Best Person to Share a Desert Island With: Michael Lapadot

Most Dreamed About: Katie Bonneau

Friendliest: Taylon Johnson

Most Likely to Have a CMC Building Named After Them: Alex Berman

Poppa Power Couple: Mark Munro & Erica Libby

Most Likely to Become a CMC Professor: Jake Petzold

 

 

Most Likely to #OccupyWallStreet: Dan Evans

Most Likely to Take Over the World: Dana Staley & Drew Oetting (together)

Best All-Around: Kevin Macpherson & Elena Davert

Most Nominated: Alex Wheatley

After the dinner, the Senior Class went across Foothill Blvd. to local piano bar Piano Piano, where the above mentioned winners enjoyed free drink coupons. But what were some category suggestions that didn’t make the cut? Here are some “more inspired recommendations coming from the broader Senior Class,” as Class of 2012 President Mary Doyle puts it:

Featured image credit goes to John Faranda.

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EVENTS

Friday, April 27

Noon: Scholarship Lunch at the Athenaeum

If you are the beneficiary of a scholarship here at CMC, take some time to stop by the Ath at noon to speak to and thank your benefactors. Besides, a free meal at the Ath is never a bad thing.

2:00 – 5:00 PM: Women and Leadership Alliance Negotiation at Pickford Auditorium

The Robert Day School is sponsoring this workshop for students and alumni. Participants will engage in a dialogue regarding negotiations, compensation, professional development, and social interaction. Alumni will be presenting and discussing all the topics, as well as role-playing various negotiation-based scenarios.

2:00 – 3:00 PM: Rose, Kravis, and Roberts Institutes Open House

Employees of the various institutes can come to hear alumni reminisce about redistricting, leadership, and environmental studies in years past.

2:30 – 4:00 PM: Speed Thesising Outside Bauer

Now that seniors have finished their theses, the alumni would like to see and hear about them. Come and pitch your thesis (if you can bear to think about it anymore)!  Email Meghan Grebing with your topic by tomorrow if you wish to participate.

3:00 – 5:00 PM: Open House at International Place, Chicano/Latino, and Black Student Affairs Offices

Come hang out with affiliated alumni and see where their degrees have taken them, be it domestic or around the world.

4:00 – 5:00 PM: Mi Casa Es Su Casa Reception

Swing by the Alumni Tent outside of Bauer to hear from alumni who may have lived in the same dorm room that you now occupy. If you want to, you can accompany alums back to their old dorms to relive and reminisce about some of their glory years.

9:00 – 10:30 PM: “Into Poverty: Living on One Dollar” in Pickford Auditorium

10:00 PM – 12:00 AM: RDS Speakeasy with the Winston Churchill Society in the Bauer Founder’s Room

Join the Winston Churchill Society for one of CMC’s finest traditions. Interact with professors and alumni over cigars, scotch, and a healthy amount of conversation. A non-smoking area will be provided for those who wish to avoid the smoke.

Saturday, April 28

8:00 AM: I Ran with Goldhammer

Consider this 5K around campus the unofficial Pirate Party warm-up.  Runners should meet at the Tiernan Field House on Scripps’ campus.

12:00 – 3:00 PM: Stag-a-palooza!

This is an alumni only event, but the Alumni Relations Office is looking for student volunteers who can work at the game and competition booths in exchange for a wristband to access food trucks. Email James Lippincott with your availability from 1pm to 4pm if you are able to volunteer.

2:00 – 7:00 PM: Pirate Party

A CMC classic.  Come out to Green Beach to soak up some sunshine and play pirate on the inflatable slides.  ”Please be respectful of visiting alumni…no water balloon attacks!” said Faranda.

9:00 PM – 1:00 AM: 5C Monte Carlo Party

Although this event is technically for alumni, students who are dressed up are invited to attend.  Just make sure you bring your ID.

Sunday, April 29

9:30 AM – 12:30 PM: Concours de Claremont Car Show

Have a thing for classic cars?  This is your event.  Wade Vaughn ’13 will be there showing off his 1966 Plymouth Fury III.

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TIPS AND TRICKS

1. Go to class on Friday. It may be warm and sunny out, but many alumni will be coming back to visit their favorite professors and classes. With all the alumni, it is more likely that your history class will turn into a story-telling session about your professor’s quirks and habits.
2. Be aware: Collins is closed for Saturday dinner. Plan ahead. Frary has pasta bar scheduled; Pitzer’s McConnell dining hall menu says it’ll be serving BBQ chicken.  We just might make it through.
3. Be a good host.  Be polite, share your campus.  If you see any alumni looking lost, make sure to introduce yourself and offer assistance.  Hey, you never know what you might have in common.

The official Alumni Weekend schedule can be found here.

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

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

1)   Snack and Tea

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

2)   Subsidizing

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

3)   Pirate Party

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

6)   John Faranda

7)   Winston Churchill Society

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

8)   Idea Night

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

9)    The Fountain

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

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

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

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

Both groups have eerily similar functions. The CPB is a board of elected officials that plans alcohol-free events and activities for students at Claremont McKenna College (CMC). Alexandra Cooke ’14, the current SLC chair, is required by the Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College (ASCMC) constitution to “coordinate non-alcoholic activities for the student body.” If you just did a double take, you’re not alone because CPB and SLC have essentially the exact same purpose. The only differences? CPB has deeper pockets, different funding sources and an unelected leader.

Jim Nauls helped bring Aziz Ansari to Claremont last spring

This article is not intended to disparage either Cooke or the current CPB chair Christina Khavarian ’12.  As dozens of airbrushed unicorn tattoos and decorated holiday cookies will attest, they have each done a fantastic job of keeping us entertained, happy, and well-fed inside and outside our Claremont bubble.

Still, from budget differences to election practices or lack thereof, it seems that the CPB chair and SLC chair are two positions that could easily be merged in order to truly benefit the students and be most effective. If combined, the new “dry chair” could pool monetary resources from two sources and avoid the inefficient overlap in positions that currently exists.  The position of SLC chair should be eliminated altogether and the CPB Chair should be elected by the students to allocate funds from both the DoS Office and ASCMC. This does raise a few problems: will ASCMC become nothing more than a glorified party-planning committee? Where will the money allocated to the SLC chair go? Because the CPB is not governed by a constitution, would the interests of students truly be spoken for?

Cooke sums up budgetary concerns perfectly, “The main differences between the two are simply where their funds come from and the sizes of the budgets. My budget comes from ASCMC and CPB’s budget comes from the Board of Trustees and is allocated by Jim Nauls in the Dean of Students Office.” Cooke notes that CPB’s budget is approximately 10 times larger than her SLC budget and reiterates, “I work for ASCMC and CPB works for Dean Nauls. While I have a constitution, an executive board and a budgeting committee to oversee how I spend my budget, CPB is guided by Dean Nauls.”

Don’t get me wrong, it is indeed admirable that CMC students (via CPB) are now in charge of allocating the funds the Dean of Students Office has appropriated for student activities, but it just seems convoluted to split funds (unevenly) between ASCMC representative Cooke and CPB’s 14-person board. CPB gets to sponsor the big names like Demetri Martin, take students to Dodgers  games, and bring Kogi trucks while Cooke only has the funds to sponsor No Shave November contests and cookie-decorating.

Then there’s the matter of the election process. As Cooke puts it, “ASCMC has a constitution that mandates the fair election of an SLC; CPB does not (yet).”

Indeed, this is how the election for CPB student representatives went in Appleby Dorm. Resident Assistant Jordan Santo ’12 asked his residents, “Who wants to be our CPB rep?”  Silence. “Seriously guys…someone…anyone?” Someone tentatively raised their hand, and thus, a new CPB representative was born!  It was hardly the best example of political activism at CMC, and while the process may not have been the same in other dorms, it’s hard to imagine that there was any hard-core campaigning going on.

Yes, Cooke ran unopposed, but she still had to make her future plans known and tell us what she intended to do as SLC chair.  Besides, a certain sneaky “Write-In” (John Faranda, perhaps?) gave her a run for her money by winning 27.37% of the vote. Students had to actively take thirty seconds out of their day to check boxes and that, my friends, is democracy.

While the individual members of the board were elected, Khavarian was chosen by Assistant Dean of Students and Director of Student Activities Jim Nauls and was not elected to her position.

In an earlier Forum article introducing CPB to the campus at large, Jim Nauls was quoted as saying “she will not have any more say in the events than other students on the board.”

CMC is all about choosing their leaders and controlling spending (trust me, I’ve seen Senate debate the merits of a various garden plants for over a half hour), and I find it hard to believe that this decision didn’t ruffle a few feathers. Yes, the idea of a CPB tyrant imposing miserable activities on sober students is preposterous, but shouldn’t the students have more of an active role in choosing who plans activities on their behalf?

When it comes to the CPB and SLC chair Cooke, the method of “divide and conquer” has become “divide and do the same thing with different funding and varying degrees of student input.”   Add to this the fact that there is very little if any communication between the two, and it’s clearly time to combine and conquer.

Though much of what we see from ASCMC as students are events like Monte Carlo or the “party inform,” ASCMC isn’t simply a governing body debating the merits of various themes (or so we hope).  As a group of leaders trying to create the best community for all of us, I believe ASCMC could get used to the idea of contributing what funding it previously used for SLC chair to CPB’s fund so we could benefit from both resources.

Cooke agrees that some cooperation could benefit both groups. “I think CPB and SLC have great potential to work together…the two groups should collaborate more, to maximize great events.”  If the SLC chair simply becomes CPB chair, eliminating redundancies and allowing for fair elections, CMC students can have the best of both worlds. Imagine a glorious campus where you can nosh on hand-decorated cookies while laughing uproariously at Demetri Martin. Dreams do come true.

Ultimately, both groups joining forces to accomplish the exact same thing can only create and fund even better activities for all of us. Personally, I’d like to see some collaboration or I’ll be forced to adopt the much less catchy slogan (my apologies to Patrick Henry), “Give me a fairly elected group of students with shared funding to provide booze-free entertainment, or give me death!”

For this column, I originally set out to write a post about apps. Example: “3 Apps for Every Stag” or “5 Apps to Get Me Through Thesis” or “What’s on John Faranda’s iPhone?” Turns out, a lot of people have covered this. My Google search of “top 5 apps” yielded 1.3 billion results. Moreover, I guarantee that any random selection of apps that I picked will be different than anyone else might pick. Even worse, I might miss some fantastic iPhone-only app because I have an Android phone (gasp). Such is the challenge in a world with hundreds of thousands of apps–there are almost literally too many to choose from. So rather than provoking a debate from which I might never recover, I’d like to redirect your attention to one of the truly revolutionary outcomes of the app-ified world: the Mac App Store.

It’s been around since January 2011, but was implemented so subtly that a lot of people–including many CMCers I’ve met–haven’t even heard about it. Simply put, the Mac App Store marks a turning point in how we use software for three reasons: it makes everything “an app”, it’s dead simple, and it sets a precedent. Windows users, bear with me, a similar “Windows Marketplace” is coming as part of Windows 8, so the ideas apply on both sides of the OS canyon.

The original iPhone, you might remember, didn’t have apps. In fact, the first non-Apple developers weren’t able to create apps for the phone until more than a year after the iPhone was first announced. There was no “App Store” to speak of. People still thought of software as “programs”–you bought your program, like Microsoft Office or TurboTax, on a CD, stuck it in the drive, and installed it. You could download it from the internet as well, but most of the “big things” were still coming on CDs. Moreover, most software programs were big lumbering beasts that needed a CD in order to function. The idea of a lightweight piece of technology that did one thing simply and well didn’t exist yet. You bought Counter-Strike and it dominated your computer while you were using it. The iPhone changed everything by demonstrating that it was feasible to make these simple pieces of technology, distribute them for (almost) free over Apple’s platform, charge a buck per download, and still make a significant amount of money.

What was the model that Apple used when building the App Store? The iTunes Music Store. Why? Because it worked really well. Apple had shown that people would pay for music online if the experience was really good and the music was high quality. There’s a premium to be had for not having to worry about BitTorrent or P2P and all the hassle that go along with obtaining music illegally, and Apple captured it. The iPhone App Store, and now the Mac App Store, are further extensions of the same idea. With the creation of the Mac App Store, Apple wants every single piece of software that runs on Apple computers to become an “app”. And in Apple’s dreamworld, the apps are curated so only the ones that don’t have viruses, don’t violate Apple’s terms of services, and don’t copy Apple’s own software get through. With the Mac App Store, everything’s an app, as long as it passes Apple’s gauntlet.

So what do users receive in return for allowing Apple stricter control over what goes on their computers? A better experience and better prices. The app store experience for your desktop programs. Log in with your Apple ID, click the price button to buy, and then click again to install. Everything is automatic after that, and every time you open the app store, all the available updates can be installed in just one click. It’s an exact recreation of the iPhone experience. Apple is operating under the belief that users will pay a premium price for an Apple computer becuase it offers this simplicity and elegance. You don’t have to go through the Windows install pain of downloading the install file, opening it, running “InstallShield Wizard”

EW!

and clicking “next” ten times before you can run your program, you click “install” once and watch as the program hops into your dock and a small red bar above the icon shows you the installation progress.

It’s readily apparent that Apple sees the Mac App Store as its ideal distribution platform for everything installed on your Mac. Apple’s two major software suites, iLife (iMovie, Garage Band, and iPhoto) and iWork (Pages, Numbers, and Keynote) are both no longer available in Apple retail stores. They’re up on the Mac App Store as à la carte downloads: $15 for the iLife apps and $20 for the iWork apps. This means that instead of dropping $120 on Microsoft Office, you can pick up Apple’s Word, Excel, and PowerPoint equivalents for half the price. Other flagship Apple software products, like Aperture for advanced photo editing and Final Cut Pro for professional video editing, are also available from the Mac App Store.

Perhaps the sharpest evidence of Apple’s committment to the Mac App Store platform is its chosen method of distribution for Mac OS X Lion, the newest version of its operating system. When Lion was released in July, the sole way to get the update was to install it from the Mac App Store. This meant a tradeoff–users had much less control over how the update went about, and had no hard disk backup of the OS in case something went wrong. In return, most users received the easiest OS upgrade in the history of personal computers. To make the upgrade experience even more enticing, Apple offered Lion for just $30–far cheaper than past Mac upgrades or comparable Windows upgrades. OS X Lion remains the best selling and top grossing “app” on the Mac App Store. Several weeks later, Apple released OS X Lion on a thumb drive in stores and online for $70. Nonetheless, it’s easy to conclude from the pricing and timing of Lion that the Mac App Store is Apple’s preferred method of distribution. The writing on the wall is clear: settle for Apple’s curation and limitations, and in return you’ll receive higher quality apps and a cleaner, more enjoyable purchasing experience. It’s a model that Apple used successfully used for both music and iPhone/iPad apps, and now they’re ready to make it universal.

So where does this leave Windows users? Windows, like Apple, is looking to make the next version of Windows more closely resemble the mobile phone experience its worked so hard to perfect on the Windows Phone. The Windows Marketplace for Mobile is the Windows phone equivalent to the iPhone App Store, and the early previews of Windows 8 draw heavily from the Windows Phone experience. There’s even stronger evidence though: screenshots of Windows 8 show a big icon for a “store” (right). Assuming that Apple demonstrates the viability of the Mac App Store, expect Microsoft to follow suit and try to provide a comparable experience for PC users. In neither case will these platforms replace a large swath of applications that people download from the internet, but they will capture a large much of the revenue in the desktop app market.

One final note: with these platforms, it’s clear that Apple and Microsoft both believe that there is a future for desktop applications. This differs fundamentally from Google’s philosophy that in the future, everything can and will be done on the web. I didn’t include the Google Chrome Web Store in my discussion because it presents a completely different vision–where users run all their applications inside the web browser and the desktop is just a portal to get on the internet (or is eliminated entirely).

Want to read more from Dave Meyer’s #CMC Tech Blog? Check out his technology saavy by reading Castles & Moats in the Tech Business, let him explain Twitter to you and help ease the stress of school with 3 Tech Tools to Simplify College Life.

You know that new “Plans” section on the Forum? Well, looking at it makes me extremely insecure. There is a lot of pressure here to have something impressive for this list and most of my friends are on it…but I don’t have a job. Tell me it’s all going to be okay as long as I’m doing me or livin’ my life or something else that Drake or Rihanna tells me to do.

Thanks,
Painfully Unemployed

Dear Future Vagabond,

I assume you are referencing the 35 people with jobs on the Forum “Plans” page? Of which two are freshman and one is John Faranda? Not to mention Brittany Taylor’s double clicked Oxford twin. I know what you mean though. Folks around here are skewing the post-grad unemployment rate like Scripps does 5C alcohol poisoning numbers.

I feel the same way pretty much daily. I ask myself, why can’t I get a job? I have some goodies. I’m bringing boys to the yard. Scary thoughts consume me. Will I just work at a nail salon my whole life in pink slippers and a silk kimono? I don’t know. Then the hyperventilating begins. I generally grab a plastic bag and put it over my head until I pass out like they taught us in middle school.

In the dream state of near death asphyxiation, the world begins to grow clearer. The clouds rise and there is CMC. Except, instead of Scripps standing beautifully across Ninth Street, large cement walls close us into a small fortress where everything is always perfect. I think, maybe kicking it around this joint a little longer wouldn’t be so shabby a life to live; a paper here, some drama there, the sun and Captain Getyoudrunk. But then the squirrels come. Remember this is a dream. A metaphorical dream, with squirrels.

They nibble at first, annoyingly, and then start fully attacking us. Then we’re running, grappling for solidarity. Some are lucky, they have their own ropes and pull themselves swiftly over walls and into employment. Career Services comes to help. They let us use their trampoline to bounce over into the workplace. Yet when I get close to jumping I read a sign that says, “FINANCE AND CONSULTING ONLY.” I sigh and turn away, then kick a squirrel out of frustration.

The dream ends there. I wake up and hypothesize the ending: I bazooka the wall down and walk silently into an unpaid internship. Which some people might say is not the CMC way to move into the job market. True. I mean, it’s not that I don’t want to work 80-hour weeks and have an army cot in my own office for overnights, it’s just that I don’t have the same skill set. Fair enough.

So now, dreamless in Realityville, I’m writing this response to a good friend, and feeling like there are more people out there who have this stress resting on their shoulders – job or summer internship. Expectations seem to be the fear.

Many of us at this college are so used to having plans. We’ve had them our whole lives: do good in high school, get into a top college, perform with quality, snatch up a job easier than Foam Party diseases… and when that anticipation fails us, like anything one depends on, anxiety creeps quickly. Many of our lives have been built on the equation working hard = reaching goals, and within reason, I think this often holds true. Job competition is just tougher than what we’ve faced thus far.

You might have had a 15% chance of getting into CMC. Jobs and internships employ only one or a few people at a time for each position. Then add a fat recession and a nation of qualified applicants and your opportunities dwindle like virginities at TNC. I don’t doubt you are good at what you do and are working your ass off for the fruits of success. So are a lot of people, probably with more experience.

Even if you disagree with everything I’ve said in this article, hold onto this last point. We ourselves are our hardest critics. It’s easy to get flustered when what we expect doesn’t come with ease. We’re okay, though. These next few months, this summer, will not define our lives. We are not screwing up big time because we don’t have a job or an internship, whatever. Finish thesis, finals, college, chill the fuck out. Spend the summer looking for a job, or doing something fun that doesn’t involve becoming a slave to some shit hole just because the squirrels are biting. Make decisions based on their potential to make you happy. Believe it or not, we are still young.

I know I often tell you to change your emotions like some lame ass article on the Forum will relieve your worries. I wish you all knew how much I was writing this for myself, as well. It’s not a simple adjustment. But if you are confident in what you are capable of, then be confident that something good will come along. I assume you’ll be working hard in the meantime.

Love,

A Mitch

We hope to hear yours. If you need that extra encouragement, e-mail forum@ascmc.org and we’ll share them on the Forum, anonymously, in a month.

Michael Wilner ’11, Forum Editor-in-Chief:

Graduating college seniors basically have their resolutions written for them (enjoy school while it lasts, and then get a life). I’ll just add that I’d like to do all the little things on my California to-do list– an actual list I made, on my snazzy iPad– before I kick the Claremont bucket. I’ve yet to spend time up on Baldy; I haven’t seen all of Scripps’ gardens. And what’s that Pomona Valley Mining Company restaurant on the side of the highway? All key goals for 2011.

Carl Peaslee ’11, Editor-in-Chief:

Last year I resolved to ‘get on a foreign reality TV show’ and to ‘shoot a gun’. I set my sights pretty high but I still managed to accomplish one of those goals. I’m going to leave ‘foreign reality TV show’ on the docket. I’d also be ok with any kind of minor celebrity status amongst some small sect of foreigners. Mostly, I just want to be able to say, “I’m big in Europe.” I’m also going to add ‘finish my thesis,’ ‘get out of the country,’ ‘make more puns,’ and ‘eat some weird things.’

What are your goals for 2011? E-mail them to forum@ascmc.org.

Laura Sucheski ’11, Managing Editor of News & Opinion:

I resolve to write more thank-you notes to people. I also want to be able to get in and out of a yoga headstand without seriously injuring myself. Finally, I need to make a concerted effort to check more restaurants off my eating wishlist before I leave the greater LA area.

Cara Daley ’11, Managing Editor of Life & Multimedia:

• Get the entire ASCMC Exec Board to go bungee-jumping
• Spend less time on GChat
• Beat French driving extraordinaire Alexander Reichert in a race up Baldy

Alex Bargmann ’11, Opinion Editor:

• In 7 semesters at CMC, I have never gone to Table Manners.  Now is the time.  This is one of several things left on my Claremont Bucket List – suggestions welcome.  I resolve to have the diligence to knock these off (not too worried).
• Continue my “Inland Empire” cultural immersion experience.  Last semester highlight: NASCAR in Fontana.  Next up: finally splurging on that San Bernardino County Sun subscription.
• Try to maintain reading a non-assigned book every 3 or 4 weeks.  First up: Michael Lewis’ The Big Short.  Also want to keep reading some long-form and get through my Instapaper queue.

John Faranda ’79, Vice President of Alumni Relations:

To spend more time dining with students in Collins Hall.  I think that I failed miserably at it and want to try again.  The lack of parking near Collins and the whole construction zone made it very painful for me to get to Collins for dinner or for snack on my way home in the evenings.  I’m hopeful that the construction is coming to a close and that Amherst Avenue soon will be open again so that I can at least get near Collins by car!

Arielle Zuckerberg ’11, Chief Technical Officer:

My New Year’s resolution is to develop a better sleep schedule. You know you’re zzz’s are messed up when your mother has to wake you up at 4pm because she doesn’t want you to miss the last 30 minutes of sunlight… That’s been the story of my life pretty much every day of winter break so far, and at this point, I’m just ashamed of myself. In 2011, I vow to go to bed and wake up at socially acceptable hours so that I can function like a normal human being.

Mike Whatley ’11, Staff Food Critic:

My goal is to find better places to eat that don’t require driving to LA. This, of course, leaves Carl’s Jr. as the exception.

Adam Griffith ’14, Staff Writer:

If the Mayans were right, the world will end in less than 24 months.  And with the guidance of almighty Quetzalcoatl, blessed be his name, how could they have been wrong?  Therefore, this year I resolve to completely give up on myself.  While most other Americans are likely promising to work out more, I’d like to get fat, and not just Jack Black comically chubby, but full on, need to shop online for special pants fat.  After a few months of eating only Collins Hall carrot cake for every meal, I will be able to successfully impersonate a small U-haul truck, or Michael Moore.  To complete my “new look”, I resolve to grow a mullet made of dread locks, which will allow me to fit in at both country rock concerts and reggae festivals.  Finally, just in case my new eating habits or hairstyle aren’t enough to sabotage the remaining aspects of my life, I think I might try getting a World of Warcraft account.

Caroline Nyce ’13, Staff Writer:

My new years resolution is short and sweet – to talk less and to listen more. Oh, and to sing louder.  No matter how out of tune.

Tammy Phan ’11, ASCMC President:

To stop and smell the roses more-or at least whatever’s at Collins. It’s so easy to get caught up in your own life, especially senior year, between classes, looking for a job, applying to graduate schools, writing thesis, etc. But the reason why CMC is so awesome is because of the people. Ten years from now I may not remember my grades from every class, but I will remember the simple things, like 4 AM ”study breaks” in Poppa or catching brunch in Collins after Vegas. So, I resolve to spend more time appreciating everyone and everything at CMC, and (a little) less time freaking out about graduation and entering the real world.

Jack Pitney, Professor of Government:

1. To help students and alumni find jobs and internships in a tough economy.

2. To help students publish articles in the mainstream media.

3. To write comments on student papers that are helpful and — even more important — legible.

4. To have a legislative simulation that’s more deliberative than the real Congress. (I know, I’m setting the bar really low here.)

1) My contribution to mandatory weekly French-only meals usually consists of nodding, smiling, and “je m’appelle Brie”, which is a pretty weird nickname in French-speaking contexts.

2) I regularly have to freetranslation.com the homework instructions.

3) I got a G on my French midterm.  No, really, a G.  Apparently the French are way more specific in telling you you’re a failure.

When deciding where to transfer it was a difficult toss-up between CMC and Berkeley and a major downer for CMC were the extensive general education requirements.  At Berkeley, there were no language requirements and “physical anthropology” counted as a science.  My “dance appreciation” class could have fulfilled pretty much anything.  But Berkeley has fewer sunny days, less campus camaraderie, no John Faranda, and in the end I had to follow my heart. Plus it’s much easier to feel superior to Republicans than to hippies.

So, that darned language requirement.  I’ve struggled with foreign languages since I took two years of German in secondary school (ich liebe deine brustigas?!) but I’ve never let a challenge stop me, and I’m not about to start now.  And here I am, struggling my way through my third semester of French.

Learning a foreign language has always seemed inherently mathematical to me:

de + le = du
à + quelle = auqelle
If there is no direct object or the direct object appears after the past participle, then the past participle does not agree.
If there is a direct object and it appears before the past participle, then the participle does agree.

I’m not a math major for a reason. My mind doesn’t work in that beautiful, logical streamlined way.  I took the equivalent of American high school math in my second year of college, and still barely passed.  And that was at community college. In a special slow-learning class. The kid next to me once just sneezed on his exam, handed it in, and got a 92. I got a 78.

So puncturing my politics and philosophy classes where I get to talk way too much and sound really British are these one-hour French classes, where I stumble on even basic grammar and feel like an idiot.  It’s really disheartening, and I probably would’ve given up a long time ago if Liz Morgan wasn’t on my back like a power-suit-wearing slave driver (one that I adore, of course).

But last week, a magical thing happened. I was flicking through old notebooks and found notes from one of my first French classes. They were covered in scribbles and edits, and I had obviously been really struggling with some of the most basic concepts, like sentence structure.

This is something that I don’t even consciously think about now. So, in the following day’s French class, I tried to focus instead on being impressed and pleased with how far I’d come.  Non, desolee Madame Rolland, I don’t know any of the words in today’s activity, mais oui! I understand the verb tenses you’re using, and the profanities, and the repeated use of the word “failure”! And oui, oui! I understand your general sentence construct, and that the upward inflection in your voice means you’re speaking angrily! Ahh, progress.

Credit: toothpastefordinner.com

I never would have reached this point if CMC hadn’t forced me to stick with French (or a language in general) for my general education requirement.  In fact, there are lots of things I wouldn’t know if it weren’t for the GE classes I had previously protested.  For instance, when people from my island first migrated here, they were pretty shitty to the native populations.  Mark Twain was a boss. Beowulf was not.  I might not really be here, or I might be the only human, and the rest of you might be robotic humanoids pretending to be humans, reacting to me in ways I’d expect based on my own behaviors. (Philosophy 137: Skepticism FTW).

Ultimately I wouldn’t know any of these things if CMC hadn’t forced me out of my comfort zone and into a fairly wide array of GE classes.  When you first arrive at CMC and look at your future course schedule, GEs seem daunting and frustrating; when you’re preparing to graduate and see GEs peppering your transcript amongst “the classes you actually want to take grrr,” they might seem like an annoying waste of time.  But, at least for me, GEs have truly augmented my education. Besides,  successfully finishing something that was loathed in the first place provides an odd and surprising sense of accomplishment.

So merci beaucoup, CMC. I might not j’adore my French classes right now, but in eight months’ time when I’m on the banks of the Riviera ordering “one small glass of where is the library, please” and making eloquent small-talk with cute French boys about books I was forced to read in my Lit 10 class, I’ll have you to thank.

Bises!

I hope these were not the “best” four years of our lives, but they may have been the most fun. You have to believe life gets better, but nothing will beat free Snack at 10:30 PM every school night. I’ll never forget the first time I went to snack. Prospie Josh thought he had floated himself into heaven. And it wasn’t even mozzarella sticks night. This was back when the fro-yo machine was always on and Gavin ruled the World Wok. I’ll miss Collins.

It’s one thing to say you will “miss” college and another to wake up Sunday morning after graduation, have to move out of your apartment, and start picking health insurance. I don’t remember high school graduation being this bittersweet, but that’s probably because I knew life would get much, much better in college. For many of us, the future is completely unpredictable.

I had a lot of ideas about what to write for a “Goodbye from the Class of 2010″ post. It’s my last written assignment for college, so there is a lot of pressure to not disgrace myself or give the anonymous commenters any reason to go on some crazy tangent. Speaking of which, someone should write a thesis about CMCForum.com’s anonymous-optional comment section. “Thesis ideas are everywhere.” Tangential advice: Don’t let anyone tell you your thesis is “more than just a paper.” It is just another paper.

I was going to work with friends to release a music video, That’s So North Quad, to chronicle the end of the college era. At least that’s what I tell people it would have been about. But our expectations were too high. We had a great script, but we didn’t write it down. No evidence. It would have been to the tune of a Broken Bells song remix. Or this song.

I was going to plan a senior prank, but the prospect of going to white collar prison scared me. I don’t believe they actually let you wear (and they definitely don’t let you pop) white collars in those places.

I was going to write a number of Forum posts (see list below) and I was going to compile “The Class of 2010′s Guide to CMC.” It would have come with a free CD-ROM version of That’s So North Quad.

I really wanted to make sure I passed down all the knowledge and information I had for the Class of 2014, but there’s only so much you can put into words. Too bad I gave up on CMCPedia.com. Maybe someone can get that going again?

I was going to write something like David Nahmias’ (CMC ’10) goodbye letter but took issue with the suggestion that I should pick up my own toys. Why don’t we just attach a claw to the gigantic Kravis Center crane and use that to solve the problem? Yeah, that would probably solve the toy litter problem, David.

On a more serious note, I’m a little concerned about how things at CMC are going to change in the future. For one thing, CMC is going to get a lot, lot richer. With money comes responsibility. Responsibility is a downer. As I wrote that sentence, a man walking with a baby in a stroller passed by our senior week beach house in Mission Beach. As he glanced at us, he noticed girls in bikinis, a keg, loud music, and people having a great time on our front porch. He did not look happy to have “responsibilities.”

Not sure what the future will bring, but John Faranda will keep us updated. And the Siegel Swimming Pool (where Phillips Hall currently sits) will come with a large trampoline.

I was going to write a goodbye article about graduating, life, etc. I had some thoughts about Claremont Confessions, CMC’s Dean of Students’ office, the RA system, and a multi-paragraph rant about the Admissions Office. But it doesn’t matter anymore. We’re finished with college. Time to move on.

We’ll miss you, CMC.

At the risk of breaking up the rhythm of this shoddily-written, nonsensical, unstructured goodbye post, I’ll divide the rest of this post into “Top Five Regrets” and “What I’ve Learned.”

Top Five Regrets

1. Not Coming to CMC Until Sophomore Year

Although my situation was unique, I feel bad for anyone who misses freshman year at CMC. Transferring to CMC as a sophomore (or worse, junior) puts you at an immeasurable disadvantage to the rest of the school.

2. Not Partying More

I went to Slippery When Wet at Mudd for the first time this semester. I went to my first Pitzer party a few weeks ago. I have never played Tuesday Night Beirut. I guess I fooled myself into thinking partying more would hurt my academic career at CMC. It’s just not true — nobody looks back at CMC and regrets not studying more.

3. Not Creating More Stuff

I started a website called Claremont Confessions last year. The name wasn’t my idea, but I take responsibility for the damage that ensued. I won’t go into details here, but you can see the Facebook group someone started in protest here and read a bit more about it here and here. What I regret is shutting down the site instead of using it as a springboard to launch a site that actually did something to bring the 5Cs together for more than gossip.

Another example is this website (cmcforum.com). I revived the site from its print deathbed my sophomore year, but didn’t act on or complete a lot of ideas for additional features for various reasons (couldn’t figure out how to implement it, would have taken up too much time, etc.). It was also impossible finding anyone willing to help. Thankfully, The Forum has gotten to the point where finding competent people to help, write, and run the site isn’t a major problem. I hope the site gets stronger, but as we’ve seen in the past and with any organization, one year of bad leadership could ruin it all. It might be a good idea to put some institutional controls in place for the future.

4. Drafts

Over the past couple years I’ve started drafts of articles I never published on this site. I regret not finishing more. Some were just a few sentences, most were longer. Here are some of my favorite unfinished drafts:

• “Top 10 CMC Moments in the Past Four Years”
• “What I’ve Learned About CMC’s “Problems”
• “Things I Thought I Was Promised When I Came to CMC”
• “Honnold Mudd in 2020″
• “Things I Didn’t Know About CMC”
• “Rants from a Nostalgic Senior, Part I”
• “How to Be a Good Professor at CMC”
• “Stop Whining, CMC”
• “Student Health Services Is Unhealthy”
• “The Case for the Block Plan at CMC”
• “You know it was a long night when…”
• “Computer Science Should Be Mandatory”
• “RDS Advertises on Facebook? Seriously?”
• “Ferris Wheel in North Quad”

5. Not Figuring Out What I’m Interested In

I am an economics major. I’m not interested in academia. I have a job next year in which the major appeal is having no specific focus or industry. I have interests, but I don’t have a calling yet.

What I’ve Learned

A few random thoughts:

• I agree with Patrick — leisure time in college is too valuable to spend too much of it studying. If you are at the very top of your class, I think you are doing something wrong. Or a Lit major. (That was a joke, Lit majors.)
• It’s strange that only a small number of students are allowed to e-mail the entire student body and are given no guidelines about what is or is not acceptable use.
• John Faranda and much of the Development Office are very good at their job; the Public Affairs office is not. Why don’t we have any CMC alumni working in the Public Affairs office? I bet their incentive would far exceed their salary.
• If you stop worrying about putting any information about yourself, your thoughts, etc. on the internet and start making sure that what you’re putting on the internet isn’t really stupid, you’ll be fine.
• As we’ve seen in the past few years, the print media is an industry prone to consolidation. As a microcosm, the Port Side, The Forum, and Claremont Independent struggle because our campus is too small to support three major newspapers.
• An unintentional offspring of CMC moving to Google for e-mail has been the widespread popularity of communicating through GChat. It could be improved.
• Our education system is incredibly inefficient. We spent 22 years learning what we could learn in far fewer.

Wait, let’s rewind a bit.

Pitzer President Laura Trombley and Robert Day '65.

In case you need to brush up on your Claremont Colleges history, here’s a little lesson: George Benson was the founding president of CMC.  Though he later helped out in the founding of both Harvey Mudd and Pitzer,  Benson seemed to be the embodiment of the ultimate CMCer.  Throughout his life, he was involved Los Angeles Republican party politics; he was even one of the original supporters of President Richard Nixon.  So why have our not-so-conservative neighbors chosen to honor Benson?

It turns out that Robert Day, CMC class of ’65 and former chair of CMC’s Board of Trustees, recently donated the $3 million for the renovation of Pitzer’s primary auditorium.   When given the choice, Day was the one that asked that the auditorium be named for Benson.  However, it does not seem that Day has abandoned his love for his alma mater and changed his allegiance to our northeastern brethren.   On the contrary, it seems that the move may have been entirely for the benefit of CMCers.  Rumors have begun to circulate that Day donated the Auditorium as a trade with Pitzer.   In exchange for the major gift, Pitzer would allegedly agree to allow the new Joint Science Building to be built in the lot across from the current building, right on the edge of CMC’s campus, on the plot of land that is currently the parking lot at 9th and Mills.  This would make the new structure just a stone’s throw from North Quad, and therefore very accessible to Claremont McKenna students. Though Pitzer had originally wanted the new project to be located further north, on a plot of land up towards Mudd, it seems more likely that the new building will be built much closer to CMC’s campus.

Interior of the new Benson Auditorium. Photo credit: Amy Jasper PZ '10

CMC’s VP of Alumni Relations, John Faranda, could not confirm the rumors that the donation was a buyoff. However, he did mention, “Robert [Day] is a very smart man, and we know he is very interested in helping science.”  In fact, it is part of Day’s family legacy.  Day is actually a relative of W.M. Keck, after whom the current Joint Science Center is named.   The W.M. Keck Foundation has provided funding for all sorts of science related projects, from the W.M. Keck Observatory in Hawaii to USC’s Keck School of Medicine. In other words, Day is merely continuing his family tradition, albeit in a very hands-on manner.

In some ways, it appears that Day is the epitome of a CMC graduate.  He is an extremely savvy businessman who is using his expertise in the world and his monetary power to forward a cause he feels passionately about: the well-being of CMC students.  As for naming the auditorium after Benson, this is not uncalled for.  Much of the nomenclature around all five colleges is already intertwined.  In fact, Pitzer itself was named after Russell K. Pitzer, who provided one of the crucial initial donations to get Claremont McKenna off the ground.

Fundraising is not currently underway on the project, and it will probably be years before construction on the Joint Science Center Expansion officially begins.  Perhaps years down the road, CMC students can show gratitude to Day for his contributions to science at the Claremont Colleges and a shorter walk to class.