Photo Credit: Jessica Dang

On Thursday, February 2, the Forum and the Claremont Port Side sat down with Claremont McKenna College President Pamela Gann to discuss the recent SAT reporting scandal.

President Gann began the discussion by emphasizing honesty, integrity and the core values of the college. Gann felt it was important “to recognize all of the historical work of prior leaders within the college that makes this community what it is.”

The College’s overarching goal was to get to the “root of the problem.” Gann stated that, “there was never a question that we would be forthcoming” about the falsified SAT data. The College wanted to be open and transparent in their findings and get the information out “quickly but accurately.”

Gann went on to explain the chronology of recent events and how the falsely reported data first came to her attention. On January 9, an unnamed source from within the college approached President Gann and raised a question about the accuracy of the SAT data for CMC’s 2011 incoming class.

That day, Gann asked Vice President and Dean Emeritus Jerome Garris to look into the questions raised about the SAT scores. Gann noted that Garris is a man of unquestionable integrity. Over two weeks later, on January 24, Gann sent an email to Garris to check-in on the investigation. She awoke on Wednesday morning, January 25, to an email from Garris. The email included news that someone within the Office of Admission had confessed to falsely reporting SAT data since 2005.

President Gann was in disbelief when she first heard the news.

Richard C. Vos, former Vice President & Dean of Admission and Financial Aid, is widely assumed to be at fault and resigned on Monday after news of the scandal was made public.

On the morning of January 25, Gann immediately notified Chairman of the Board of Trustees, Harry McMahon ‘75, of Garris’ findings. McMahon formed a small working group of board members that met later that day by phone. McMahon, the Board of Trustees, and Gann worked in parallel through this process. “The board was totally in sync with us as we did our work,” said Gann. Gann then held an executive committee meeting over the phone on Thursday and a full meeting of the board on Friday.

Early Monday morning, January 30, the college began telephoning all entities to which the affected data was reported and informing them of the falsified data. At 9:00 AM, Gann met with her senior staff to inform them of the news, and at 10:00 AM, she met with the Office of Admissions and Financial Aid staff. Gann’s email was sent at 11:00 AM to all students, faculty, staff, alumni, and parents of current students.

Soon after, Gann informed this year’s Early Decision I applicants—those who had already received notification of their binding admission—and Early Decision II applicants about the falsification of SAT scores.

On Wednesday, February 1, the college formally released the corrected data and sent it to outside agencies, including the New York Times, the LA Times, the college’s auditors, Moody’s Investors Service and other interested parties. The corrected data has not been sent to all entities, but the college hopes to finish their distribution by the end of the day.

Photo Credit: Jessica Dang

Gann emphasized the important distinction between data construction and data reporting. Data construction, she explained, is the way in which the college compiles the data internally. Applicants often take the SATs and the ACTs more than once, and all scores are sent to the college. Like many of its peer institutions, Claremont McKenna takes an applicant’s highest critical reading and highest math score to create the combined SAT score used for the college’s admission decision. If a student’s ACT score is higher than his or her SAT score, the former score is used in the admission process.

Gann explained that now, nearly fifteen to sixteen percent of applicants only submit ACT scores to the college. Since a higher ACT score can trump the SAT score, Gann said, “There will not be an SAT score for every student.”

Data reporting, she explained, is the way in which the college’s admissions data is presented to outside entities. According to Gann, the manipulation of SAT score data was an issue of data reporting and not data construction.

“As far as we know,” said Gann, “there was no falsification of data construction.”

Gann noted two main reasons for how the data could have been misreported for over six years. First, she said, “a sole person had too much authority over the reporting of data.” Gann admitted that there was “no internal checks and balances system in place” when the senior administrator was falsifying reports of the data.

Second, the reported SAT scores “did not trigger suspicion,” said Gann. Gann explained that the data were relatively flat, and “the falsified numbers were almost the same every year.” Nothing in the data raised any suspicions amongst those who saw it.

Citing personnel matters, protected by California privacy law, Gann could not comment on the former senior administrator’s motivation behind fudging the numbers. She also could not comment on whether the person responsible was asked to resign and whether there was a resignation letter.

President Gann has said the college will move forward next week with an independent review conducted by the law firm O’Melveny & Myers and led by the Board of Trustees. Gann emphasized that no one from within the college can be responsible for leading the independent review as it would be an obvious conflict of interest.

Though she can’t predict when the review will be completed, Gann said she hoped it would be finished quickly. The findings of the independent review will only be made public if the Board of Trustees chooses to do so. Although the college has no reason to believe that other data has been falsely reported, the independent investigation will look at data before 2005.

Photo Credit: Jessica Dang

Gann believes the college acted quickly and “used good governance” to address the root of the problem and manage the situation. Gann asserts that the College has “been very prompt, open, and honest” in its handling of the issue.

While some students have expressed frustration with the minimal communication from Gann and the college administration, Gann emphasized that her plan of action thus far has prioritized (1) obtaining the right information and (2) getting the correct information out to the appropriate agencies. Now, she said, the college is in the midst of her third objective—to repair the trust of the community—and will continue to reach out and inform students as best it can.

Gann thought going to student publications such as the Forum and the Claremont Port Side was more effective than immediately holding a town hall-style meeting. However, Gann has been present in college dealings over the past week. She attended a senior class reception on Tuesday evening, appearing at a Board of Trustees meeting breakfast with students, and may appear alongside Vice President of Public Affairs Max Benavidez on Monday evening at the ASCMC Senate meeting.

President Gann could not speculate on how this incident will impact CMC’s rankings in the future. On NPR’s All Things Considered, Robert Morse, director of data research for U.S. News and World Report, indicated that the dip in scores is likely to have only a small effect on the ranking. “It’s certainly not going to drop the school to twentieth place,” said Morse, “but I guess there’s some chance that it could drop out of the top ten.”

President Gann added that she does not see any data that suggests rankings drive a student’s decision to go to a college. “The primary reason that students come here is the high quality education and the academic program is a good fit for them,” said Gann. She continues, “rankings and guides are only part of the process.”

Many believe that rankings played a role in causing this incident. Gann stated that the Office of Admission has no explicit goals for SAT scores. “Our aspiration is to have a talented student body,” said Gann, “and SAT scores are a part of that.”

In 2002, the Board of Trustees adopted a general policy statement to guide the admissions office on shaping incoming classes. Some considerations include leadership, diversity, and support for co-curricular programs. According to Gann, one change in this policy since the beginning of her presidency was to increase the number of international students.

Despite the recent SAT score incident, President Gann believes that Claremont McKenna remains a strong institution. “We have wonderful students, wonderful faculty, and I’m very proud of this college,” she said.

Gann hopes that this unfortunate incident will also become a learning experience for students. She explained that the past week has been an excellent lesson in “crisis leadership.” Gann stated that, “lapses in leadership are where you learn the most.”

Updates: February 2, 2012 at 3:14pm

Since the incident first came to light, the college has taken a number of steps to ensure that this will never happen again.  Before any data is released from the Admissions office, two Vice Presidents in different areas of the college, that have no authority in the Office of Admission, must sign off on the data.  President Gann believes this method should be extended for all data reporting at the college. Vice President for Administration and Planning, General Counsel, and Secretary of the College, Matthew Bibbens, and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculty, Gregory Hess, signed off on the corrected SAT score data before it was released yesterday. President Gann also signed off on the SAT data.

Heath Hyatt ’12, Caroline Nyce ’13, and Nathan Falk ’14 contributed reporting.

Editor’s note. This article was updated on February 2 at 2:37pm. The original article stated that a senior administrator had “falsified reporting” of SAT data since 2005. The updated article clarifies and states the administrator confessed to “falsely reporting” the data.

On campus, the Forum broke the news of President Gann’s email concerning the fudged reports and compared a google cache of the Office of Admission webpage to its current page, and later highlighted former Dean Vos’ resignation. On Wednesday afternoon, the Forum publicized an official statement from CMC’s student government, ASCMC. Nationally, The New York Times and The LA Times were among those to first pick up the story, offering background on the events of the incident, including the score falsification, Richard Vos’ resignation, President Gann’s email to students, and the move to hire a law firm to investigate the matter more fully.

Photo Courtesy of CNN

A variety of reports have concluded that the college’s rankings will only be mildly affected, if at all.  CNN reported that according to U.S. News and World Report, SAT scores “account for about 7.5% of a school’s total score in the formula.”  In an interview with NPR, Robert Morse, the director of data research for U.S. News, speculated that while the score change wouldn’t have dire effects on the college’s ranking, it could likely drop out of the top ten.

USA TODAY interviewed Robert Franek, the senior vice president of publishing for The Princeton Review who stated that “he had never heard of a college intentionally reporting incorrect data.” However, Franek also told the Forum that he didn’t believe the score inflation would make a real difference in CMC’s standing with the Princeton Review, as their reviews are based entirely on student opinion.

Rankings aside, the Claremont Port Side conducted an in-depth investigation into how much the scores had been altered to create an upward trend in scoring. Reporter Jeremy B. Merrill ’12 published graphs which reveal critical reading scores were inflated by “an average of more than 17 points,” suggesting the score manipulation was more drastic than President Gann had originally suggested. Merrill reported an elevated mean during the past years to cover up a dip in scores and the fact that, “the freshmen admitted in 2011 — the class of 2015 — had mean Critical Reading scores that were the lowest since the class admitted in 2007.”

TIME magazine’s online newsfeed was sympathetic to CMC and criticized the rankings system for putting undue pressure on colleges to present a flawless face.  The Chronicle of Higher Education also reported on the competitive world of admissions and gave examples of several colleges in similar circumstances.  The article concluded by reaffirming, “We also maintain the belief that the system is fair and honest, and try to head off the cynicism that our families could easily adopt by viewing college admission as a rigged game of numbers and self-interest.”

As for the man responsible, The New York Times also confirmed that it was in fact Richard C. Vos the former Vice President and Dean of Admission and quoted him as saying, “No comment. It’s an internal personnel matter.”

The New York Times Education Section spent time on campus for an article entitled “Students at Claremont McKenna More Worried About Reputation Than Rankings” interviewing students who generally agreed that although the score adjustment was regrettable, it did not reflect negatively on their fellow students. Most students echoed senior Blake Bennett’s sentiment, “It’s still a great school. I just wish this wasn’t why it was getting headlines.”

ABC News reported on campus in front of the Kravis Center, gathering footage of sweatshirt-clad CMC students as a background to its report on the recent controversy.  More recently, ABC News reported that a spokesman for CMC, Associate Vice President for Public Affairs, Communications and Marketing, Max Benavidez, stated “We’re not hiding anything,” he said. “We’re the ones volunteering to tell people what took place and what we’re doing to fix it.”  The report also quoted Aditya Pai ’11, ASCMC Vice President, as saying, “[Vos’s] actions do not reflect the strength of our community, the excellence of our education, or the caliber of our people.”

Students continued to ask for answers as Nathan Falk ’14 called for a further explanation from the administration. “Only shedding light on the issue will bring us closure,” Falk said in his Forum op-ed.

In a positive take on recent events, Caroline Nyce ’13 defended her college and its community in another Forum op-ed published Wednesday morning. Nyce wrote, “The CMC they’re writing about? That’s not my school.”

It is on the front page of the Education section of the New York Times. Publications like USA TODAY, CNN, the Wall Street Journal, TIME, Bloomberg, ABC, and countless others are all writing about us. Finally, people all over the country are talking about that “small, selective liberal arts college in California.”

Credit: hhsprincipalsoffice.wordpress.com

This is definitely not how I pictured it would happen.

Students and professors are shaking their heads in disgust, and Pomona students are preparing “S-A-T” chants for the next basketball game.

I am the first one to tell you that rankings matter. You may, in fact, recall the Forum article I wrote last fall in which I argued that CMC’s rise in the national rankings changed people’s perception about the school. Claremont’s ascension into the ‘elite’ tier of liberal arts colleges convinced many students who would have otherwise gone elsewhere to choose CMC. Perhaps you are one of them.

So, yes, rankings do matter.

Do they matter too much? What could drive a “senior administrator” to adjust already-great scores? There are many unknowns here, but one thing is absolutely clear: there’s no excuse for cheating. Period.

No increase in applications, donations, or rankings could possibly justify risking CMC’s reputation. Nothing can justify fudging the numbers at any time. The fact that the admissions office apparently did it for six years straight is truly disturbing.

Claremont McKenna prides itself as an institution that educates leaders. CMC graduates often go on to run for public office or lead successful businesses. Teaching ethical conduct, no matter the circumstances or competition, is one of the most important lessons a school can teach.

The blame game has already started. Former Dean of Admissions Richard C. Vos is no longer employed by CMC. Honestly, I don’t know who is responsible. Instead of calling for scapegoats, however, I am calling for answers.

The administration owes the Claremont community a further explanation.

Where is the transparency after-the-fact? The news broke after one vague email to the student body, and after 36 hours, the Office of Public Affairs has not released any more information except that the Dean of Admissions has been replaced. Trying to close the book on the issue with an email saying we caught the bad guy and hired lawyers won’t suffice. I understand that there may be legal reasons certain details cannot be revealed, but some very general questions need to be answered before we can move on.

I want to know how these discrepancies came to light. Why now? The administration apparently found out about this in January. Does that mean January 1st? Does that mean Monday morning? Does the timing of this incident just happen to be after applications have been turned in? Was there internal or external pressure to climb the rankings? Were there cutoffs the admissions department were told to meet? Were there incentives in place that may have motivated the individual to manipulate the scores? Most of all, I would like to know how this could have happened – for six years – without anyone else knowing about it at a college that is built on leadership, accountability, and integrity.

The fact that President Gann publicized this information is an important first step. This could have been swept under the rug completely, but it wasn’t. An official from Public Affairs has agreed to address the Student Senate next week. That is a crucial next step.

We need more information. We need to have an open discussion about what happened and how we can move forward from here. The best way to get past this is to understand it and learn from it. Transparency is the only way to end the speculation and conspiracy theories. Only shedding light on the issue will bring us closure.

Is this the end of CMC as we know it? No. Will future employers look at recent grads any differently? Probably not. But will CMC’s reputation be stained indefinitely? Maybe.

Current, future, and past students had nothing to do with this incident, but we now have to pay the price.

The pride that I have in my peers and professors at Claremont McKenna remains unchanged. My professors are no less brilliant, and my peers are no less amazing. The spectacular experience that I have had here as a student cannot ever be taken away from me. My future degree is not any less meaningful to me than it was on Sunday.

But we need information. We need answers.

We need to talk openly about this, because this matters. Yes, rankings matter. Ethics, however, matter more.

It isn’t fair. And it hurts.

Needless to say, this has been a rough couple days for CMC. Not only was the news surrounding the fudged SAT reports a poor moment for the administration, but it was also a difficult moment for the Claremont community. After all, we are the ones who love this place. We serve as its principal defenders and advocates. We devote inordinate amounts of time to explaining our institution to relatives and job recruiters– even strangers on the street.  It’s an incredible place, we argue. You’ve just probably never heard of it.

Now they have. It is a great irony that we receive so much attention for an issue that is so far removed from the hearts and minds of CMCers. Rankings are not necessarily what drove us here as prospective students, nor are they what we seek to take away with us as graduates.

I did not choose Claremont McKenna College for its name recognition; I came here in spite of its nonexistence.  I chose CMC because, despite knowing it was small and little-known, I had a feeling in my core it was worth the risk.

Let’s be clear: the unethical move highlighted in the press today was made by an administrator. It was one singular employee.  Perhaps he was moved deeply by his passions for the school, but nonetheless, his actions were his and his alone.  The bad news was honorably self-reported by the administration.

Our community, on the other hand, is innocent. This incident is by no means indicative of our school culture.  After three years here, I can tell you firsthand that Claremont McKenna College is not a hyper-competitive learning institution. The students here are scholars and leaders, not grimey grade-obsessed teenagers. Where I go to school, people do not try to sabotage their peers over grade point averages. Rather, they derive pleasure in seeing their peers succeed, in every venture.

The most important thing we can do as students in this moment is simple– we must defend the community we hold so dear.   Now is not the time for internal competition, rumors or conspiracy theories. We should take this moment to reaffirm our values as Claremont McKenna College’s finest, by supporting our classmates. This is an opportunity to reevaluate who we are as members of the CMC community. No matter what your major may be, we can all agree that, as students enrolled in this institution, we are part of an incredible organization.  This community is a caring one, founded on our ability to support each other regardless of our yearly U.S. News and World Report ranking. We do not find value in petty competition for competition’s sake. Claremont McKenna is better than that.

The CMC they’re writing about? That’s not my school. What happened this week– it is not who we are. Let them not extrapolate their opinion of our admissions office to that of us as a community. While it is clear that the administration needs to make some changes, it is important to remember that our college culture is not what is coming under fire.  Professors and students alike, continue your good work. Our educational policies are not the problem. Please don’t change a thing; you’re wonderful the way you are.

Here on the front lines in pleasant Claremont, California, one fact rings true: competition does not consume, nor define us. What happened on Monday is not reflective of our school community. Claremont McKenna College is a top-tier liberal arts college unlike any other in the nation– I maintain that opinion regardless of the news that broke this week.

Unfortunately the answer is obvious, and cringe-worthy: U.S. News & World Report National Liberal Arts College Rankings.

Claremont McKenna College has been rising on this list—and other lists—for some time now. The yearly reports have been big news on campus: we glorify falling admissions rates and drool when Forbes ranks us higher than Yale. We post on our Facebook walls about how we fared relative to other competitive colleges. We put flashy banners on our homepage telling us where we stand. The 5^th and 6^th lines of President Gann’s biography on the college’s website list the school’s ratings and its admissions selectivity ranking.

The administration is obsessed with our placement on an arbitrary scoreboard, and many of us students have joined the self-congratulatory bandwagon. We find ourselves today in an environment so focused on rankings that a senior admissions officer decided that a one-percent fudge was worth his career.

Shame on Mr. Vos, but he does not deserve all the blame.

Monday’s announcement was a wake-up call. Yes, these types of rankings games must be watched more closely. Yes, everyone involved should see the door. But the administration must also address the fact that the incentive to cheat at these games in our community seems to be unusually high. Beyond firing those responsible for cheating, the administration must address both the larger system of college rankings and its attitude towards our own ratings.

The college continues to insist on measuring itself by metrics calculated by people who have never eaten in Collins dining hall. We have an unusual and unhealthy obsession with moving up that list. It must stop now. If the administration continues to see us only in numbers, we will continue to bleed integrity. CMC will win the game. But we will lose ourselves.

Why would President Gann care what U.S. News and World Report thinks about our professors? The answer is simple: high rankings lead to better students, better professors, more money for the school and better jobs waiting for us after graduation. High rankings are good—and we can measure them. How can the college possibly be asked to ignore them?

It can’t really. Somehow, we have to attempt to strike a balance between caring and obsessing about our reputation as an institution. Unfortunately, this is an issue that every college community and every admissions department in the country must confront.

Why? Because the college ranking system is broken.

We know this intuitively. Measuring Harvey Mudd College on paper with Claremont McKenna on paper is like asking a blind man to compare apples and oranges. If a high school senior were to ask you which of the two schools she should attend, telling her the square footage of Kravis or the SAT score statistics of Mudd’s freshmen would be silly. Yet these are the very numbers that colleges around the country let rule the decisions they make at the very highest levels. These statistics are not inherently important; the ranking system makes them important. That’s ridiculous.

Once a school has been named among the top 20 schools in the nation, it should not be ranked against its peers. The differences between schools at this level come from the different focuses and strengths of each school. Publishing rankings only encourages an obsession with prestige: a gaggle of kindergartners standing on tippy toes trying to see who is the tallest.

Undeniably, the actions of anyone involved with this scandal are irredeemable and absolutely inexcusable.

But the admissions department was acting on the pressures it felt by the rankings fixation of this administration. “I put pressure on myself to drive up the rankings because it is in my office’s best interest,” Dean Vos told the Claremont Port Side in an interview in 2008, a year in which scores were inflated. This administration has created an environment that passively encouraged cheating.
But the administration was acting on outside pressures too—pressures caused by a broken ratings system that we know has no baring on the quality of this education. A solution, then, to properly address what happened will be complex.

U.S. News and World Report should admit that what it publishes is based on funny math from essentially all participants. And at some point, this college should stop sending data to institutions that rank colleges. More realistically in the short term, however, this administration needs to address its ranking mania. The resignation of Mr. Vos should not be the end of this fiasco. From here, the first step is to admit we have a problem.

I didn’t come to Claremont McKenna College because it’s number nine. I came here for the people, the classes and the professors. This won’t affect those things. But we must understand that it is worth reflecting on this situation further. For those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

And we are better than this, 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!”

Henry Kravis ‘67 knows a thing or two about Claremont McKenna College’s oft-heard tagline “leaders in the making.” As co-founder of the international private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co. (KKR), Mr. Kravis has built a multi-billion dollar empire and made serious waves in the business world.

Mr. Kravis is among CMC’s greatest benefactors and most recently, contributed the funds for the new Kravis Center facility located on the westernmost part of campus. The $80 million building is the largest on CMC’s campus and houses faculty offices, classrooms, and a much-needed underground parking structure. The Kravis Center also unites five of CMC’s touted research institutes under one roof.

Three years after breaking ground, CMC celebrated the opening of the Kravis Center on Friday, October 21, 2011. As part of the convocation ceremonies, Mr. Kravis spoke with Tova Markowitz ’12 and Heath Hyatt ’12 at an Athenaeum luncheon. Mr. Kravis discussed lessons learned as a major corporate figure at KKR and emphasized the importance of a liberal arts education in today’s globalized world. In his opinion, successful CEOs are those that can innovate to adapt to a changing world and shifting markets. “There are very few companies today that aren’t somehow affected by what’s going on in the rest of the world,” said Mr. Kravis.

Below is a video recording of Mr. Kravis’s visit to the Athenaeum. The video also appears on CMC’s website.

Conversation with Henry Kravis ’67 from Claremont McKenna College on Vimeo.

CMC plans on accepting fewer than 600 of these applicants in order to avoid housing shortages. According to their calculations, this would place CMC’s acceptance rate for next year at just 11.7%. The admission rate for the Class of 2015was 13.8%.  CMC could be the most, or one of the most, selective liberal arts colleges in the nation.

Photo by Karan Malik

Last year, Pomona College just barely beat out CMC’s 2015 acceptance rate with 13.6% admittance but, as early reports indicate, growth in Pomona’s number of applications has essentially remained flat. The Office of Admissions also pointed out that Amherst college, last year’s most selective liberal arts college in the nation, had an acceptance rate of 12.8%. Swarthmore College admitted just under 15% of its applicants to the Class of 2015.  Williams College, the top liberal arts college in the nation, announced a 17% admission rate in 2011.

Over the past few years, CMC’s acceptance rate has been plummeting, and this year is a good sign that we might see that trend continue. In 2010, the school accepted 17.2% of applicants, and last year, when 4,481 applied to be a part of the class of 2015, the acceptance rate fell to 13.8%.  If those were great years, the next one may be amazing.

CMC benefits from a dropping acceptance rate. Although the administration may have to say no to more potential Stags and Athenas, increased selectivity will hopefully produce a stronger freshman class, composed of great students and promising leaders. This is just one more sign pointing to a bright future for CMC.  As it continues to grow more selective and appears higher and higher in the rankings each year, it will draw more attention from all corners of the country.  That means more public interest, more renown, and, hopefully, the end of that “I swear it’s not a community college” conversation for non-Californians.

For students here at CMC, there isn’t any doubt that we are attending one of the best school’s in the country. With any luck, this unprecedented admittance rate will force others to take notice as well. For anybody interested in watching CMC take its proper place at the forefront of America’s elite colleges, the Office of Admissions’ announcement is great news.

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!

President Pamela B. Gann

Nathan Falk: Thank you for meeting with me President Gann, I hope it’s all right if I start with some general questions about the “State of CMC.” What are the most important projects that you personally have been working on recently?

President Gann: Ok, yes of course. Obviously the biggest project that I’ve been dealing with for the last few months was finishing the Kravis Center and getting it ready for the beginning of school and its grand opening. It’s continuing to be a great success story, and we’ve probably gotten 95% there, but we still have some loose ends here and there that need to be dealt with.

Otherwise, to continue in the realm of buildings and grounds, our next big project is the renovation of the North Mall, which stretches from the Kravis Center all the way to Bauer. We have been working with student focus groups and ASCMC to figure out how best to preserve the aspects we love about the fountain, whether it is dropping students in on their birthdays, celebrating senior thesis accomplishments, or just having fun and hanging out on a really hot day. Student input was extremely important, and I think we have a design that would do that very well. Also, we want to enhance the seating areas and outdoor spaces along the North side of the Athenaeum to make that more of a useable daytime terrace, and also improve the South side of Emett Student Center, where the Hub is. Then, we’re moving forward with further planning for the section from Heggblade all the way to Bauer Center. Although there are no formal designs yet, one idea I like is putting a water feature where the four North Quad dorms meet. The first part of the renovation will be completed this coming summer, while the second piece has no detailed timeline right now.

The third buildings and grounds related project we’ve been working on, is the new Fitness and Athletic Center. This new space would house all our athletic facilities, but would also serve as a large events center where we could seat all students, faculty, and staff under one roof. Currently, we have no place on our campus that can house our 2000+ member community. We are beginning to review the programming for this project, and will start having fundraising conversations now that the Kravis Center is open and functional. We’ve already discussed how athletics will work during the 18-month transition period during construction, so we are ready to proceed with raising the necessary funds.

http://www.cmc.edu/civicengagement/

Transitioning to the Student Affairs and Academic arenas, our biggest project this year was to launch the Center for Civic Engagement, which brings together a lot of existing projects such as the community service internship programs, some community service projects that students have demonstrated interest for in past years, etc. But, the center is meant to pull all of those things together to make the programs more cohesive, robust, and garner broader student interest in the realm of volunteerism and service. We’re focusing on what I call “social capital,” which our country has always depended on. Whether that takes the form of voting, running for local or national office, working on campaigns, community volunteer projects, and environmental or sustainability projects, we want to be able to support students’ ventures in these areas, both domestically or abroad.

Another Student Affairs issue is library hours and study spaces. We are currently working with students on this, and although I don’t have any policy updates, Dean Hess and Dean Huang’s office are working with a student group to come up with a better solution.

Career Services and student needs are also a big focus for me. I think that currently the quality of services is excellent, but we need to increase the scale. Frankly, we’re trying to figure out how to best broaden the scale of our career services.

As for the purely academic side, in addition to conducting extensive faculty searches, our biggest single project is launching the Silicon Valley Program for next fall. Also, last year we ran several experimental models where we had students pursue international work for-credit. This is different than summer-internship credit, and much more similar to our program with Yonsei, where students study economics in South Korea, or the Jordan program, which we think is more likely to be a biennial opportunity.

CMC-Yonsei Korea Summer Program, Photo Credit: DSME Photographer

This year, we’re taking a very serious look at India. We have a faculty working group and student focus groups so that we can try to begin programs there in the areas of Technology, Business, Finance, Social Innovation and Entrepreneurship, not to mention culture and religious studies.

NF: Perfect, that’s quite a lot to deal with at once. Next, I’m curious, what shortcomings have you or your administration encountered in the last few months?

PG: You know, I get asked that question a lot. Just the other day at Forum for the Future, the young alumni asked, “what are your big problems,” and my answer was this: If you look at the college internally, and the things that we can affect, CMC is in a very good spot right now. The biggest single challenge is one thing you can’t control, and that’s the economy. The economy affects our financial model because our revenue comes from three sources: tuition, gifts, and returns on the endowment. So if the economy is growing very slowly, families have a harder time affording tuition, which results in more financial aid, alumni may feel more pressure about how much they’re willing to give, and then you also have lower returns on investment.

Credit: USA Today

In 2008, we had to hit the “reset” button after what happened to the economy, and the markets are just now, a few years later, about to recover everything we lost. So we haven’t gotten above the point, we’re just getting back to where we were. Still, we’ve had two years of expenditures and modest inflation, so the purchasing power isn’t back to where it was, and, since July 1, we’re looking at negative investment returns. That’s not an environment where we can take on lots of new initiatives, etc. That’s an environment where you just try to hold on to everything. So when people ask me what my biggest challenge is, it’s managing the college in such a way that we remain with forward momentum, but not in a way that makes new financial commitments that, at this point, would put financial pressure on CMC. Basically, how do we run the college, keep it moving forward, but not start anything bold or expensive, because we can’t do that in this environment.

NF: How do you want to see CMC change in the next 5 years? In the next 10 years? In the next 50?

PG: Actually, I don’t want to change CMC in the most fundamental ways. We have an incredible mission to educate leaders through the liberal arts, and I think we are accomplishing that mission. I think our students and alumni like our mission, that’s why they’re here. You had lots of choices, and why did you come to this college? I think it’s because this is the right place to be for what you wanted to accomplish while in college.

Secondly, because we’re in the consortium, we have the luxury of not having to do everything at CMC. Let’s say these are the 13 things we do really well, and there’s another 50 in Claremont. I think that’s a luxury, because we don’t have to make trade-off decisions with lots of small departments, small programs, this organization or that organization. I think this is something special to Claremont, and I wouldn’t change that. I think that we should do as much as we can to use the consortium affirmatively to make it work for us and make sure we’re a strong partner with the rest of the consortium. You were asking what we need to be doing 10 years or 50 years out, and I think we have to pay a lot of attention to the consortium. So how do we keep building those bridges and making them more and more significant and more and more distinctive in higher education?

So I think the biggest things are making sure we stay the course, and just continue to work on quality and alignment of everything we do, while building the financial resources to give us the capacity to ride out economic challenges from time to time. I personally love CMC the way it is, and just want to be able to qualitatively improve and deepen the programs we offer. For example, we fund 125-150 summer internships each year. I’d like for us to have the means to fund internships for every CMC student. I’d also like to see every CMC student provided with the opportunity to have one international experience while they are here. It could be for two weeks, it could be in January, in the summer, or for a semester.

I think we are a very innovative place and we keep testing and trying out things, and then when they work, I work to try to figure out how to scale them financially.

Me: Ok, last question. What elements of your job do you most look forward to?

President Gann: My favorite part of my job is the ability to make a difference in people’s lives every day, and I really mean this. I want every student to come here and have a life-changing experience. If I’m a young faculty member, I want him or her to find this as a very satisfactory professional home for teaching and research and identify with CMC as an institution. I feel that my primary job is to come into work every day and try to make this the best possible institution for all of the people who have chosen to be here, and I also care that our staff feels great pride in their identification with this college. What I like to do is to come into work and think somehow I’m going to make this a richer and better and more successful experience for the members of this community.