In addition to the new flatscreens, which will feature live updates from CMC’s finest internet publication, the computer labs have seen a few other upgrades. Poppa’s nasty old flooring and plastic sheets have been torn up and replaced with new carpeting. The chairs have also been upgraded to seats with some sick new technology — armrests! Awesome. And, if you’re a lab junky like me, you’ll be most excited for this last detail: Poppa is now ALL double screens. That’s right. No more arguing with growling seniors for those prized PCs during thesis time.

Some of the other changes students will see on campus include: flat-screens in Collins (and some huge fruit posters?), new wide-screen monitors in Ryal, and, even though you loved the Hub’s old-church-basement feel, it’s received a makeover, too. Those old love seats have been swapped for plush new leather furniture and the carpet has been completely replaced. The Kravis Center workers are still slaving away, but the construction has ended on the new pathway from CMC to Scripps. Now, there are a few new places to sit and a few less steps on the way to that delicious Scripps brunch.

BBQ Chicken Salad
First grab not one, but two plates.  From the salad bar, pile a few tongfuls of romaine lettuce on one plate, then add ½ a ladle of ranch dressing.  Put second plate on top and shake both plates until the dressing is well mixed. Still at the salad bar, throw on some corn-off-the-cob, bacon bits, red onions, and olives.  Now move onto the sandwich area and add roasted red and green bell peppers, cheddar cheese, and ½ ladle of BBQ sauce.  Then ask the man at the grill station for a nice plain breast of chicken.  Put that on the second plate that served as a top for shaking.  Spread some more BBQ sauce on the chicken and cut into thin slices.  Place on salad.  Then head to the “Farm to Fork” station for a handful of Fritos.  Finally, drizzle ½ ladle of ranch dressing on top to finish it off.  Scrumptious.

Brunch Quesadilla
Feeling last night a bit too much?  Try this for a comforting, stomach-coating fix.
Go to the omelet station and ask for a flour tortilla.  Spread some red pepper sauce (in the sandwich station) on top, and then cover half the tortilla with cheddar cheese.  Go back to omelet station and add tomatoes, onions, and any other vegetable that you might be particularly keen to.  If desired go to the salad station for some spinach leaves.  Then move on to “At Home” buffet for some eggs (tell them to just put eggs on the cheesy half of the tortilla).  Next, fold the tortilla over itself and cook on the sandwich press until cheese is melted and tortilla is golden.  Top with sour cream if available, cut into pieces, and enjoy.

Pineapple Thai Peanut Noodles
Grab a cereal bowl and a spoon. Put about a tablespoon of peanut butter in the bowl, 1 ½ tablespoon of soy sauce (from the dining area), and about ½ tablespoon of soymilk.  Stir to combine, then microwave for 30 seconds.  Take out and put bell peppers, spinach, and shredded carrots on top.  Microwave for another 45 seconds.  Get a plateful of pasta from the “At Home” section and add all ingredients from the bowl.  Mix it all up nice and well.  Top with pineapple slices, a bit more soy sauce, and Sriracha sauce.  Yum!

You might think people will look at you funny for scurrying around the dining hall with multiple plates and strange food combos, and you’re probably right.  But it’s worth it.  You’ll be proud of your little creation, and you’ll enjoy it that much more.  So go on and experiment with your own culinary masterpieces.

Parking lots and baseball fields currently utilize this space east of Bauer Center, itself to be replaced with a campus center. In the future, new quads, academic and residential, will take up the land, along with a new admissions office and alumni house, located on the corner of 9th St. and Claremont Blvd.

The plans were formulated based on a proposal to expand the student body from 1150 to 1400 (the maximum allowed in accordance with the College’s Constitution). The rest of the plan describes how the College will reach its “full potential.” Fear not – the sacred student-to-faculty ratio will be preserved at 8:1. But how will the College accommodate all these new students and simultaneously improve the physical campus with the “new or renovated academic facilities, a new fitness and athletic center, a new campus center, and the potential development of an Alumni House” all mentioned in President Gann’s email? These objectives may require diverse and potentially startling changes to the CMC landscape.

The plan assumes that, in order to continue attracting the best faculty and students, the College requires newer and more numerous facilities. This will be accomplished through a set of goals and objectives, which include:

• Making a clear vision for CMC allowing the improvements to strengthen the identity of the College.
• Increasing the aesthetics of CMC.
• Increasing the sense of community through greater opportunities for interaction.
• Environmentally responsible development and planning.
• Better interior and exterior infrastructure.
• Alternative strategies for meeting parking, mobility, and service needs and maintenance.

But what does this actually mean for CMC?

Bauer Center will first be the first major building torn down, to be replaced with a campus center, which will provide a real entrance to Ninth Street. “Much like the Smith Campus Center at Pomona, this central building would have an open, adaptable ground floor, and would house mail facilities, dining options and lounge spaces,” says Buildings and Grounds Commitee member Lucia Foulkes. Collins will be replaced and the new dining hall will be located further north near the new campus center. One wonders whether this will cause more South Quad residents to frequent Frary, and widen the North Quad-South Quad social gap. Perhaps anticipating this worry, the Master Plan only has one dining hall, maintaining the sense of community fostered by Collins. To ASCMC President Tammy Phan, “one dining hall means that we still haven’t grown too large,” and that there still is a “central meeting and eating area.”

This new academic building will be built where McKenna Auditorium currently stands, right outside the Flamson Plaza Fountain and across from the Athenaeum. In the distance, the new campus center is visible, where Bauer Center is located today.

The temporary offices, sardonically referred to as “Trailer Park West” by some peeved professors, will finally be removed and replaced with an eastern expansion of Parents Field. Linked with the new campus center, Parents Field will form the “heart” of campus. The athletic fields to the east will be replaced with a new residential complex – an “East Quad” – consisting of two halls facing each other around a courtyard and a series of gardens. The student apartments will be renovated, but Phillips will be demolished to make room for a Social Pavilion and Recreational Pool. The Hub will be gone as well, replaced by an academic building with a clear path to Scripps.

Of course, the Stags and Athenas will have a new place to shine. Ducey Gym will be replaced with a new Fitness and Athletic Center, and the track and football fields will be converted to intramural and club sport fields. The varsity soccer field will be moved across 6th Street and the rest of the varsity sports’ fields including football, track and field, baseball and softball will be situated in the East Athletic Expansion, across Claremont Boulevard from the apartments.

A substantial overhaul of the College’s pathways is also planned, throughout new and old quads alike. Such pathways are primarily responsible for connecting the campus and for welcoming visitors. Major axis will be redrawn to make for better navigation throughout CMC, and for clearer entrances to the College from various points. These entrances will be more aesthetically pleasing – the first of them being the Kravis Center itself. Trimming and lighting are small aspects of the plan that may have a surprising effect on the look of CMC in the short run.

Overall, these changes sound dramatic, and indeed they are. However, the Master Plan makes a concerted effort to preserve the intimate nature of CMC while strengthening the positive characteristics. “The College has done a lot of planning and group sessions with students,” says Phan, suggesting that we have had and will continue to have a voice in CMC’s future. The architecture of the new buildings will flow with those surrounding them, attempting to create an aesthetically-cohesive campus from two conflicting styles: the utilitarian concrete structures from our founding and the modern masterpieces designed by Architect Rafael Vinoly and CO Architects, among others. Pleasing everyone who enjoys the California sunshine, the plan calls for more open and green spaces round campus and gives them a practical purpose beyond mere enjoyment. The green spaces are designed for better “natural” drainage during rains.

While the changes can seem intimidating, our most characteristic features are here to stay. “It’s reassuring to know that some things will never change,” says Foulkes. “In 25 years, when some of us will have kids at CMC, North Quad will still be here to remind us of our youthful exploits.”  The buildings thoughtfully chosen to remain represent our core CMC values and culture; polished up a bit, but essentially unchanged.

You probably already know I had brain cancer. If not, I had brain cancer. Every three months I return to St. Jude, the place I called home for nearly a year. These are, undoubtedly, the most humbling moments in my life.

Life in this part of Memphis is a hard slap in the face. One ride on a rickety hospital shuttle is telling. Rich brick estates quickly melt to the broken streets and dilapidated housing of South Memphis, a perfect resting spot for America’s best children’s cancer hospital. Two blocks from St. Jude sits the popular Shelby County Jail, and subsequently, roughly thirteen jail bond businesses. Not to forget the liquor stores, pawn shops, blood donation centers, crack heads, and a surplus of loiterers living bleakly on a malt liquor and Wendy’s Dollar Menu diet. Southern Memphis is a poverty-ridden-hellhole of crime and anguish, a dead end for aspirations. Needless to say, there is an eight-foot wrought iron fence surrounding all St. Jude properties.

St. Jude attempts to be the happiest place on earth. They are largely successful, from the doctors, to the nurses and the janitors, these are among the most genuinely nice people I have ever met. The walls are painted into playground scenes, the ceilings glittering with stars, a contrasting environment to the white washed walls of most other hospitals. To be quite literal, St. Jude is hands down the best place you could ever take a kid with cancer. Its treatment is revolutionary (my doctor designed my protocol, SJMB03). Though in all its glory, it is nonetheless, full of cancer-laden children.

When you’ve been in the cancer world a while you start to get a sense of who has a high survival rate, and unfortunately, who doesn’t. In any given waiting room there are two Southern folks comparing their kids’ diagnoses, and no matter how sweet the drawl, fourth stage neuroblastoma cuts deep. Glioblastoma steals all the air from your lungs. Thanks for trying, life, better luck with your next religion. The kids never really grasp the concept their parents fear. If they can walk, they will run, zipping by you screaming enthusiastically. At St. Jude, ignorance is a child’s bliss, and knowledge, a parent’s nightmare. Say the prayers, keep the hope, I am sure miracles happen every day, but sometimes they take breaks in Memphis.

I don’t want you to cry. I don’t want you to hold the hurt I feel looking into the empty eyes of a helpless family. I want you to take a deep breath and reflect on the life you live here in sunny Southern California. Think about all the privileges and freedoms you have to lead a healthy life. Think about your family and friends and how much they mean to you. Take a step back from the drama that is thesis, your final papers, your summer internship – whatever is consuming your every thought. Let the stress roll out of your fingertips as you imagine how good your life truly is. Collins is repetitive, DOS is infringing, a boy did this, a girl said that. Smile, you’re alive, people love you. You will be successful. Call your family, they miss you.

At some point in your life someone told you not to sweat the small stuff. Not everything is small, but most of it is not worth worrying about. Eventually everything will work out, I promise.

If you are feeling like your pockets have a little too much cash in them. If your momma doubled that fat allowance and you need to drop some of those dollars before the summer, send a little St. Jude’s way, they’ll appreciate it.

Here are some ground rules. I’m going to have two center focus points: North Quad and South Quad. I feel like this adequately covers the CMC community. Seniors in the apartments use the dining halls less and Mid-Quadders can figure it out based on which quad they are closer to. Secondly, the unit of measurement I used is the average size of a Claremont city block. To put this in perspective, the distance between Stark Hall and Boswell is approximately 2.5 blocks. I think this will be easier to think about than something like “2,834 feet to the Muddhole”, and much easier for me to measure.

The dining halls we will cover are Scripps/Motley, Pitzer, Frary, the Coop, and Hoch-Shanahan/Muddhole. I feel like these are the most popular destinations. Also, this article is based solely for travel purposes. If you want to read something that discusses quality, there was a recent article written about coffee and Claremont that also reached out for my professional opinion (the last paragraph!). Anyway, back to business.

South Quad: If you live in the South Quad, you are just under two blocks from Collins, your closest dining hall. Branching out, Frary is only a slightly further walk, and would probably be the same if it wasn’t for the construction.  The Hub is a little over two blocks and Scripps comes in exactly at three as the crow flies. Pitzer is a medium distance of four blocks. The real treks start to occur when you try to eat at the Coop or at Mudd. The Coop is five blocks away, while Hoch comes in at a whopping 7, over half a mile.

Consensus: If the food looks better at Scripps or Frary, go for it. A half mile for Mudd? No thanks.

North Quad: Since Collins and The Hub are right at your front door, I’m not even going to acknowledge them with a distance. Just walk outside. However, Scripps and Pitzer are also excellent options at only two blocks away. Mudd is still pretty far at about 4.5 blocks, but it’s really just on the other side of Scripps.  As for the Pomona eateries, Frary is about 3 blocks, while the Coop, with construction, is almost 7.

Consensus: Pitzer and Scripps prove the easiest alternatives to CMC food. Mudd is doable if you have some time, but unless you are meeting some friends on the weekend or after Pub, I really don’t see any point in venturing over to the Coop.

Well, there you have it. The dining hall distances are broken down.  Of course, if you are rushed for time, Collins is still the easiest, but some of the others are surprisingly closer than I initially though. In any sense, we’ll all probably still end up trekking seven blocks to the Muddhole next Saturday for one last steak quesadilla before bed.

While students from all the Claremont Colleges enjoyed the dishes of each of the visiting universities, the hits of the night were clearly the Beef Tenderloin served over Garlic Mashed Potatoes with Red Wine and Shitake Mushroom reduction and the pie station, both devised by Claremont McKenna’s executive chef, Alberto Gonzalez.  Both stations featured long lines of hungry students all night long. You can find highlights from last night below and the entire collection of photographs here.

“America’s already very accustomed to Chinese and Japanese food, so it’s time to bring in bolder flavors,” Tila said in the Los Angeles Times, “Indian flavors, Singaporean flavors, and of course, Thai – I think Thai has been misrepresented. I’m trying to bring it back to what it’s supposed to be.”

In this spirit, Tila has prepared the following menu: Vietnamese pork sandwiches, an Asian noodle bar containing vegetarian, chicken and beef  and stir fry, and wild salmon entrées at the Exhibition station.

But delicious  food is not Star Chef Night’s only attraction. Bon Appétit will also be raffling off a weekend for two at Las Vegas’ Encore Hotel along with dinner at Wazuzu. Raffle tickets will be sold following the dinner (around 7 pm) so plan on attending if you want to enter your name in the raffle. If this didn’t whet your appetite, check out Tila in action below.

At first, the inconvenience was limited to water faucets that barely dispense water at the Athenaeum, Collins, or Claremont Hall. Equipped with motion sensors or touchpads,  these faucets do not dispense enough water to wash their hands for the medically approved 15-20 seconds. This was an annoyance during the school year, but with the much publicized H1N1 virus, it is a public health threat. (I doubt the lost productivity of sickness of students and faculty was factored into the cost-savings.) Unfortunately, this is just one of the many ways in which “sustainability” ruins life on campus.

Contrary to what many of its supporters — among whom I include some members of the Board of Trustees — claim, I find little evidence that its version of sustainability actually saves costs. The most egregious instance of this occurred last year. In the name of sustainability, the school spent between $3100-$3900 each on four solar-powered trash cans. Was this a sustainable purchase? Now that the trashcans have been put in the shade, as if to add insult to injury, they can’t even power their own operation. (Humorously, a representative of Big Belly Solar informs me that the photovoltaic cells used to compact cans will be be a “revenue” stream – which means that it would take 70,000 cans to pay for just one machine, at $3500. I hope we don’t drink that much.)

Along those lines, do the many empty parking spots that remain unused in our parking lots serve our community as well as allowing some freshmen, somewhere to have access to their own vehicles? But Dean Huang, in an email to me, admitted that part of the reason freshmen were banned from having cars on campus was “environmental” and to wait until the college’s master plan was released. Now that it has been, we see that the stated mission of “sustainability” may even harm the environment. In a school with limited funds, why build parking lots that you aren’t going to operate at capacity?

Last Friday night at around 3 AM, I counted twenty empty spots in the South quad lot. Why didn’t the college try to strike some kind of deal with Scripps College, which has a mostly vacant parking lot just a block from our campus? Surely Scrippsies benefit from the parties we throw and would benefit from the money that freshman CMCers would-be drivers would provide. Scripps endowment fell between a quarter and a third last year. Are we really to believe that they wouldn’t sell parking spots?  Even worse, these allegedly “sustainable” policies have unintended and harmful consequences. By curtailing freshmen driving, the colleges make drinking that much more attractive. You don’t need to be an econ. major to understand that the college has changed the price of a night on the town. Instead of driving into LA with fellow freshmen for a night on the town, it’s much easier to buy some booze from a willing upperclassmen and wind up making some poor decisions.

Decisions — there’s that word again. Part of being out on your own and away from your parents is newfound freedom and responsibility. For the most part, you can choose what classes to take, when to eat, whom to sleep with, what clubs to join, and who you want to be. In fact, the college seems to promote more libertine policies — multiple days for free sexual disease testings, free condoms, and a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy on alcohol. But part of those choices is whether or not you want to live a supposedly sustainable lifestyle. You’re supposed to be able to choose. From compelling students to install poorly illuminating light bulbs that make it difficult to read and do homework to now monitoring what its students eat, however, the college is overstepping its bounds.

Because a few students have wasted food, the Claremont colleges have decided that we are not responsible enough to decide what to eat. But if the colleges were really insistent that Claremont students waste food, why not allow them to self-police, as other colleges have done? The school could even set targets for the students to reduce their waste, if it were so inclined. Instead, they have undemocratically decided that Claremont students — among whom are some of the smartest students in America — must be treated as animals, incapable of choosing the portions and amount of their own food. As children we learn what to put into our bodies, but as college students, we apparently have lost that most elementary of lessons. While the college used to sell itself on the conversations students had over dinner and on the lessons they learned from each other in the dining room, one wonders how wise a policy it is that makes community that much less enjoyable. Never you mind the fact that eating disorders are apparently a real problem from young women — or so, at least, we are told at freshman orientation.

Worse yet, now that the college has done away with trays, it has simply makes life harder for the already overworked dining hall staff, whose pay has been frozen and whose hours have been artificially elongated by the extra cleaning they must do. The food that once fell onto trays now falls on the floor, on the table, and on chairs and must be washed. According to some of the dining hall women I interviewed at three of the dining halls, they spend an average additional 30 minutes each day cleaning the floors.

Pitzer and Claremont McKenna College have now offered a “reusable” container. The Claremont Portside and the Forum reported that the containers will be purchased by our Dean of Students, Dean Huang, for an untold sum of money. Now it appears as if Collins will be providing these containers gratis to each student on a meal plan. But this raises more questions than it answers: If the school — or Collins– is going to go to the effort of buying a whole bunch of takeout containers, why can’t they spare $1.75 for each student to have their own tray, weigh the remaining food refuse, and then charge the students who waste the food more? Remember, the supposedly environmentally friendly containers at the other colleges cost between $3 and $6. This cast doubts on the supposed savings that trayless dining is supposed to bring. Anyone who has worked as a dishwasher knows that it is a lot easier to wash a flat tray than a weirdly shaped takeout container. So not only will the college have to pay the initial costs of purchasing these containers, the perpetual costs of their cleaning will have to be sustained as well. How sustainable.

But “sustainability” was never really about the environment, after all. It’s about signaling. Gann signals to the Board of Trustees that she’s reducing costs and to the campus what values she thinks we ought to be promoting.

And the rest of the campus signals its apathy by going on its merry way.

Instituting snack on Friday and Saturday is important because it would help reduce the severity and number of alcohol-related incidents.  Thursday night snack already confers many of these benefits due to the popularity of TNC, which is why snack should be extended to the other two big drinking nights on campus.  Eating food, especially high protein foods, slows the absorption of alcohol into the body and thereby reduces the likelihood of people becoming intoxicated beyond their limit.  Drinking non-alcoholic liquids, particularly water or sports drinks, is an effective method to prevent hangovers.

Additionally, the institution of snack may slightly slow the rate of alcohol consumption, which can help prevent alcohol poisoning.  Certainly, people determined to continue drinking will sneak in alcohol or avoid snack altogether.  Nonetheless, many people interested in food, will avoid the hassle of smuggling in alcohol and stop drinking for at least the duration of their time in the dining hall.  Having snack on Friday/Saturday may also possibly reduce the frequency of drunk driving.  Yes, drunk people can currently always go to the Hub, Coop, or Mudd Hole instead of driving, but another option would make drunk driving in search of food even less rational, particularly when snack is “free.”  For the more sober-minded, snack on Friday and Saturday would provide another social opportunity for people who want to socialize at an event not dominated by the mutual consumption of alcohol (yes, these people do exist on campus).

Even if you think the public health benefits of Friday/Saturday snack are overstated, at the very least, people who are drinking would greatly appreciate convenient, “free” food and drinks.  In my experience, most believe the marginal utility of food increases when they have been drinking.  Similarly, the consumption of marijuana, another popular activity for CMCers on the weekend, is known to stimulate one’s hunger.[i] Furthermore, Gatorade and soda can serve as excellent mixers or chasers.  The priorities of drunk and stoned CMCers rightfully do not usually factor into discussions about campus policy, but it might seems reasonable to include those priorities when making snack policy.

I realize there may be some practical considerations against this proposal and I want to address a few of them here.  I can understand that many food service employees would not want to spend their Friday and Saturday nights working at snack, but perhaps overtime pay would entice them.  Maybe budget cuts make fewer snack nights a necessity.  If so, Friday and Saturday snack could replace Monday and Tuesday snack.  I can understand Bon Appetit being reluctant to let hordes of drunk CMCers into the dining hall on a weekend night and possibly messing up the place, but experience proves this concern is not warranted: Thursday night snack and TNC have coexisted peacefully.

Through a generous gift from the Bon Appetit Management Company, we will begin issuing one free container to every CMC student who is on a board plan. Distribution will be next week in Collins. The container we selected is currently in use at Pitzer College.

Free containers! We go to the best school ever! Free containers!  Incidentally, since we’ll be using the same containers as Pitzer, I suspect we might be able to use them at both cafeterias (unless insidious measures are devised to stop us).  As for why Bon Appetit was so eager to give us free containers, the administration explained that Bon Appetit’s greater buying power, “circle of responsibility” philosophy, and hopes of creating a prototypical green cafeteria for their marketing plans came on like a rush of generosity.

When I shared the news with students, reactions ranged from joyous to mysterious.  Elise Viebeck ’10 described it as “lifechanging,” while Abhi Nemani ’10 warned me that “freedom isn’t free.”  Wade Vaughan ’13 said what I actually wanted to hear: “two thumbs up!”  Share your thoughts below.