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.

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.

It was a busy semester at CMC.

CMC moved up in the rankings to the 9^th best Liberal Arts College in the country.

The Kravis Center officially opened to students and faculty.  The Living Room (affectionately known as ‘the Kube’) attracted students’ attention  after some technical difficulties and the administration’s initial decision to limit access to students. This was all before the Kube became home to one Pomona student’s temporary interpretive dance studio.

The fall semester also celebrated and embodied student leadership at CMC.  Students started a movement to do a better job of cleaning up after parties and led an effort to change our campus conversation about sex and gender norms. Trying bridge the gap between our Building Attendants and their residents, the Forum got to know some of CMC’s friendliest staff members. CMCers led a campaign to be more environmentally friendly on campus and coordinated a day of reflection on 9/11. Others took the lead in social activity planning, expanding student involvement with Dean of Students and creating the College Programming Board (check out the big name they are bringing to campus). Student initiative also brought the popular TED talks to the Claremont Colleges, hosting a TEDx conference in September.

CMC also faced a number of challenges in the fall of 2011: an unexpected over-enrollment of students forced the conversion of two popular study spaces into four-person rooms and a large number of students returning to CMC in the spring from fall study abroad programs led to an on-campus housing crisis.  The story behind the “Marks Squatter” brought some humor to a rather-serious-but-now resolved issue of on-campus visitors.

The Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College was hard at work all semester, advocating for students on issues such as increased study spaces, building a better quality of life, and providing some much needed snack time.

The Occupy Movement swept the nation this semester and arrived at the doorstep of our Claremont Colleges. Students were active in the protests in Claremont, Los Angeles, and the rest of the nation. Indeed, two Pitzer students were arrested for their involvement in the Occupy LA protests.  Political dialogue was alive and well, especially towards the end of the semester, when CMC welcomed former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to our campus. Many 5C students, however, had a different plan in mind and formed an “unwelcoming” party for Rice’s visit. The planned protests forced a change in venue for Rice’s speech, which triggered an outcry from students. While the protests stirred up quite a controversy, the civility and political discourse throughout the evening exemplified students’ diversity of thought, without provoking violence or hostilities.

The Forum sat down with our very own college president Pamela Gann and discussed her current and future projects for the school, which included a revamp of the beloved North Quad and expanding the new Center for Civic Engagement.

But it wasn’t all business this semester at the Forum. Speaking with Paul Zak, a.k.a Dr. Love, the Forum got to hear the Doctor’s thoughts on love, life, and how giving 8 hugs a day will make the world a better place. Those student globe-trotters enjoying their study abroad experience took time to write home to CMC and share their experiences from far-off lands such as Washington D.C., South America, Italy and Oman. And for those bright-eyed freshmen, returning students and Dean Spellman gave them their two cents (sometimes musically) on how to navigate their first semester and discover how great this college really is.

We uncovered the top 5 companies that hire CMC students, brought Words with Friends lovers the 10 most useful Scrabble words, and suggested 8 classes to students that might have overlooked some academic treasures. Students contributed to the ongoing discussion on topics such as art, film, pop culture, public radio, music and concerts. And despite the delicious unveiling of a new Ath menu, the Forum offered some tips on how to stay healthy, even in the face of all those Rice Krispie treats.

A-Mitch even appeared for an encore.

ASCMC hosted a number of events this semester, improving on past traditions—Monte Carlo—and even starting some new ones—The Boardwalk Empire party and No Shave November. We know you can’t wait for the Wedding Party next spring—and neither can we. Expect even bigger surprises next semester.

Our tech guru offered some awesome tips on his #CMCTech blog, including advice on how to make your work faster and more effective, thoughts on the Semester in Silicon Valley Program and even a holiday gift guide (it’s never too late to get that perfect present).

The Forum also better incorporated sports into our publication. The Forum now offers live broadcasts of all home CMS athletic games, complete with video and audio from student broadcasters.  We celebrated triumph, defeat and the utter domination at SCIACs.  The publication also took and in-depth look at sports at CMC and uncovered how SCIAC rules hurt CMS recruiting high school athletes and what many are doing to save the Intramural program.

Outside of the CMC bubble, the Forum checked in with our beloved Claremont village, celebrating the once-in-a-century Zipcode Day (9/17/11=91711) and partaking in the delicious festivities at the California Beer Festival.

It was a busy semester and time for reflecting has just begun. First, we would like to thank you, our readers, for your support, comments, advice, kindness, crudeness, humor and thoughtful discussion. But, we have one more request. The Forum has grown considerably in the last semester but we want to know how we can continue to improve. Below is a short survey that we hope you will fill out so we can make this publication stronger. We look forward to hearing your constructive thoughts, suggestions and comments.

The Forum wishes you a wonderful break and a restful holiday. We promise to bring you the best in news, opinions, and insights from Claremont College students as we enter our spring semester. We hope you’ve enjoyed reading with us this fall, and we’ll see you in 2012!

The jokes, however, turned bitter when former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited CMC’s campus on November 30th.  Campus news articles and blog posts became online battlegrounds of political rhetoric, pitting “conservative” CMC students against “liberal” Pitzer students.  On the campuses themselves, there was a prescient sense of animosity; in class, I could truly sense a distance among Pitzer students during some of the more heated days of the online controversies.

Most people, Pitzer and CMC students alike, went to Ducey Gymnasium on Wednesday expecting to be involved in a tense shouting match.  In some small ways, the expected malice was there. When I introduced myself as a CMC student to Marcus, a demonstrating Pitzer student, his response was “you’re from CMC?  Baby-killer!” Marcus, however, certainly was not representative of the entire student population at the protests on Wednesday.  In general, the protests were incredibly constructive and peaceful, with little in the way of altercations beyond a few students who seemed intent on provoking a fight where there was none to be found.

Indeed, the aggressors in the crowd seemed to be more the exception than the rule.  Protestors and CMC students alike were generally incredibly respectful of one another.

Christian Neumeister, a CMC freshman who attended the talk, was understanding of the protests. “I certainly think [the protestors] have the right to voice their opinions.  I don’t necessarily agree with their opinions, but it’s their fundamental American right to voice them,” Neumeister said.

An unnamed Pitzer demonstrator agreed: “CMC brought Dr. Rice because it hopes to foster a discussion as part of its Athenaeum program.  That is all well and good – the reason we’re here is not to stop that discussion, but rather to promote our own outside.”

The protests themselves were very different from the disorganized mess that some predicted they would be. During the talk, professors and students lectured bystanders and demonstrators on different topics, which ranged from the use of torture to the impetus behind the Iraq War.  Near the Northeast corner of the parking lot, a group of students held a waterboarding demonstration in order to provoke student dialogue around the moral and ethical issues involved with the practice.  These lectures – while certainly biased to present an anti-Condoleezza Rice perspective – created an environment more conducive to learning than to accusation, and were a welcome presence on a college campus.

Feel free to chalk it up to my freshman naiveté and optimism, but this made me happy to be a student at the 5Cs.  To me, the 5Cs are built on a certain morale and community camaraderie that governs our campus-to-campus interactions, including a certain sports rivalry (in which CMS is most certainly superior).  It is certainly true that the anonymity and immediacy of the Internet allowed the controversy of Dr. Rice’s visit to become more malicious than intended.  Yet, once CMC and Pitzer students were face to face, the conversation took on a human face, one that represented our students in a much more flattering light.

“I have heard a lot of frustration from several students who find the spaces available to be too crowded or limited in hours,” said Mao. “The spaces in the proposal are ones where students should have increased access. Several other institutions allow 24-hour access to classrooms and a 24-hour library space. We’re a top academic institution, but lack these qualities of our peers.”

The SSTF submitted a proposal on Tuesday, December 6, to Dean Jefferson Huang, Vice President for Student Affairs, and Dean Gregory Hess, Vice President for Academic Affairs, which suggests how study spaces on campus can serve to satisfy what they identify as six primary student needs: a 24-hour (1) individual study space, (2) group meeting space, (3) group study space, (4) computer lab space, (5) outdoor space and (6) an informal gathering space.

Photo Credit: David Leathers

Identifying and detailing the proposed use of six spaces–the Hub, Frazee, the Living Room, the Kravis Center terraces, classrooms and the Crocker Reading Room–the proposal seeks to ameliorate the difficulties CMC students have recently encountered with procuring appropriate study spaces. The SSTF also suggests measures to increase the efficiency of printing in computer labs and ways to increase the availability of information to the CMC student body regarding hours of the study spaces.

The proposal recognizes the advancements made in the Hub over the past year, but points out that it is not being fully utilized by the student body. The Hub is most often used during the weekdays, when students can get meal replacements, snacks or socialize with friends. But, as the Hub grill only serves food after 8pm on weekends, the space is nearly empty for much of the day, excluding mealtimes. Thus, in the short-term, the proposal suggests that an expansion in the hours of operation would lead to students making better use of the Hub over the weekends as an informal hangout space. In the long term, the proposal suggests that the Hub should be accessible to students 24-hours a day through key-card access. Furthermore, as the Hub lags significantly in terms of food and aesthetics in comparison to its counterparts across the five colleges, the proposal suggests renovating the Hub as part of next summer’s North Mall Renovation Project.

In its proposal, the SSTF questions the effectiveness of Frazee, the newly created study space on campus, in creating a comfortable and suitable study environment for CMC students. In particular, the proposal sites the ‘chair room’–the room adjacent to the Hub Store–as an inconvenient answer to increased study space. In the short-term, the proposal suggests the conversion of the ‘chair-room’ into a 24-hour conference room for students by removing all the chairs and adding a table. The SSTF suggests that with this change, the room would be more useful as a group meeting space or a group study space. The long-term proposal suggests the elimination of the walls between Frazee’s two rooms to create a much bigger study space.

The Living Room does not currently serve as an appropriate study or a lounge space as the tables are too short for studying to take place and limited access to the building itself prevents students from taking full advantage of its resources. The proposal suggests that it is necessary to increase the accessibility of the room to 24-hours a day.

The SSTF also cites limited access to the Kravis Center terraces as seriously inconveniencing students and preventing use of the space for group meetings, group studying, or more social student interactions. The proposal suggests that day-time access to the second and the third floors should be granted to students every day of the week. ID card readers and security cameras will ensure that students are safe and treat the building respectfully.

According to their proposal, the SSTF assert that there is no group study space on campus where group collaboration can take place. The library and the reading room have restrictive noise rules, making them excellent places for peaceful studying but less great for rowdy meetings. Meanwhile the dorm lounges and the Hub are too noisy. The proposal suggests that classrooms in Kravis Center, Roberts, and Bauer be available for students to work in a group after-class hours. Currently, the Dean of Students Mary Spellman and Registrar Elizabeth Morgan are looking into this while Assistant Dean of Students Eric Vos and Dean Huang are also looking into the matter.

The Crocker Reading Room does a good job of providing a quiet, individual study space to students. The proposal suggests that the Presidential Collection on the second floor be moved elsewhere in order to allow for an extension of hours and access to the reading room. By moving the collection, students would be able to appreciate the collection at a more secure place and there would be no need for student monitors outside the room. The monitors could be reallocated to supervise the Ducey weight room, which would ensure that the student monitors are still employed. The proposal highlights this particular recommendation as it has a few costs for the college, with many benefits for the students.

To the SSTF, printing remains the main problem in the computer labs. Many students rely on the availability of computers at labs like Poppa in order to quickly print reading and study materials; more often than not, however, students arrive at a lab only to find that no computers are available for a simple print job. The proposal notes that these circumstances lead to one of two things: students leave unsuccessfully or interrupt students already at work. To remedy the problem, the proposal suggests the creation of 1-2 ‘printing stations’ in Poppa lab – computers designated for students who come in solely to print. This would solve the problem by allowing students to get in and out quickly, while preventing any additional equipment from being added to the lab.

Perhaps most important in the SSTF’s recent proposal is what they cite as the underlying reason for why the Kravis Technology Classroom or Frazee are underutilized: a general lack of communication. The proposal seeks to address the communication gap between students and the administration and suggests that the “Student Gateway” page of the CMC website include a detailed list of study spaces with availability and hours of operation.  Rather than sending out school-wide emails regarding the hours for a particular study space, the information could be consolidated in an easily accessible and readily available format on the school’s website.

SSTF hopes that with their proposal comes a marked change in how the CMC administration will assess and evaluate the existing–and potential–study spaces on campus. It is clear that procuring appropriate study space for college students is a high priority issue, and the SSTF hopes that their initiative will draw the attention of both administration officials and the CMC student body to this reality.

The full text of the proposal is here.

Photo Credit: STERLINGDAVISPHOTO

Many evacuated of their own accord, however, Alyssa Solis and Morgan Bennett, two Pitzer juniors, were arrested along with 289 other protesters on charges of failing to disperse.

“We were on the South lawn when 100 police officers in riot gear poured out of the South entrance to City Hall and formed a perimeter,” Alyssa Solis recalls. Solis and Bennett were caught inside the police barrier when the raid began, and Solis tried to follow police instructions to exit, but the barricades were confusing and difficult to navigate.

“An officer announced, ‘if you want to leave, exit this way.’ I had no intention of getting arrested because I had a dance concert the next day, so I exited to the corner of First and Broadway where they told me to move a block West, but there was a line of policemen blocking our way and so we were essentially cornered,” Solis said. “We saw [the officers] count the zipties and then we heard them say ‘just get them all.’

The students were cuffed, and after her arrest at approximately 2:10AM, Solis was put on a bus with 48 other people where she was driven to Van Nuys for processing. “They left us in the bus for 7 hours without food, water, and would not let us use the bathroom. We were able to break the zipties with a multi-tool that had not been confiscated, but people were urinating and vomiting because of the cramped quarters.”

Solis was booked at 5pm, 13 hours after her arrest.

Many protesters said they felt traumatized after witnessing police use force against the protesters. The Los Angeles Times reports that some protesters might even need therapy. There were no major instances of violence during the eviction, however, which led Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, in a press conference later that morning, to describe the raid as “maybe the finest moment in the history of the Los Angeles Police Department.”

Some protesters, including Solis disagree. “They arrested everyone,” she said. “They arrested legal observers, media people with permits to be there, and a girl who was walking home from the bar and didn’t have any idea what Occupy LA even was.”

Villaraigosa first announced that protesters would be evicted due to public health and safety concerns on November 21st at 12:01 AM after 7 weeks of occupying the park. But that deadline came and went without police action. The announcement, however, did cause half of the protesters to pack up and go home, according to NBC Los Angeles. Over a week later, on the night of November 29th, police assembled and began raiding the park just after midnight on November 30th. LAPD enlisted a dozen undercover agents to gather information on the intentions of protesters, a police source told the Los Angeles Times, and Villaraigosa later said he had decided to go ahead with the eviction upon learning that there were children living in tents within the encampment.

In all, 46 people were charged with misdemeanor crimes of failure to disperse from an unlawful assembly and/or resisting arrest. Some protesters were released on bail, while 187 of those arrested were released without bail and without being charged because they had no prior convictions. Solis was given a notice to appear, while Bennett was not charged.

Morgan Bennett could not be reached for comment.

Photo credit: Huffington Post

The firings signal the end of a verification process that began on November 7th, when the college notified 84 employees that they must provide updated citizenship documentation by December 1st, or they would be let go. The Student Life reports that the letter was sent after the Pomona College Board of Trustees had received a complaint that some campus employees were undocumented, and that the investigation was part of a “series of legal obligations.”

“The College and some of its employees have been placed in a difficult and unfortunate situation, which we wish could have been avoided,” Paul Efron, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees wrote in an email to the Pomona community. “However, while many of us believe that the country’s immigration policies are in need of reform, it is important to emphasize to the Pomona community that the College has a responsibility to comply with the current laws.”

Photo credit: Huffington Post

After 17 employees failed to resolve the discrepancies in their files, the college terminated them effective today. Instead, the employees came to work chanting “we’re here, and we’re not leaving,” according to the Huffington Post.

The employees were joined by an estimated 150 protesters in Frary dining hall this morning, which has been the target of a boycott since Wednesday.  In a school-wide email to Pomona students, Miriam Feldblum, the Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students, announced that protestesters were permitted to take-over the dining hall. ”The organizers stated that their intention was to have 17 of their number arrested by Claremont Police, but College officials declined to have them arrested so long as they were peaceful,” Feldblum writes. “The protestors then moved to Alexander Hall, where they resumed their protest, continuing their stated intention of being arrested. Around 11:30 this morning, as a result of a negotiation between the protestors and the police, CPD arrested 17 protestors for blocking College Avenue.”

Photo credit: Huffington Post

Pomona dining hall workers have been attempting to unionize for over two years, although the L.A. Times reports that talks with Pomona’s administration have stalled. Cynthia Peters, media relations director for the college, told the Huffington Post, “The terminations had nothing to do with the union organizing. The two issues are completely separate.”

The events surrounding this issue are still on-going and this article will be updated as more information becomes available.

The entrance to the talk was crowded with several dozen protesters from the 5C’s and the surrounding community. The gathering of dissenters held signs, which varied in messages from peaceful indignation to vulgar allegations. “War benefits the 1%,” read one sign and another displayed a photo of Rice’s face superimposed on a hyper-sexualized image of Wonder Woman.  The protest itself, dubbed “Unwelcoming Condoleezza Rice,” was organized by Pitzer students Emma French ’13, Vincent Giannotti ’12, and Liz Scherffius’13, who hoped to “open a discussion on how foreign policy is, and should be, made.”

When asked whether they believed that the protest — which drew its influence from the Karl Rove Athenaeum protests of 2008 – could possibly be construed as impolite, French responded that “CMC students need to straighten out their priorities; Condoleezza’s crimes are so much more severe than rudeness.” French further explained that the “demonstrators were upset with the protest zone” and felt that it was “not accommodating.” When pressed about the private property laws that would allow CMC administration to expel the protestors from even the zone appropriated to them, French continued to assert that the “restriction had no basis.”

While the event was held and sponsored by CMC, French stressed that the issue was “not about Pitzer or CMC ideology,” but rather about “the larger effect,” and that “making the argument otherwise is incredibly shallow.” Some students did take the time to talk to the protestors, attempting to decipher the argument which “got bogged down in ideological rhetoric,” explains Kyle Gosselin’14, who spoke with the protesters for the duration of the lecture. Gosselin continued that his “impression was that they were expressing their opinions, and even though [he] disagreed wholeheartedly, [he] respects them for getting out there and doing it.” Others, like Sae Bin Park ’12 were not quite so receptive, claiming, “no one cares about liberals at CMC and what they have to say.” Overall, however, French expressed her great satisfaction with the event, explaining that it had turned out “a hundred times better than [she] ever expected,” and that she was “proud that [the protesters] proved [they] could have really strong opinions without being disrespectful.”

The lecture itself began with a lighthearted jab at the evening’s venue change as Athenaeum Fellow Jake Petzold ’12 remarked, “Welcome to the…where are we?” After his introduction, Rice began her discussion on policy-making and her experience as Secretary of State in the President George W. Bush’s administration. Discussing her reaction in the wake of, the 9/11 attack, Rice described the aftermath of that unforgettable day as living every day “like it was September 12^th.” Rice also offered commentary on the state of certain countries throughout the world, noting Brazil and India as countries with great liability but expressing her appreciation for the value of their brand of “multiethnic democracy.” Rice went on to call China a miracle, contend that the upheavals and anger in the Middle East are “ultimately a better outcome than the silence of authoritarianism,” and describe the United States of America gone bad as the “biggest challenge to the United States of America.”

Aware of her college audience, Rice also stressed the importance of education and the pursuit of one’s passion as the key to happiness and success. Rice herself was a music major until the end of her sophomore year at University of Denver when she realized that she did not have the talent to play professionally. She then described her path to finding a major, eventually landing on becoming a Soviet specialist noting, “From that moment on, everything started to fall in place.” Rice then expressed her great belief in finding one’s passion, with great conviction in the idea that when you “find your passion, you will be a long way towards happiness and prosperity in life.” With this, she advised students to try something difficult, explaining, that “if you make yourself succeed in things that are hard for you, you will find that you are more fulfilled and that you find greater satisfaction in overcoming something that was hard for you than in doing something that was easy.”

Photo Credit: David Leathers

Her words were well-received by CMC students. Hillary Lundberg’14 describes the talk as “witty, honest, and inspiring – rare qualities in someone of her status and experience.”

Rice then took on a half hour of questions from the audience that ranged from her difficulties as a minority female, to foreign relations with Iran and Iraq, to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s “kind of creepy” affection for her. She addressed the administration’s use of water boarding as an “enhanced interrogation technique,” and defended it after the Justice Department deemed it legal  before it was used. In response to one question, Rice affirmed that “Iraq is still a lot better off without Saddam Hussein,” and she was “glad that we are not sitting here talking about an arms race, a nuclear arms race between Iran’s Ahmadinejad and Iraq’s Sadam Hussein, and that’s exactly where we would be.” She then went on to dub Iran the “most dangerous country in the world right now,” and suggest that tougher sanctions should be levied against the state. Rice cautioned, however, that for those students who hoped to influence policy, “take it one step at a time.”

Rice closed her talk stating, “I have no problem with protests, this country was born in protests,” in reference to the reactions of many to the decisions made in Iraq. But perhaps in her own nod to the protesters right outside Ducey Gymnasium, Rice noted that when people protest “they need to be sure they’re not getting in the way of others who might want to have a civil dialogue about differences.”

Editor’s Note: This article originally stated that the administration “defended it [an enhanced interrogation technique] as it passed through judicial review before it was used.” The Justice Department reviewed and deemed the action legal and it was not passed through judicial review. This article was updated at 11:30am on December 2, to reflect this change.

Photo Credit:David Freid

The mix of protestors at the scene ranges from wandering freeloaders to lawyers and professors who are sick of the status quo; all camping out under the banner of the “99%”, a label that throws protestors from very different walks of life together. After investigating the scene myself, I realized that the overshadowed rational thinkers of the Occupy movement deserve a great deal more attention than we’ve been giving them. While the campground at Occupy LA is an excitingly quirky one, it’s not hard to see that a number of people are either complaining, or taking advantage of free camping. I found that at the heart of the movement, however, are informed and hopeful people who really want to change the way the American Government operates, and those people need our help.

Slowly declining morals within our government and our economy affect every one of us, in some form or another. It is a problem that the “Occupy” movement aims to address, not through erratic complaints and shoddy cardboard signs, but instead through raising awareness. The people who make up the driving force behind the protests are trying to reach interested and politically active students and convince them that the wrongdoing that slips past the American public does not have to continue hurting our government and our economy. We all know that CMC’ers are very well-informed and have a certain penchant for political discussion, so why is it that students like us are missing from the movement? The fact is there are protestors with concrete and legitimate motives who need our help, and we should not be deterred by the crackpot image that some media sources purvey.

HyperVocal published an article on the Occupy protests investigating exactly who the protestors were. Regarding the media reaction to the protestors, it stated: “They’ve been labeled hippies, lefties, unpatriotic bums, STD spreaders, and angry, unemployed college grads. Those stereotypes are meant to brush off the seriousness of the protests.” A study conducted by business intelligence analyst Harrison Schultz and Professor Hector R. Cordero-Guzman from Baruch College, however, has shown that 70% of Occupy protestors identify themselves as Independents, 47% of them hold full time jobs, and 61% of them attended college. The movement then is not a strictly left-winged one, and while half of the protestors are unemployed, there are plenty of educated individuals supporting the cause. Students like us should not be deterred from participating because we think the movement is an extremist one, when in fact, it is not.

I spoke to one protestor who said, “People need to just see what we’re about. People need to put down their cell phones and open their eyes.” The man in question refused to disclose his name, but said he had been hitchhiking for 3 months before camping at Occupy LA for the past three weeks. According to this man, the movement does not need another diluted message or more people with cardboard signs – it needs numbers. That way, cynics and supporters alike, will realize that something needs to change. The movement needs more bodies to gain momentum, but where will they come from?

Emily, a student at the University of Southern California, was sitting in a drum circle wearing a red and gold Trojans sweater. She’d come to the protests with a friend, but said that it would be impractical for her to try and spend the night. According to Emily and a few protestors who served as staff at the University of Southern California, action is not being taken on behalf of the school as a whole to participate in the protests. While it is rumored that some buses of students had been organized to travel to the protests together, none of the occupants said they’d seen them or any other schools represented in great numbers. According to the same study by Professor Cordero-Guzman and Mr. Schultz, 45% of protestors are from the ages of 25 to 44, and 32% are over the age of 45. People under the age of 25, including college students, are the least represented demographic.

With the amalgam of messages of the Occupy movement and its negative portrayal by some major news sources, it is not hard to understand why intelligent people are shying away from camping out at City Hall. It takes a trip to the protests, however, to see that there are a number of people at the protests with defined goals and legitimate complaints, who simply lack the power to advance them. The problem is that college students – especially CMCers who have the potential to make a lot of noise – are not seeing that the Occupy movement is not only to placate people who want their tuition paid for or their homes returned, but also to encourage people who see a problem to go out and fix it. So my suggestion is, go. Even if you don’t have anything to say, go. Go with an open mind and try to understand what these people are all about, and even if you don’t agree, at least you will have learned something.