Geology and chair of the Search Committee. “One of these four candidates is liable to become our Dean of Students.”

Yesterday, the first of four candidates visited Amherst to meet with faculty, administrators and students. Over the next three weeks, the other three candidates will make similar appearances.

Lieber, Amherst’s current Dean of Students, actually sought to step down last year but the college could not find a suitable replacement in time and he agreed to stay on until one could be found.  Considering Lieber’s rush to leave, we can only imagine that if Huang is chosen he will be expected to start very soon.  According to the Student, Huang is planning to visit Amherst in the next few weeks.  With tough competition from Georgetown, Amherst, and an internal applicant however, we may not be saying goodbye to Huang just yet, something he emphasized when The Forum reached him for comment,

I get calls like this fairly frequently; just yesterday, I was contacted by a headhunter for the Dean of Students position at Swarthmore College, who said I had been recommended by someone else for the position. I’ve been asked to apply for similar positions at Yale, Brown, Rice, and others. Each time, my answer has been, “No, thanks.” I’m happy at CMC, and was not actively looking to make a move.

I felt that Amherst’s position was worth taking a look at for personal reasons. I have family in Massachusetts, and I spent several of my summers during college living on the campus of Amherst, working as a summer RA. So I decided to talk to them about the position.

I wouldn’t get too worried or excited (whichever it may be) about my potentially leaving CMC at this point.

No news right now as to what CMC’s administration would do should we lose Dean Huang.

(Unless we get used to a life of luxury at CMC, and enter high-paying professions to maintain a high standard of living. But that’s another question.)

The typical explanation is that we go to a good college to “learn things,” fill our heads with calculus and chemistry and the canon, and then we’ll be more prepared for jobs because we know more things than a high school graduate. This might have been true back in the day when information was more limited and you had to physically go to the places where people knew calculus and chemistry to get a better education than a G.E. Doctors, nurses, engineers, accountants, future professors, and maybe actuaries learn useful information as an undergraduate that they will need for their careers. Besides a specious argument that college teaches you “how to think,” it’s not obvious that the things we learn in other departments are useful for post-graduate life, or true that we need to pay $50,000 to learn about them.

I can think of four better reasons that justify the amount of money you’re spending to come here.

There’s a positive peer group effect. Your work rate depends very much on how hard your friends are working. Want to become a good student? Become friends with good students. If you want an explanation for your success while you’re in school, look no further than your roommate, who has a significant influence on your GPA. The long-term evidence is more murky, but when you surround yourself with other successful students, they rub their smarts on you, your skills rub off on them and everyone benefits.

There’s a networking effect. According to the Internet, over seventy percent of jobs are found through networking. CMC’s connections in finance and government in particular run deep. As I heard one RDS scholar say, “If we didn’t have alums at that company no one would have even read my application.” It’s not quite nepotism, but alums in the field will help CMC seniors get a leg up. Although this is less true nowadays, because rich people are delaying marriage, CMC is also a great place to meet a potential spouse from your socioeconomic class. Marriage has a big positive effect on income and productivity.

Doing hard work can help “override the governor.” The most interesting article I’ve read recently was a profile of Jure Robic, a Slovenian biker who competes in weeklong, 24-hour bike races. Robic will literally go crazy around day three of the race; he starts hallucinating, jumping off his bike to engage in combat with mailboxes and shouting nonsense at his race team. His team discovered that when Robic feels ready to drop dead from exhaustion, he’s still got about 50% of his energy to give. At that point, fatigue is more or less a brain feature than an accurate assessment of your ability to keep pumping your muscles. By completing a steady diet of papers, exams, and research assignments, students are doing things that they would discard as being too difficult if they weren’t in school. This tolerance for work builds up over four years; doing large amounts of work also forces students to manage their time and focus. Getting good marks from professors and managing the workload can give students more confidence in their abilities, which has positive effects on their success in the workplace. This helps explain why athletes have more post-grad success than non-athletes; they have more practice in persistence and training their brain to fight through procrastination and fatigue.

Your degree and GPA differentiate you from other job-seekers. Yes, you are paying $200k for a piece of paper, but what a piece of paper! Your CMC degree tells employers that you’re trustworthy, and, if you have a good GPA, that you’re probably a better candidate than most of your peers. A signal’s value correlates with how hard it is to acquire; a degree represents four years of hard work.  Additionally, a degree from this prestigious college signals that you’re smart, and got good high school grades.  Other job applicants need to work much harder to show off their smartness.

While school is nominally about learning new things, the smart student will realize she can do that anywhere, like Wikipedia. The parts of a CMC education that actually help you earn more money later in life don’t match up well with academic subjects. Just try telling your parents that when you get a disappointing report card.

The Wall Street Journal reports:

In its statement Thursday, SocGen also said that Robert Day, a nonexecutive director, also was under investigation for alleged insider trading by the French regulator and that he also rejected the allegations.

The bank said the proceedings against Messrs. Mustier and Day came in the wake of an investigation, started in 2008, into the bank’s financial information disclosure and the trading of its shares.

Earlier investigations came in 2008, just a few months after plans for RDS were announced. Some speculated on the possible connection between the sale of shares and Day’s $200 million donation, earmarked to fund RDS.

This investigation prompts the question, what would happen to RDS if Day were found guilty? How much distance would the College seek from one of its biggest benefactors?

“We’re assuming a 30% drop,” Gann stated. “This really starts effecting your budget two years from now, rather than right this minute. But because of the way our spending rule works, it smooths out bad quarters over twelve total quarters. It gives you time to put everything in motion to absorb such a big loss.”

Such motions were generally outlined in Gann’s November report, which included the suspension of certain faculty searches. While no current building projects will be directly effected– the Kravis Center is on schedule, the tennis center will open and the Eastern lands will be purchased– the administration doesn’t plan on embarking on any new projects in the near future.

The Campaign for Claremont McKenna will likely have a slow year, with many donors saying they will pledge at the end of the campaign, which is four years from now. The campaign’s major gifts from Day, Kravis, Crown and Roberts will all be paid out as planned.

Colleges and universities across the board have witnessed similar misfortunes, with losses in fiscal year 2008 averaging between 25-30%.