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What stalker romances reveal about liberalism’s blind spots. Image Credit: Jasper Langley-Hawthorne Is stalking someone bad? Most people would, assumedly, say yes. Stalking is a criminal offense in the state of California, incurring up to 3 years in prison and a $10,000 fine; it is also a federal felony under the 2005 Violence Against Women Act.  Now, below is an excerpt from the blurb for Navessa Allen’s novel Lights Out . As of writing this piece, Lights Out  has been on the New York Times top 15 bestseller list for 56 weeks and counting: Trauma nurse Aly Cappellucci doesn't need any more kinks. She likes the one she's landed on just fine. To her, nothing could top the masked men she follows online. Unless one of those men was shirtless, heavily tattooed, and waiting for her in her bedroom. She dreams about being hunted by one in particular, of him chasing her down and doing deliciously dark things to her willing body. She never could have guessed that by sending one drunken text, those dreams would become her new reality. Lights Out  and other books in Allen’s “Into Darkness” series are lovingly labeled by trope-trigger-happy BookTok influencers as “Stalker romance” and “Morally grey MMC” [male main character] and “Touch Her and Die.” Upon first learning about the existence of these books (and their astonishing sales figures), I found myself wondering: is the meteoric success of dark romance novels like Lights Out  and H.D. Carlton’s Haunting Adeline  something to cheer for, or something to gag at? I hope to do two things in this piece. First, I want to examine why these dark romance books have appeal, and then opine on why they really shouldn’t be appealing. Second, I want to draw out of this discussion an understanding of how liberalism, for all its power, has certain blind spots when it comes to what Leon Kass called the ‘wisdom of repugnance’ and arguments in favor of the good  rather than the right .  Let me also state up front what my argument is not : it is not an argument to ban dark romance forthwith. Nor is it an argument against the portrayal of abuse, rape, etc. in literature as a whole per se. But, ipso facto , I find the argument that there should be reasonable ways in which we ought to limit the glorification of abusive behavior compelling, especially for young adults who may, increasingly, be picking up these kinds of books. I have read, for the purposes of this article, Allen’s first book, Lights Out. Let me tell you, dear reader, I have seen and experienced it all: I laughed, I wept, I smiled and grimaced and soldiered on through a barrage of amateurish prose, throbbing genitalia and, yes, stalking and borderline criminal behavior. I did not love it. However, I do consider it important to first explore what is attractive about dark romance: I do not mean for this to be a critique of individual  readers or their preferences. There are many reasons why residents of ‘ romancelandia ’ may like these books. For one, pleasure and danger can be correlated: the thrill, so to speak, of fantasizing about sex with a morally questionable stranger may have its appeal. Equally, perhaps there is a quality of protection and devotion inherent in the stalking behavior found in these works, a quality which readers might find lacking in a post-sexual revolution era of casual hookups and online dating. Finally, and maybe most interestingly, one might argue  that the predominately female readership of dark romance is drawn to the genre insofar as it represents an opportunity to express their sexuality without violating the image of chastity and innocence that women are oftentimes expected to fulfill; the dubious consent in these works offers a means of letting loose one’s sexual imagination without making the active choice to do so.  Oppositely, I can think of a few possible grounds on which to object to dark romance. Most prominently for this piece, books like Haunting Adeline  and Lights Out romanticize (ha) abusive and unhealthy sexual relationships: dubious consent, stalking, physical violence, etc. I don’t buy the argument that dark romance novels engage in ‘safe exploration of taboo.’  I’d imagine one could find the prospect of being stalked hot right up until one becomes one of the 43% of college students  who have reported experiences indicative of stalking behavior, or one of the 25% of female college students who have reported being victims of sexual assault. One could argue that AI-generated child sex abuse material (CSAM) also engages ‘safely’ with a societal taboo, but I think you’d be hard pressed to find many ardent defenders of AI CSAM.  Some proponents of the boons of these books may maintain that our minds are not susceptible to media in this fashion, and that the appealing presentation of stalking and violence in dark romance novels has no effect on our real-world relationships. I find this contention implausible; in the words of Harry Clor, the famous philosopher of public morality, “man, the image-making and image-using animal, can be influenced for good and ill by images.” There is also empirical research  that links pornography consumption with intimate partner violence.  I believe these conflicting sentiments on dark romance now present a novel inlet into a wider discussion about liberalism and how we as a society determine moral behavior and tastes. I intend to move beyond a reductive relativist approach here. I understand that relativism is the path of least resistance when it comes to reading. After all, given how few people are picking up novels anymore, reading anything  is good, right? We all have different tastes; who am I to judge? However, taking this position amounts to putting on one’s moral blinders and plodding indifferently up the beaten track of moral isolationism . I believe that reading is not solely an instrumental act, valuable merely because it’s ‘better than scrolling TikTok.’ My interest lies in how we come to our understanding of moral judgements, both individually and societally. I don’t think it’s too radical to say that the approach to moral behavior embodied by fans of dark romance and the publishing industry more broadly is decidedly liberal (with a small-‘L’). Believers in John Stuart Mill’s harm principle, liberals’ rallying cry is: if it doesn’t hurt anyone, it’s a-ok by me . Opponents of the widespread popularity of this kind of literature most likely hail from more conservative camps: just because it doesn’t hurt anybody does not mean that it is good  for me.  Where do these divergent camps come from? I think Jonathan Haidt’s research on moral foundations theory  is a great place to start answering this question. Haidt argues that there are five foundational moral ideals that come pre-packaged in the human brain at birth: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, and sanctity. The care foundation is associated with empathy for others’ pain, fairness with reciprocal altruism, loyalty with coalition creation and maintenance, authority with hierarchy and tradition, and sanctity with disgust, degradation, and self-improvement. When debating the value of stalker romance, the sanctity and care foundations are most salient.  Those who lean left are especially concerned with the values of care and fairness, whereas those who lean right favor all five foundations fairly equally. Haidt says that when one of these foundations is transgressed, we experience feelings of moral disgust or repugnance. Haidt writes in the tradition of Leon Kass, famous bioethicist and physician, who coined the phrase the ‘wisdom of repugnance’ in an eponymous essay against human cloning.  As a purely descriptive matter, the publishing industry is overwhelmingly left-leaning . So is BookTok . This means that the industry sidelines as secondary the considerations of loyalty, authority, and especially sanctity prized by their conservative peers. What do we make, then, of the feelings of disgust, discomfort, or aversion that many people undoubtedly have regarding the prevalence of books like Haunting Adeline and the Into Darkness  series? I believe that invoking liberal values of individual freedom, care, and fairness—Mill’s harm principle—does little to resolve this tension. Bringing up the notion of ‘safe exploration of taboo’, for example, to quash someone’s (my) distaste for this kind of fiction isn’t effective, because I’m not sure whether a ‘safe exploration of taboo’ can even exist, or should exist. Just because orthodox opinion disregards Haidt’s sanctity foundation doesn’t mean that everybody  does. I sympathize with parents who may feel uncomfortable about how much of modern “literary” discourse vaunts these kinds of books, and what lessons their children may be picking up when BookTok serves them a healthy helping of Brynne Weaver, Navessa Allen, and H. D. Carlton.  That we are inclined to dismiss those parents’ concerns is, I believe, a great example of the moral ‘blind spots’ associated with the cultural dominance of liberalism.  I’ll leave off with Leon Kass’s most famous line from his essay The Wisdom of Repugnance  in full, for he can spell out the essence of my side in this moral quandary better than I: “Indeed, in this age in which everything is held to be permissible so long as it is freely done, in which our given human nature no longer commands respect, in which our bodies are regarded as mere instruments of our autonomous rational wills, repugnance may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. Shallow are the souls that have forgotten how to shudder.”

Read The Forum' s interview with Mark Lilla—political scientist, historian, and Professor at Columbia University. This interview transcript has been edited for length and clarity. Image Credit: Christophe Dellory, HarperCollins Shiv Parihar : Hello and welcome to The Forum’ s Interview series. This is Professor Mark Lilla of Columbia University, one of the premier political theorists in America today, and in particular, an expert on religion and politics. He’s speaking here at CMC about another expertise of his: the work of Alexis de Tocqueville.  Dhriti Jagadish : That is Shiv Parihar, and this is Dhriti Jagadish.  Shiv Parihar : I think classical liberalism and its future is on the minds of a lot of people right now—yourself included. And we wanted to sort of take this another direction, particularly in the context of Tocqueville, and ask, do you think there are certain cultural prerequisites for the success of liberalism? And if so, what are they? Do we have them now and where do you see them evolving in the future?  Mark Lilla : Well, we've got to be careful—especially these days—in how you use the word liberalism and to be precise about it. Do we mean liberal theory? Do we mean liberal government? Do we mean a liberal society? In which sense would you like me to answer?  Shiv Parihar : We'll say in particular, liberal government.  Mark Lilla : By liberal government, [if] we mean the idea that the state is constrained from doing certain things because of a certain sense of the inviolability of individuals, then sure, there are cultural preconditions,  they're harder to delineate a priori than they are to recognize in their absence. In the ancient world, for example, the sense of the individual's relation to the society was quite different from a society like our own, which is more liberal.  If one is concerned about, for example, limiting the arbitrary power of authority, one has to come up with a vocabulary to talk about it. And vocabularies differ in different cultural contexts. If all you mean is liberal government in that sense, obviously Tocqueville recognized this cultural factor  at the beginning of Democracy in America  when he talks about the Anglo-Protestant heritage and how it helped shape the conception of the first Americans in their relation to the environment  Dhriti Jagadish : On that note of Tocqueville, J.D. Vance has been saying that Americans won't fight for abstractions, but according to Tocqueville, it seems that we didn't really need to. It was the Europeans that had a very romantic, noble notion of self-sacrifice, whereas Americans had “self-interest rightly understood,” right: daily acts of sacrifice and restraint that benefit both them and others. What does “self-interest rightly understood” look like today?  Mark Lilla : Well, first, I'd like to question the premise of J.D. Vance. I wonder, has he seen Ken Burns’ Civil War?  Has he ever seen documentaries about World War II? Has he ever looked at monuments devoted to the heroism of Americans in battle, in Iwo Jima and other places? No, Americans will fight for an ideal and for an abstraction. Democracy, in the popular sense, is an abstraction.  Dhriti Jagadish : Does [self-interest rightly understood] accord with the kind of self-sacrifice and loftiness required to fight in the Civil War, the Revolutionary War?  Mark Lilla : No. What Tocqueville meant by the phrase is that Americans had developed a way of thinking about their communal life, so that they understood there were benefits redounding to individuals who participate. But Americans had a less developed theoretical view of this relationship thana kind of instinct, about the relation between what they did for the common and what they did seemingly purely for themselves.    The question, I suppose, is “What are people like today?” Is that what you mean?  Dhriti Jagadish : Yeah.  Mark Lilla : The closer you get to the ground, the more I think Americans seem like they always have been. Yes, it's true, we're bowling alone  now and there's less participation in certain sorts of organizations. But in moments when it becomes necessary, it’s really extraordinary how the American people get together and accomplish things together. For example, when there's a natural disaster about to strike a community in Europe, citizens will wait for the state to interview. And, of course, we now wait for FEMA (longer and longer),but as a people we still have a capacity to come out and immediately help our neighbors and the community without prompting. As you move up the chain from the local context, the local school, the sports teams your kids are on, there's less of a sense of the connection between our public participation and our private benefit. But that's been a long time coming because we became a gigantic country involved in all sorts of world affairs. The economy has become more complex. It’s hard to discern how our individual work contributes to anything. Frankly, in a globalized economy everything changes very, very quickly and you have to be adaptable.  You can imagine a past world where people could say, along with Martin Luther, that “Here I stand, I can do no other.” But that's not what life feels like for people today. It feels like surfing. And if life is surfing, and you're simply trying to prepare yourself for the next wave, [it] becomes harder to think about what one's public contribution ought or even can be.  Shiv Parihar : I wondered if I could challenge you somewhat on the JD Vance question, because you use the examples of Iwo Jima, of the Civil War. But it does seem to me that many Americans felt that they were fighting for much more than an abstraction, that they were fighting for democracy, but as it was practiced . Or on D-Day, [they] felt that even if they were fighting for liberation, they were also fighting for their homes, right? So, yes, there's the abstraction, but at least my understanding [of] Vance [is] that the soldier in the foxhole wasn't thinking of the abstraction. He was thinking of his home. And so the abstraction became secondary.  Mark Lilla : Well, alas, I'm old enough to have known a lot of World War II veterans growing up. And they talked endlessly about the abstraction.  Remember, America has never had large, hostile neighbors, so our homeland has never been really threatened in the way others have in most places in the world.  We both know where JD Vance wants to head with this.An idea of the homeland, an idea of this nation being like other nations that are bound by families being in places for a very long time – the whole nostalgic picture. He certainly has an agenda with that, [though] that doesn't mean that makes him wrong. But I knew people who were both World War II veterans and certainly Korean War veterans—my father, for example. Then, there was less of a sense of what the interest was. But certainly not in the Second World War.  And especially after Pearl Harbor. My parents' generation talked about that often, about what that moment was like. For people who were living in the ‘30s an isolationist mentality came naturally. , But it ended abruptly after Pearl Harbor and didn’t return until recent decades.   In Sam Tanenhaus’s biography of William F. Buckley, we learn that Buckley's brothers immediately signed up to serve, and [did] not listen to their isolationist father because they were so taken up by their sense of responsibility and the nobility of the democratic cause. Dhriti Jagadish : I guess the question is, then, where does this instinct, this aspirationalism come from in Tocqueville’s view? Because he has this understanding that Americans can be very insular. That's the big risk with democracy—that there's this mediocrity that doesn't really reach that lofty level. In your experience, where does that kind of aspiration come from?  Mark Lilla : It was only within America's encounter with the wider world that this became even a question, I think. People were fighting for many things in the Civil War, and there were certainly principles there having to do with slavery, for and against. But it really was after World War I that the country had to ask itself, “Why is this country different from every other country?” It’s striking when you think about it, but at Versailles  it took Woodrow Wilson no time at all to come up with his Fourteen Points. “This is what we mean by democracy. This is what it means to live a moral, political life as a nation.” He’s a good example of what a creedal nation we are.   You know, it's funny. Coming of age during the Cold War, I [came] to the view that ideology is the source of most of our problems, and I wondered if only we could be more practical and empirical about things. [Ideology] pushes all the wrong passionate buttons. But I have to say, I have become a bit nostalgic for the age of ideologies. They are the fruit of the effort to see how things connect and put them together into a coherent moving picture.  And to ask what we might do, as human beings, to shape the world. But there are no significant efforts to do that right now.  Nothing. Nowhere in the world.  Dhriti Jagadish : It seems like we need practice, right? Informal associations, where we're reminded of our obligations to one another.  I also think about Spain, which had a very weak civil society, which decided, “Okay, we're going to be democratic after Franco.” As we were talking about earlier, [American] institutional norms that we've had in place, of what we conceive of as  liberal democracy, have been falling. In the Spaniards’ case, they decided, “No, we're going to stick to democracy and forget about that era of Franco,” and they stuck to it. Do you think Americans are capable of that [ideological commitment], or do they need that kind of habituation and acculturation? Mark Lilla : It's a very good question. You have to remember that in the Spanish example two people mattered. One was King Juan Carlos, the other was socialist Prime Minister Felipe González. Sometimes it just depends on the right kind of leader, someone with the right idea, that can have that sort of effect. But there's no way to predict this. You know, with Donald Trump essentially we're going through a stress test right now. We won't know the result until we're out of the test.  Shiv Parihar : I wanted to talk a bit about the academy. You do really wide ranging political science. You talk about all these different countries, you go over a wide period of time. This isn't really that common in the academy anymore; you find a lot of people that sort of really focus in one place or on various niche threads. Did you think that this [genre] is worthwhile enough to make a comeback? Do you think it's outmoded at all? Because there are certainly some quantitative folks that would argue it is.  Mark Lilla : Well, the one factor that seems decisive to me is whether there's a large reading public. There was this tradition in the post-war period of very serious, very accomplished philosophers, historians, and literary critics who wrote their books tor each a wider educated public—where they didn't have to dumb things down too much. They developed a style that then had some grudging recognition within the academy. And my home institution [Columbia University] was a place that was home for a lot of such intellectuals; Lionel Trilling, Jacques Barzun, Daniel Bell, Peter Gay, [and] Richard Hofstadter were there. And all of those people wrote books that educated, non-academics read.  I'm fortunate enough to have had for almost 30 years now, , a home at the New York Review of Books , where, with the help of the founding editor, Robert Silvers, I really learned how to do that kind of writing. And so, I'm still producing it. The Review  is producing it. But who's reading it? I don't know. Who are we speaking to anymore? There is all this chatter out there, so you end up having to do it for its own sake.  Shiv Parihar : I think that the question of whether civic education has declined is almost not worth asking: the answer is “yes.” But assuming that it has, how do you see a way forward to a revival of civic education in America and more broadly?  Mark Lilla : Well, a few things are getting bundled together here, from my point of view. One is the idea of a general public that reads things about political affairs in order to be able to make decisions while voting or putting their efforts into things. The other thing is civic education in the sense of understanding how our system works, what our obligations are, thinking about the principles on which it is based, and so on. So let's take those separately.  Regarding the first, I think we’re  actually in a much better position than in the recent past. When you look at the number of books written on public policies that come out every year, the debates that are on television about them, and then, the grand debates about what our foreign policy ought to be—that's reaching many more people than in the past.  When you talk about an America past with lyceums and people going to William James’s lectures, you have to remember that 80% of the country was rural. So, most people were not seeing any of this stuff. They had a Bible and maybe a couple Shakespeare plays; that’s all they had. So one must pay attention to is what's happening to the elite, what's happened to everyone else, and the degree to which the barrier between them collapsed or disappeared.  And so, on the one hand, I would say that you have to speak down more now, if you want to reach a lot of people, but you reach a lot more  people than you did back in this so-called Golden Age. We were a much more aristocratic society in that sense, with an urban elite that was governing over a hugely rural population.  Now, in the second sense, about civic education, there I am concerned. All you had to do was watch the Jay Leno Show back in the day when he would just interview people on the street and ask them things about American government, and they had no idea how it worked. I'm also concerned because, however well-meaning, what goes under the rubric of civic education in the second sense today is based on presumptions about movement politics. So you have a class on civics, and you're all supposed to pick an issue, and you study the issue, and then you decide on your position, then you're supposed to write to your congressperson or you go to a demonstration, and so on. And so there's a kind of activist notion of what it is to participate. And certainly on the Democratic side—as you know, I'm a centrist Democrat—that leads to a skew in perspective so that the idea of civic engagement in “causes” takes precedence and not the acquisition of institutional power through parties and elections. And that's where the real power is held, not in causes.  Shiv Parihar : On the note of you being a centrist Democrat, Professor Jon Shields here at CMC wrote a piece  in the New York Times  a while ago about how liberal professors can influence conservatism more positively by being mentors for conservative students who lack center-right figures in the academy and on college campuses. And in Shields’s view, these liberal professors can stop these conservative students from going off into…I think the example he uses [is] TPUSA [Turning Point USA], [but] a much darker example would be Fuentes [and] actual Nazism. Could you talk more about how you have seen yourself fulfilling this role [at] Columbia?  Mark Lilla : You know, I feel like a lifeguard sometimes now. Because I do get these conservative students who come to me. Some of them, very few of them actually, are just ideological thrill seekers. They want to épater , you know: shock . But there are a lot of them who are just genuine seekers, also religiously, spiritually. And when they feel ignored or disrespected, and they don't have an education in the full range of conservative political thought, they often can just head off in the wrong direction. I have a couple cases of students where I felt like I just grabbed them by the collar before they jumped over a cliff, going into this stuff.  So my job is to just provide the alternatives and, at the same time, [take] them seriously. [I take] their questions very seriously and often [show] that they can be reformulated in a more moderate way—trying to shift the discussion from the culture of complaint to one of constructive projects for the future. I do feel sometimes like a lifeguard or a goalie.  Dhriti Jagadish : Can you describe your concerns with this cliff that people are jumping over? Because I think [for] a lot of students here, when they think of conservatism on college campuses, they automatically assume it's some kind of TPUSA, YAF: very showy, very activist-y. But there are lots of these intellectual circles at these elite colleges that are becoming extremely reactionary, extremely insular. A lot of these elite circles are being captured.  When you see your students heading for this cliff, what exactly are you worried about?  Mark Lilla : Well, it's mainly being in an echo chamber. The term in French is surenchérir  which means to keep outbidding someone, but it's used metaphorically in the sense of one-upmanship—[so there’s] a kind of one-upping each other for attention, ideologically.  And there's a ton of money around. If you are so inclined, you can go off and study in the summer, you can get internships; no one ever ended up in the poorhouse by working in these organizations. They are plush and there are fancy lunches, and some rich guy will invite you to his penthouse in New York. You can have fine wines and sherry and cigars, and look out over the city from his balcony.  It goes to your head. I saw that when I was at the Public Interest already  starting back in the '80s. I worked for Irving Kristol at the Public Interest , and essentially, it was a kind of brown bag institution, nothing fancy, just good talk. I've often told people who run these conservative institutions: stop putting on these fancy lunches. Give them a sandwich. Dhriti Jagadish : [There are these Great Books camps: Hudson Institute’s Political Studies, Hertog Foundation’s Political Studies, the American Enterprise Institute’s Winter and Summer Honors Programs, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s Honors Program. Do you think they're doing the kind of wining and dining to make students a bit more reactionary against their campuses and what they've been learning? Or do you think that, potentially, they're moderating and tempering some of the darker Nick Fuentes, Bronze Age Pervert, online Right?  Mark Lilla : I just don't know. And that's why I'm interested in talking to students and teachers who've been involved.  All of [these programs] have been founded in my lifetime, and I saw some of them come to be and knew the people who were running them and teaching in them. In the 1990s, I think part of the motivation [was that] this was the first wave of a kind of PC, anti-Western mood that took over campuses: “Ho ho, Western Civ has got to go,” at Stanford. There was a congruence between a small-c conservative desire to maintain a certain kind of education that they worried would be disappearing and a more political conservatism that you could start educating young people as cadres.  But my sense had been, and you can correct me, that at places like Hertog and AEI, that it was the Great Books-y side—and defending that—that came first and still comes first. And that the “cadre part” comes second—but maybe I’m wrong about that. And that also comes from people who taught there. But so much has changed, especially in the Trump years, that I don't know.  Dhriti Jagadish : You wrote in the New York Review of Books [in November 2025], the storm is coming . Where are we at now, a couple months later?  Mark Lilla : The interview was really about what I call these chthonic forces that are at work ideologically on the right now—which are coming from, in some sense, below , and not from right and left. There's an ambient apocalypticism, and apocalypticism is something that I've studied and thought a lot about in a religious context and also in relation to communism in the 20th-century: transpos[ing] messianic fever into politics. But the word apocalypse doesn't mean that everything just gets destroyed; it means the dawn of the new era. What I feel as ambient now, [is a] kind of nihilistic urge. [There’s] no sense of what it takes to build, [no] sense of the fragility of things.  It's one thing for that to exist in Trump and Trumpian followers, and the Peter Thiels of the world, and so on; it's another when that exists without a huge cultural pushback. But there's something about it that seems weirdly in tune with the times, in a way I can't put my finger on. And for me, that's the most unsettling.  Dhriti Jagadish : Thanks so much for your time. Mark Lilla : This was terrific.

Woolley Athenaeum Fellow Violet Ramanathan '27 sits down for an interview with Ken Walden. Credit: Byron Figueroa This semester, CMC’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum  welcomed a new interim director, Dr. Ken Walden. Priya Junnar, who served as director from 2014 to 2023 and served as acting director in 2025, stepped down from her role in December, following the announcement that her husband, CMC President Hiram Chodosh, will be resigning at the end of the 2025-26 academic year.  The Athenaeum, renowned as the ‘crown jewel’ of CMC, hosts guest speakers four nights a week who give keynote presentations over a formal dinner. In the past year, the Athenaeum,—colloquially known as the “Ath”—has hosted leading free speech expert Nadine Strossen, political commentator William Kristol, Pulitzer prize winning author Joshua Cohen, and John W. Dean III, a former White House advisor who played a key role in the Watergate investigation.  Interim director Ken Walden earned  his bachelor’s degree from The Citadel, a military college in South Carolina. He also holds a Master of Divinity from Duke University, and another master’s and a Ph.D. from the Claremont School of Theology. Walden is a Chaplain Lieutenant Colonel in the United States Air Force Reserve who recently served active duty in Stuttgart, Germany. He is an ordained clergy-member of the California-Pacific Conference of The United Methodist Church. Walden has previously worked in education, including as President of Gammon Theological Seminary at the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta, GA. He has also worked at Hood Theological Seminary in Salisbury, NC, and Claflin University in Orangeburg, SC. Below, read excerpts from Dr. Walden’s interview with Forum editor and Woolley Athenaeum Fellow Violet Ramanathan ‘27. Dr. Walden described his career path as “tri-vocational,” serving as an officer in the military, a college professor and administrator, and a member of the United Methodist clergy. Last year, he was assigned to the United States European Command in Stuttgart, Germany. When asked to describe the day-to-day of his role in Germany, Dr. Walden shared the following:  I worked a lot with our NATO partners and members and friends from different countries, and we worked around issues around diplomacy. What commonalities do our countries have, and where can we build upon bridges and build upon different joint interests? But I also did some traditional chaplain roles in terms of counseling. I did a lot of advising commanders. Unfortunately, when I was in Germany, we had a few deaths, unexpected deaths, unplanned, unanticipated deaths. And I participated and did the eulogy and things of that nature as well. After spending what he described as “a really good time” in Germany, Dr. Walden felt that it was time to return to the U.S., and he was excited to find the Athenaeum opportunity in Claremont, a town that he is familiar with from his time at the Claremont School of Theology. Dr. Walden is excited about the interdisciplinary mission of the Ath. Since he has worked in many different fields throughout his career, he connects with the Ath’s focus on drawing in people from a variety of backgrounds, viewpoints, and areas of expertise. He also felt called to CMC because of the college’s distinct ambition. In a time where many schools are closing or downsizing, CMC is “expanding programs, expanding staff, expanding resources, [and] also expanding buildings.” Dr. Walden also mentioned the appeal of a small college environment with a close knit community, which reflected his experience at the Citadel, Duke—which he described as having small classes—and the Claremont School of Theology.  In discussing his goals for the Ath, Dr. Walden described his desire to maintain the strong legacy that Priya Junnar has built over the years. He also cited the importance of hosting a diversity of events, including musical events like the Gospel Choir on February 2nd , the first Ath talk that Dr. Walden attended. In discussing the importance of performances like this, he said the following: Music can have therapeutic properties…We often talk about air pollution, water pollution, food pollution. Well, there's noise pollution, too. What we listen to, what we are hearing. So music presented in a very healthy way, it can help heal the body. Additionally, Dr. Walden mentioned wanting to create more opportunities for students to share their work at the Athenaeum. When asked about his transition into the position, Dr. Walden said: “My first role is to listen and learn.” He mentioned that Mrs. Junnar has been helping him understand the many moving parts of the Ath. Dr. Walden also noted that he hopes that his faith will guide him in his work in the Athenaeum. He described his faith as a source of optimism, and a part of his commitment to “mercy and grace.”  While some on campus have questioned the value of maintaining a dress code at the Ath, Dr. Walden remarked that this policy trains students well for dress codes in future professional settings: I think that the Athenaeum is smart, and the Athenaeum policy serves the students very well in terms of a dress code. And the reason being is because many of our students will be going to a variety of professions. And [in] many professions, you cannot wear what you want to wear…. I think it’s good for the students to experience a place with those kind of expectations. More generally, he remarked that it is important for students to understand the “rules of engagement” in professional settings. When he’s not working, Dr. Walden enjoys spending time outdoors: walking along the beach, swimming, hiking, and visiting the botanical gardens. He also enjoys reading and writing, and he has authored multiple books, including Practical Theology for Church Diversity  and Challenges Faced by Iraq War Reservists and Their Families . He is currently working on a book about the first African-American to graduate from the Citadel, Charles Foster. Dr. Walden shared a few media recommendations for CMC students. For books, he recommended Confessions of an Economic Hit Man  by John Perkins, an autobiographical account of a man who worked to make foreign countries economically dependent on the US; and The Warmth of Other Suns  by Isabel Wilkerson, about the Great Migration of Black Americans leaving the South in the 20th century. He also recommended the film Casablanca , which he described as follows: The reason why that's one of my favorite movies is because it deals with politics. It deals with national identity. It deals with the complexities of relationships, romantic relationships, but it also deals with the complexities of friendships, and the complexities of different seasons of life. And it's packaged in such a profound way… I’ve seen that movie about 50 times. As a closing remark, Dr. Walden commented that he wants to serve as a mentor to the CMC community: “to give students small pieces of advice that could make a big difference in their lives, for the better.”

Learning for learning’s sake doesn’t have to preclude career advancement.   Antioch College, an abolitionist liberal arts institution, in the 19th-century. (Credit: Wikimedia Commons ). The liberal arts in America have moved away from their traditional mission of providing students a space for inquiry while educating them about the intellectual foundations of their civilization. The intellectual garden of liberalism welcomed the matriculating student to frolic within the bounds of firm walls that excluded rabble rousers, left and right alike. This educational model was rejected en masse from the 1960s onwards, by research-heavy academia demanding that professors “publish or perish” rather than teach, and by students who sought to deconstruct their moral foundations. Thus, the walls of the liberal garden have been torn down, and the weeds have set in. The rise of niche academic identitarianism coupled with a wider decline in intellectual diversity  has narrowed academia’s scope so as to prevent genuine free thought. The fault of this decline does not fall on traditional disciplines of the liberal arts, but on the colleges meant to tend to the garden of ideas. In his 2005 work Privilege , Ross Douthat observes that elite college circles became the forges of an American cultural decline that began in the 1960s. Harvard pioneered the sexual revolution and pop culture drug use, its students content to rely upon easy access to birth control pills and healthy finances. This culture gradually trickled down to the rest of the American populace as students at these institutions became the premier producers of media, from Hollywood to literature. This cultural shift wrought moral havoc by making casual sex the norm. Even worse, most Americans lacked elite college students’ trust funds and secure family institutions, contributing to higher rates of child rearing outside of marriage and divorce. The decline of morality in these colleges brought about the wider erosion of American culture. This eventually reached those who had to reap the worst of the move away from traditional values. Working-class Americans were left parenting more children outside of marriage and taking more drugs than their upper-class peers.  Douthat observes how little his fellow students seem to care for the merits of their liberal arts education beyond its pre-professional dimensions, a strange decision at an institution where students are almost sure to find their way to a comfortable living. Douthat himself is far from immune to the worst of Harvard culture, chasing admission to prestigious social clubs and, of course, monetizing his young adult gossip into a memoir to propel his way to the top of The   New York Times .  A third of the American professoriate leaned right forty years ago, but the ideological bent of academia to the left has accelerated since. The lack of ideological diversity fails all students. Left-of-center students often find themselves interacting with a hollow shell of their ideologies centered on identity politics rather than a historical tradition. Surveying the Claremont Colleges catalogue on Hyperschedule, for instance, one finds more opportunities to interact with Africana Marxists or the gay liberation movement than, for instance, 18th-century radical Thomas Paine or even Vladimir Lenin .  Conservative students are perhaps failed most of all. Left without faculty mentorship, these adrift aspiring activists instead find themselves under the wing of anti-intellectual right wing radicals. When conservative students stumble upon “mainstream” conservatism they do so under the aegis of figures such as Milo Yiannopoulos that stand either apart from or against the intellectual conservatism students might have found in their departments. Very few colleges offer much in the way of teaching about the intellectual tradition of the right. It should be no surprise that students of conservative inclination, deprived of the chance to discover the anchor of history, sway into the storm of the far-right’s excesses. Liberal arts colleges in America today often claim to be the last bulwarks of educational tradition, but the problem of intellectual diversity is particularly strong there.The institutions have an average Democrat to Republican ratio of 12.7:1 among their professors, and several top liberal arts colleges have no Republicans  in their faculty at all. Conservatives in the humanities, such as those studying literature (where two percent of professors leaned right as of 1999), find themselves alienated as their field suffers from analysis steeped in niche fundamental presuppositions or ideological perspectives. The same study aggregated professors across gender studies, Africana studies, and similar fields at liberal arts colleges, finding that none at all were registered Republicans.  Ideological bias in the humanities and interdisciplinary studies has drawn conservative talent away from these fields. Searching Google Scholar, one finds  over 1,350 articles on the subject of “xenofeminism.” The whole of work found on “conservative literary criticism” yields  a mere 75 results. Other disciplines that may be seen as having a more practical application face similar failures. For instance, sociologists often fail to consider history’s most consistent social institutions — those of religion.  The liberal arts have historically balanced free inquiry with the bequeathment of a grand heritage of thought. The field of American education today seems polarized to the most radical of both views. At many schools, pursuing truth is jettisoned entirely. For instance, Kevin Roose’s The Unlikely Disciple sees the author, a Brown University student, visit Evangelical America’s premier educational institution: Liberty University. Here, free inquiry is discouraged and doctrinal inheritance becomes the paramount aim of education, thus presenting a different rejection of the liberal arts. However, Liberty may have more in common with its nemeses in “woke” academia and elite pre-professionalism than it admits. Liberty may adhere to a full ten, but, at dear old  Claremont McKenna, the universal commandment is apparently to line thy pockets. Meanwhile, elements of academic postmodernism seem to hold, at the very least, the universal truth that there is no universal truth . Enforcing adherence to conservative beliefs is little better than constraining intellectual freedom within the bounds of leftist postmodernism.  Academic institutions are failing because they have turned away from traditional liberal arts values. The answer to decline is not rejecting the liberal arts wholesale, but returning to historical understandings of their worth.  This article was published in conjunction with The Claremont Independent .

President-elect faces removal after Executive Board unanimously approved petition for recall vote. Update 3/23: The recall for the president-elect passed, as the simple majority requirement was met. There will be another call for candidates before a second electoral vote occurs. Credit: Violet Ramanathan '27 On Tuesday, March 10, Harvey Mudd College students received an email to vote on whether to recall the president-elect of the Associated Students of Harvey Mudd College (ASHMC) following a petition alleging racism and transphobia.  The petitioner, who lost the ASHMC presidential election in both of the last two years, based his complaint on a comment made by the president-elect a year earlier. In a conversation with her friend regarding last year’s ASHMC president election — in which the petitioner was running — this year’s president-elect remarked: “would you rather vote for a president who’s qualified or Black?” In an interview with The Forum , the president-elect confirmed that she made this statement. In February, the president-elect — who was president of Drinkward Dorm at the time — reached out to the petitioner and his running mate via email to apologize and initiate a meeting to talk further. At this meeting, in an attempt to explain the rationale behind her comment, the president-elect asked if the petitioner would have been offended if the comment had referred to someone trans rather than someone Black, according to a statement made by the petitioner. This comment sparked allegations of transphobia in addition to the initial accusations of racism. On Feb. 25, the president-elect and her running mate were elected. Shortly after, the president-elect was called into a meeting with the current president and senate chair of ASHMC. During this conversation, the ASHMC leaders told the president-elect that she could either step down or be dragged into a public recall vote, according to the president-elect. The president-elect asked for time to think, and shortly afterward the petitioner presented his request for a recall vote to the ASHMC Executive Board.  On March 9, less than two weeks after the election results were released, students received an email notifying them that the ASHMC Executive Board had approved a petition to hold a recall vote, and that each party would give a speech the following night. Each candidate was allowed to write a 250-word statement to attach to the recall vote, and during the speeches they were given the chance to read their statements aloud. The ASHMC Constitution  states that a recall petition may be presented to the Executive Board and, if approved by three quarters of the board, it will be sent out to be voted upon by the Harvey Mudd student body. The Executive Board approved this petition unanimously, according to minutes from the ASHMC Executive Board meeting. On Tuesday, March 10, Harvey Mudd students gathered in the Aviation Room in the Hoch-Shanahan Dining Commons to hear statements from each of the involved parties. In his speech, the petitioner reiterated the president-elect’s allegedly racist comment, before stating “I called her out on this, and she doubled down. She claimed that context and emotionality excused her. What context makes Blackness and qualification mutually exclusive? What emotion led [the president-elect] to think less of somebody’s capabilities due to the color of their skin?” The petitioner also reiterated another statement made by the president-elect, in which “she… asked if I would be offended if the choice had been between someone qualified or someone trans.” He alleged that the president-elect “lacked the integrity to apologize. Every ‘I’m sorry’ was qualified with an excuse… She never apologized to me. She couldn’t even see why she should apologize.” An email obtained by The Forum  reveals that the president-elect did offer an unqualified apology to the petitioner and his running mate. The petitioner concluded his speech by saying: “Do you want to be represented by a student who makes prejudiced comments in private? Who is incapable of accepting criticism and unable to reflect onto her actions? Who was unwilling to apologize and tried to justify prejudice? How many of you are willing to try to do the same?” The president-elect opened her speech by apologizing and taking responsibility for her actions. “I take responsibility for insensitive statements that I’ve made regarding the qualifications of Black and trans candidates, and I’m sorry for the harm I’ve caused, and I continue to take accountability.”  She noted that the conversation in question happened over a year earlier, and stated that “since then, I have engaged in transformative and restorative justice.” She mentioned conversations with deans and those hurt by the situation, and she acknowledged “that my responses have sometimes been inappropriate.”  The president-elect added that “Over the past year, I’ve worked to contribute positively to ASHMC and to Mudd.” She concluded: “I am the same person you’ve elected, and if allowed to move forward, I will continue working to uphold the Mudd values of community, curiosity, and inclusivity. I encourage anyone with further questions to contact me.” In her interview with The Forum , the president-elect elaborated that her initial comment was made in response to a friend who expressed that they were going to vote for the petitioner because he and his running mate are Black. “I didn’t mean it to be about specifically the Black identity or any specific identity,” the president-elect said. “I guess a better way to put it is, should this fundamental identity guarantee you some sort of qualification; would you rather vote for someone Black and unqualified or not Black and qualified?” The petitioner did not respond to The Forum’s  request for comment. The voting form was released after statements concluded and will remain open until March 17. The student body vote requires a simple majority for the president-elect to be recalled, at which point a new election would take place. This is an evolving story. Updates will be added as developments occur. Amy Weng CMC ‘27 contributed reporting.

Your guide to state and local housing policy. Many students of the Claremont Colleges eagerly track the moves of the president, Congress, the military, the Federal Reserve, and countless other political entities. We tend to show off this knowledge with Instagram virtue signaling and angsty Walker Wall scrawling. But how many of us know what policies are being decided in our own backyard?  On March 11 of this year, the City of Claremont unveiled Larkin Place, an affordable housing community initially proposed in 2022. Given that its construction—and controversy—has lasted longer than the academic career of any current 5Cer, its development is worth investigating, especially in the context of Claremont’s housing landscape.  This past summer saw significant victories for California’s pro-housing or Yes-in-My-Backyard (YIMBY) movement. In June, Governor Gavin Newsom signed AB 130, SB 131 , and SB 79  into law, requiring faster permitting processes, streamlining the onerous California Environmental Quality Assessment (CEQA) review, and making it easier to build housing near major transit stops. In his speech , Governor Newsom signaled his commitment to increasing responsiveness and efficiency in future building projects.  Is Claremont on board? Well, it’s complicated.  Support for YIMBY policies doesn’t neatly fit within your typical factional lines. Though Claremont is a professionalized, Democratic stronghold, the debate remains contentious in our City of Trees and PhDs. This article will discuss Claremont’s recent developments, framed by the essential facts of the state and local housing debate—consider it your one-stop-shop on the subject.  The Larkin Place Controversy Last fall, I met with Reverend Gene Boutilier of Claremont’s United Church of Christ. Boutilier is also president of Housing Claremont , a chapter of the non-profit Abundant Housing LA which is dedicated to YIMBY solutions in the Los Angeles area. Boutilier drove us to Larkin Place , then still under construction on Harrison Avenue, and explained its long path to completion.   The Jamboree Housing Corporation, a nonprofit housing developer, proposed Larkin Place in 2022 as a four-story, 33-unit development to house formerly homeless adults making no more than 30% of the Area Median Income (AMI). “Individuals will not be pulled directly from the street and placed into Larkin Place,” Jamboree notes, as the comprehensive application process requires months of preparation. The selectivity is necessary, as Jamboree provides its residents with access to wraparound services like therapy, crisis counseling, and life skills courses. Jamboree claims  that these services help 72% of their residents maintain a steady job, which Jamboree estimates lowers dependence on public assistance (CalFresh, CalWORKS, emergency room use, etc.) by over $8 million annually.  Jamboree's Larkin Place site plan. Credit: Jamboree Finished construction of Larkin Place. Credit: Claremont Courier Making Larkin Place a reality was quite an uphill battle, Boutilier reflected. The liberal and progressive residents of Claremont were theoretically  supportive of affordable housing, so long as it wasn’t happening on their  Harrison Avenue. The primary opposition group, Safe and Transparent Claremont , amassed 453 signatures to bar the development. They pointed out that Jamboree lacks a sobriety requirement, only requires voluntary participation in its services, and is too lax with its visitation rules:    “We feel that simply housing those with high needs without proper clinical supervision is not in anybody’s best interest and is an insult to all of us who have dealt with mental health and addiction issues either personally or in our family home.”  Though Jamboree insisted it would conduct background checks and closely monitor its residents, many Claremont residents voiced their concerns as soon as the proposal was announced. Or as Boutlier recalled:  “[Residents] would say, ‘If only you were serving veterans.’ Well, some of those people in [Larkin Place’s] 34 units will be veterans. ‘If only you were serving old people.’ Well, some of them will be old people. ‘If only you [built] workforce housing.’ Well, some of them will have full-time jobs.” But Boutilier also acknowledged the Larkin Place campaign’s strategic missteps. “Mistakes were made by my friends at Jamboree. [They allowed for] uncontrolled public speaking that went on and on and kind of built on itself like a firestorm.” Indeed, the first meeting with residents and developers back in 2022 was nearly three hours long, described as “sometimes raucous”  by the Claremont Courier  as developers’ statements were met with “loud protests.”  Unfortunately for Larkin Place’s opponents, subdivision (d) of California’s Housing Accountability Act  (HAA) prohibits local governments from denying approval for affordable housing projects, like Larkin Place, or reducing their proposed densities. Very limited exceptions apply. This restriction mitigates the number of veto points that local governments have had in housing approval processes, as seen in the graphic below.  Housing construction process. Credit: Dhriti Jagadish, based upon The Institute for Local Government's Planning Commissioner Handbook Furthermore, when proposing Larkin Place, Jamboree applied under AB 2162 , meaning the project received “by-right” status for its affordability. By-right developments—so long as they abide by existing zoning and building codes—need not be subjected to CEQA review and discretionary reviews by architecture commissions, planning commissions, and public hearings.  Though unnecessary, Jamboree did  opt for review  by Claremont’s Architectural Commission, hoping to receive “buy-in from the community,” according to Jamboree’s Chief Development Officer. Larkin Place’s initial design required an easement across a city-owned parking lot—a measure to ensure vehicular access—and was approved  by the Architectural Commission on January 26, 2022 contingent on the city council’s approval.  Yet, on June 28, 2022, the city council voted 3-2 to deny Jamboree’s request for the easement. This action prompted a statement  from the California Department of Housing and Community Development (HCD) alleging that Claremont had violated the HAA. “Denying the easement equates to disapproval” of an HAA-applicable affordable housing project, the HCD argued, and none of the exemptions that allowed for such disapproval applied to Larkin Place.  Claremont denied that they broke the law , arguing that Jamboree would be able to continue building Larkin Place if they designed an alternate site plan that wouldn’t require vehicular access—which Jamboree eventually did.  Larkin Place is an illustrative example of the kinds of clashes that occur between state and local oversight of housing policy—and a pricey one, with legal fees costing the city $140,000.  Claremont’s RHNA Compliance Though Claremont has significant control over its development, the city must align with California’s housing objectives. To understand Claremont’s predicament with Larkin Place—particularly, the urgency of advocates and the hesitancy of the city council—we need to dig a bit deeper into state housing laws. Consider the Regional Housing Needs Assessment  (RHNA), a state-mandated process determining projected and existing housing needs. The state and local governments work together to allot a quantity of housing units to be built by each city within an eight-year cycle.  California cities are currently in the sixth cycle, extending from 2021 to 2029. This means that Claremont is required to build 1,711 units by 2029. All cities submit a “housing element” of their general plan to the HCD to explain how they intend to meet their housing needs.  6th Regional Housing Needs Assessment for the City of Claremont. AMI = Average Median Income. Credit: City of Claremont Claremont hasn’t always been compliant with the 6th cycle. After missing the October 15, 2021 deadline  to submit its housing element, Claremont was sued  by the nonprofit Californians for Homeownership in September 2022.  The nonprofit selected Claremont and eight other cities as being among the “farthest behind’”  in building enough housing to meet their RHNA demands, according to their attorney Matthew Gelfand. In an interview with the Claremont Courier , Gelfand stated  that Claremont was an “extreme outlier in its lack of progress and its refusal to engage.”  Claremont settled the lawsuit , agreeing to adopt the 6th Housing Element by July 31, 2023 and pay legal fees. However, in April 2024, the state determined that Claremont was still  not in substantial compliance , missing required rezonings and commitments to develop Accessory Dwelling Units, among other shortfalls.  In September 2024, after a June 2024 city council vote to update  the Housing Element, the state finally determined  that Claremont’s Housing Element  was in compliance—nearly three years after the October 2021 deadline to submit.    How Claremont Plans to Meet Its Housing Needs Claremont’s Housing Element features 31 “Opportunity Sites”  that could accommodate the city’s RHNA units.  According to the element’s FAQ , one of the biggest hurdles remains zoning regulations. 27 of the 31 Opportunity Sites must be rezoned because Claremont’s current regulations do not permit the higher densities needed to achieve RHNA capacity. As such, Boutilier believes that “some of these identified Opportunity Sites are not real—they're never going to turn into real projects.” Claremont's "Opportunity Sites." Credit: City of Claremont However, developers have successfully proposed projects on some  sites at the very least. This past July, City Ventures received approval to construct a 70-unit condominium on 840 S. Indian Blvd, with 10% and 5% of its units set aside as moderate-income and low-income, respectively.  This affordable unit allotment complies with Claremont’s Inclusionary Housing Ordinance  that was passed in 2006 and strengthened  in 2021. The ordinance requires all rental and for-sale developers to reserve 10% and 5% of their units as moderate- and low-income or  make an “in-lieu payment” to the city’s inclusionary housing fund.  Boutilier is especially interested by Opportunity Sites on religious properties. California’s SB 4  provides streamlined permitting and zoning processes for religious organizations and nonprofit colleges to develop affordable housing on their properties—including by-right approval. “One of the best [Opportunity Sites] is the Claremont United Methodist Church. They have a very large property…[and] a very good committee of church leaders that really want to develop housing.”  The city is also prioritizing Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) development in a new push by many Southern Californian governments. ADUs  are independent units—often rental spaces like tiny homes, garage conversions, or granny flats—located on a lot with a preexisting primary residence. Because ADUs allow for more density, especially on single-family lots, 11 of Claremont’s Opportunity Sites are zoned with an ADU-ready Overlay .  Claremont’s Road Ahead As is the case for most California cities, Claremont’s housing burdens won’t ease up for a while. The pace of development is still sluggish. Innovative solutions meet neighborhood resistance.  For instance, the City Ventures development on Indian Hill had its fair share of opposition. The people of Claremont “argued all kinds of things” in city council meetings, Boutilier noted. “They complained that there weren't enough children's amenities on the playground, weren’t two-street driveway exits from the property, [and that City Ventures] will overpack the neighborhood with traffic.” Information campaigns matter, Boutilier noted, as we drove to St. Ambrose Episcopal Church. The Church is working with non-profit developer National Core to redevelop a portion of its parking lot for a 59-unit apartment  for low-income senior citizens. “They hired a professional who helped them orchestrate their community response [and] make the neighbor visits. The public meeting was extremely well planned [and their] pastor did a beautiful job of laying out the Christian argument for serving the neighborhood,” Boutilier admired.   Not every campaign has been successful, though. Boutilier showed me the Claremont United Church of Christ’s parking lot, which was planned as a safe overnight parking site for registered vehicles, complete with 24-hour security and access to the Church’s facilities. Since my meeting with Boutilier, however, funding for the lot was denied by the city. Canvassers for Inclusive Claremont, a 5C pro-housing group, repeatedly heard  from the lot’s neighboring homeowners that the site—located in the middle of a 6th Street neighborhood—would pose a “reduction in ‘quality of life,’” alongside complaints of “unpleasant second-story views” and “undesirables.”    Conclusion If housing policy seems complicated, that’s because it is. Indeed, this explainer is not comprehensive—it did not touch upon Claremont’s debate around renters’ rights, for example. To learn more, follow student groups like Inclusive Claremont . Read the Claremont Courier . Pay attention to the activities of Housing Claremont and Claremont Tenants United . Attend a city council meeting once in a while.  You may not agree with all of the solutions proposed—I certainly don’t. But at least the residents, activists, and leaders involved have an understanding of the problems. That’s more that can be said for many of us students.  I’ll default to one of my favorite lines from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America . We enjoy “the goods” of Claremont as mere tenants, without  a “spirit of ownership” that motivates us to propose—or at the very least, ponder—improvements. We sit back and wait for that amorphous “government” to fix things, sapping our own political willpower all the while.  If we’re going to live in a place for four years, using its utilities and patronizing its businesses, we need to pay attention to its developments. We’re not squatters.

Trump’s brand of high-stakes visual spectacle aligns precisely with a prize built on honoring temporary diplomatic disruptions.  President Donald Trump is presented with the inaugural FIFA Peace Prize at the Kennedy Center, Friday, Dec. 5, 2025, in Washington. Credit: Evan Vucci, AP While the punditry assure  themselves that the Nobel Committee would never deign to honor a figure as polarizing as Donald Trump, such self-soothing certitude betrays a historical amnesia regarding the prize’s erratic lineage. This naive belief persists even as Trump is a serious contender  for the 2026 prize, nominated by global figures clearly courting his political favor or seeking relief from U.S. tariffs. Experts insist that serious contenders reside elsewhere, yet this presumption relies on the notion that the prize rewards moral purity rather than a forceful disruption of the geopolitical status quo. If Trump were to receive the laurel, the consequent outrage would be performative and the shock entirely feigned, for the committee has long treated the mere interruption of conflict as if it were equivalent to peace.  The history of the Nobel is less about rewarding saints and more about giving out practical, often rushed awards to leaders who manage to just briefly pause a conflict. Consider the case of Theodore Roosevelt, feted for mediating the Russo-Japanese War even as the agreement he forged began to buckle under the very imperial pressures that had precipitated the conflict. The committee, fully cognizant of the treaty’s structural fragility, proceeded regardless, signaling that the capacity to compel hostile empires into a temporary pause matters more to Oslo than the longevity of the resolution.  This institutional habit of elevating symbolic disruption over settled results is nowhere more evident than in the legacy of Henry Kissinger, whose award remains a monument to the committee’s infatuation with narrative over substance. That Kissinger was honored for a Vietnam agreement that was actively disintegrating even as the citation was read suggests that the Nobel prizes the appearance of a turning point more than the turning itself. This focus on how things look is exactly why Trump is a serious candidate. The Abraham Accords provided the kind of big, historic moments that the committee finds hard to ignore. Although critics rightly note that the Accords failed to address the heart  of the Palestinian conflict, the agreements manufactured exactly the sort of high-stakes visual spectacle—Israel and Arab states formalizing ties after decades of cold distance—that the committee finds irresistible. By   bypassing the traditional, slow-moving negotiations  that usually define Middle East diplomacy, the Accords offered the Nobel Committee a clear "before and after" moment. Fundamentally, the Nobel Peace Prize is an institution built upon a contradiction that Trump’s chaotic brand of statecraft fits with unsettling precision. While the committee postures as a guardian of moral progress, its internal mechanics—a small group appointed by the Norwegian parliament operating behind sealed archives—produce a Janus-faced record that vacillates wildly between affirming conscience and rewarding raw geopolitical leverage. This structure allows the committee to treat the moral purity of a Mother Teresa or Malala Yousafzai as of equal value to the hardline pragmatism of a Henry Kissinger or Menachem Begin. Such tension is a defining feature, not a bug; the committee has learned to metabolize these opposing archetypes as proof of its own sophisticated worldview, alternating between the pulpit and the situation room as the political winds dictate.  Trump’s foreign policy, which frequently swings  from aggressive threats to sudden, business-like deals, mirrors the Nobel Committee’s own ambivalence. For example, he might threaten "fire and fury" against North Korea one day (impulsive antagonism) and then arrange a historic-looking summit with Kim Jong Un the next (transactional deal-making). This "doctrine of unpredictability"—where he trashes long-time allies while praising former enemies—resonates with a committee that has never quite decided if it wants to honor good intentions  or actual results .  Those who predict his exclusion on moral grounds fail to grasp that the Nobel is frequently a narrative instrument used to signal what the committee hopes the future might look like, rather than a reward for what has actually been achieved. Since the committee has never hesitated to elevate a potent symbol when it wishes to suggest that history has lurched in a new direction, a Trump Nobel would reflect the institution’s longstanding fascination with rupture and spectacle. The global outrage would be deafening, but the choice would be entirely, cynically consistent.

A mask, apparently, requires at least one person to be aware of its existence. Credit: Wikimedia Commons Pavement was why my father didn’t get a perfect SAT score. The way he tells the story, you’d think his British education had left him functionally illiterate. Once you fly across the Atlantic, the ground your feet step off onto is called the  sidewalk. If you walked on the pavement , you might get hit by an American Car—one of those gas-guzzling rusted pickups driven by a tanned man clad in denim or something like that. This is why we were sent to The American School, so that we knew to walk on the sidewalk.  As I barrel across my front steps, it is not semantics that captivates my mind. I am entirely preoccupied with my toes. They are nestled deep in patent red Mary Janes, the sort that reach out of the catalog with greedy little hands and lilting voices. Each foot is tucked in a sock, one old and one new, because only one foot was up for the challenge of never-been-washed-before-cotton that morning. At all times, my toes must remain at least 2.54 centimeters away from the nearest sidewalk / pavement  crack. Not for my mother’s back or my father’s spine, though (the others sometimes played perplexing games). The pavement / sidewalk  is not divided into even segments whatsoever. But the slabs of concrete must have been manufactured in a standardized manner. I have a world of questions to ask the man that assembled this particular stretch. What sort of person does something like this? The task at hand, given the suboptimal conditions, demands utmost focus. I glue my gaze to the ground, and for extra measure, I hike my knees up. My steps are horizontally timid and vertically fervent. A mother, watching from the window, sees her little girl stomping in slow motion, each exaggerated step convulsing her little purple-with-blue-polka-dots skirt, and purses her lips.  In the classroom, I don’t see that my pigtails dance alone in a sea of docile long locks, or my shiny shoes, interlocked at the ankle, harmonizing with the wall clock’s exact tick as they tap the linoleum floor. People lie when they say that we don’t have eyes at the back of our heads. We do. The way we see behind us—and ourselves from behind—is through our ears. But this mode of seeing is forever limited by the perceptivity of others. And so I was blind for years, because I was too busy watching them to notice that they never saw me.  I observe that Lisa is wearing pink socks that are a different pink from her top, but she doesn’t seem to mind that one is wrong, so I set out to not mind either. I also notice the shoes—all colors of lace-up sneakers in canvas, mesh, suede, and one pair of dull black rubber rain boots—under the row of desks in front of me. They lounge in varying asymmetric positions—pushed far out, wrapped around chair legs, hovering, resting flat—but all are relatively stationary. There is one other set of feet tapping the floor, though. I can’t see them, but I can hear them. I don’t know who he is yet. But apparently, he is allowed to poke the rest of us with the sharp end of his pencil. I don’t quite understand how he manages to do anything at all, let alone torment us with tiny stabbings, given that he seems to have his own personal classroom aid hovering over him at all times. And if you say anything to the teacher, you get into trouble, Sydney tells me over lunch. She alternates between eating singular carrots dipped in ranch and educating me, paying no mind to him being well within earshot. No one else pays him any mind either. I’ve never seen carrots that look quite like hers before, smooth bite-sized oblongs, a small pile nestled next to a tiny container of sour-smelling dressing. How much carrot must be discarded, I wonder, to make those perfect little logs? I don’t tell her this, or much of anything, yet. By the second period, I would know his name, and I would soon come to hate hearing his name, always inexplicably following mine when our teacher—the shared one—would announce pairs. This is when I make my first and only mistake. Turn and talk to your neighbor, the teacher writes on the board. A thought hurtles through me and wrenches my right arm straight into the air.  “I think you spelled neighbour  wrong.” The class goes silent, and all I can hear echoing in my ears is the tapping of my shoes and the ticking of the clock. Then he begins to laugh, laughing so hard that tears stream down his face and he’s kicking his feet and banging the table. Despite all my efforts to step carefully, I’ve stumbled onto the pavement and he’s pushed me and I know he didn’t mean to. Yet, as slender tears well in my eyes and drip down to mar my leather shoes, I discover hate unlike anything I have ever felt before. Rather than flooding outwards, it turns on itself and drills deeper into me. If I had sat with that shocking emotion for longer, perhaps I would have seen for the first time. Instead, determined to give my classmates nothing to watch, I still my shoes against the classroom floor and sit up straight. In just a few days, Justice will be my deepest desire. That and Claire, who manages to pierce everyone’s ears somehow. I learn that my shoes matter much more than the sidewalk cracks, and I vow to never be anything like him.

Meet your next ASCMC Executive Board. Credit: Claremont McKenna College On Tuesday, March 3, 2026, Claremont McKenna College students participated in the annual election to determine their representatives for the 2026–2027 ASCMC Executive Board . With a voter turnout of 59%, 807 out of 1,357 eligible students cast ballots. Amrit Dhaliwal emerged as the new Student Body President. In the first round, Dhaliwal led with 235 votes (32.6%), followed by Eliot Advani with 212 (29.4%), Katie Hodge with 192 (26.6%), and Violet Ramanathan with 82 (11.4%). After Ramanathan was eliminated and votes were redistributed, Dhaliwal remained in the lead with 261 votes (36.5%), while Advani and Hodge tied with 227 votes each (31.8%). Advani and Hodge were consequently eliminated, and Dhaliwal secured the presidency with 648 votes. Dhamar Ramirez Gomez defeated Leah Gaidos in the race for Executive Vice President, earning 378 votes (61.7%) to Gaidos’s 235 votes (38.3%). For Vice President of Student Activities, Alex Bruno ran unopposed and was elected with 541 votes. The position of Dormitory Affairs Chair went to Jonmathew Caballero Hernandez, who ran unopposed and won with 553 votes. In the Senior Class President race, Reid Jones defeated Tanveer Grewal with 115 votes (51.6%) to Grewal’s 108 votes (48.4%). For the Junior Class President role, Ibukun Owolabi ran unopposed and won with 166 votes. For the Sophomore Class President role, Meera Jakhar defeated Zoey Marzo after two rounds. In the first round, Zoey Marzo received 76 votes (38.0%), Jakhar received 75 votes (37.5%), and David Yusten Jr. received 49 votes (24.5%). After Yusten Jr. was eliminated and votes were redistributed, Jakhar secured the position with 100 votes (51.8%) to Marzo’s 93 votes (48.2%). You can read the upcoming Executive Board members' candidate statements here .

Outdoor adventure carries real risks, and wilderness medicine may be the difference between a close call and a tragedy. Mount Whitney in the Eastern Sierra Nevadas. Credit: Riley Hester The rhythm and flow of the mountains are a presence I find myself constantly craving. Early alarms, headlamps flickering in the dark, stiff legs that haven’t yet forgiven yesterday's miles. There's a familiar comfort in the repetition of steps and breath, where mental clutter dissolves and the only focus is the simple, steady motion of moving uphill. Everything becomes quieter and sharper at the same time.  And yet, it's not just about the calm. There’s something addictive about testing limits. Just look at Alex Honnold, who recently free climbed a skyscraper on live television . The pull to reach higher, to cover more remote terrain, and to move past what feels comfortable is irresistible for those accustomed to adventure. There is a particular kind of magic that comes with increased risk. I have found myself in multiple situations where the scale of danger exceeded my better judgement, yet I am quick to forget this fear and focus instead on the thrill of the story. Until recently, I felt extremely at peace with this love of risk. My parents, however, were less convinced. They encouraged me to take a Wilderness First Responder course, hoping that if something were to go wrong, I would at least have some idea of what to do. At the time, it felt like over-caution—unnecessary, I thought, considering my experience and competence in the outdoors.  Nevertheless, I heeded their advice and came to campus a week early to complete a Wilderness First Responder course through Pomona’s Outdoor Education Center (OEC). I expected to learn some basic skills—bandaging, maybe CPR. Instead, each day after class I walked home replaying scenarios I had just learned about: uncontrolled severe bleeding, spinal injuries, altitude illness, hypothermia. We ran simulations of chaotic accident scenes—packing deep wounds, stabilizing a “patient” with a suspected shoulder injury without moving their spine, and improvising splints and litters from backpacks and skis. The training was designed to feel real, with limited supplies and time pressure. I kept asking myself how I had made it through so many trips without knowing any of this. What if someone I had been hiking with had been bitten by a snake miles from the trailhead? Would I have known when a headache was just exhaustion—or the beginning of something life-threatening at altitude? The more I learned, the clearer it became that my safety owed less to control or competence than to luck. Prior to the OEC training, I had considered myself completely prepared in the outdoors. I made sure to carry many layers, enough snacks and water, iodine to filter water, headlamps, and phones with AllTrails maps downloaded. Sure, all of that preparation is important, but I had miscalculated: I was counting upon my gear and fitness alone to keep me safe. At the time, I thought that preparation meant being ready to feel uncomfortable—a feeling I expected and even welcomed—not necessarily being ready for what could go wrong.  That difference is exactly where wilderness medicine matters. It isn’t about fear-mongering or expecting the worst; it's about acknowledging that if something does go wrong outdoors, the stakes are higher and help is farther away. A twisted ankle or dehydration on campus is an inconvenience, yet those same complications miles from a trailhead might be life-threatening if you don’t know how to assess, stabilize, and evacuate safely.  The risks aren't abstract or hypothetical. Many of us have had friends or family forward us the same headline: “ Three Hikers Found Dead on California’s Mount Baldy .”  What makes devastating news—like the headline from Baldy—especially unsettling is that it’s rarely the result of a single catastrophic mistake. Beyond a lack of basic outdoor training, these tragedies often are a result of something the outdoor community doesn’t like to confront: ego. The outdoors rewards confidence and grit, but those same traits can propel us into poor decision-making. Peer pressure, summit fever, and the desire to prove ourselves can cause us to ignore warning signs, stay out too long, or take risks we wouldn’t be able to rationally justify. I am the first to admit that I love to push my limits and hate having to back down from something.  But outdoor leadership isn’t just about fitness or enthusiasm. It's also about awareness: of the people we move with, the environments we pass through, and the moments when something begins to shift for the worse. I've known multiple people at the Claremont Colleges who’ve had scary encounters outdoors, close calls with weather, and injuries that could have escalated. But when everyone makes it back safely, those experiences tend to fade with time. As a campus community, we need to take wilderness medicine more seriously. Consider attending a wilderness safety workshop at the OEC or taking a Wilderness First Aid  or First Responder Course . Be sure to always clearly communicate trip plans and work to understand region-specific risks. Wilderness medicine doesn’t fully eliminate the risk or dull the magic of being outside. Loving the mountains and craving adventure means respecting them—and respect demands preparation, not just for the summit, but for everything that happens along the way.

The underspoken dark underbelly of the AI debate. The Pied Piper leads children to their deaths with his beautiful song. Credit: Wikimedia Commons Much   ink   has   been   spilled  over the so-called “alignment problem” of artificial intelligence. Will it behave as humans want it to behave? Will it provide what humans want it to provide? My critique is not downstream of the alignment problem. I am not qualified to predict whether AI will someday misalign with mankind’s wishes. It is, however, becoming increasingly evident that AI is fulfilling our wishes faster than ever. Thus, my fear is the very opposite: that AI will accomplish its mission with immense success and that the human race will be worse off for it. In saying this, I echo Dr. Richard Jordan, a game theorist at Baylor University, who wrote an illuminating article  on his Substack last year. The purveyors of everything from Cheetos to tobacco to pornography understand human nature. Humanity's pursuit of gratification is often at odds with our own edification. If artificial intelligence can minimize the work it takes to reach our passions, I fear that we will soon drown in them.  Former Forum Editor-in-Chief Henry Long observed  our crisis of fulfillment. Modernity has bestowed upon us the ability to constantly reach small summits. With this given, Long mourns that many forget about their higher desires, preoccupied with base wants. In turn, they abandon love for lust or truth-seeking for affirmation. AI takes this to an entirely new dimension. AI’s job is to give each of us what we want. It fulfills this function like nothing we have ever made before. It can tell you what you want to hear, even if it is a lie or actively dangerous. It can show you any image you might want to see, even things that objectify or promote violence against others. One thing it will never do is call you to any higher wants or desires. The human soul contains those things most dangerous to our own flourishing. Artificial intelligence unleashes this darkness in its most consolidated form by offering to subordinate us to our own wants. Artificial intelligence can directly seek to groom its audience to focus ever more on their lowest desires by dumbing us down through a constant stream of low quality content.  American democracy has been undermined by echo chambers that weaken pluralism. AI’s programmed desire to please allows us all to make echo chambers with ourselves, lacking any need to critically think at all. Meanwhile, AI adapts to our worst tendencies in a vicious cycle. Its heavy usage by abhorrent extremists online led Grok to praise  Hitler. The stakes are more than virtual debates. They can be life and death. A Florida teenager, struggling with suicidal ideation, turned  to ChatGPT. This sickly-sweet echo chamber affirmed his wants, as AI is trained  to do to every user. His eventual death by suicide was a tragedy preventable by real human intervention.  I am most afraid for those young souls that are to be reared with artificial intelligence in place of parents and siblings. A generation ago, parents complained that their children turned to the television for entertainment over Jane Austen. A generation hence, The Avengers might seem positively intellectual compared to the immediate fulfillment of every desire through AI.  In this insidiously pleasurable manner, AI will remove the challenges that build our character. In too many sad instances, it has already robbed the beauty of the art of writing. Ray Bradbury, one of the great deans of 20th century American literature, passionately argued in Zen and the Art of Writing   that “writing is supposed to be difficult, agonizing, a dreadful exercise, a terrible occupation.” Writers are made by tearing over paragraphs, sentences, and words in rounds of edits. Human beings are made by pondering questions and the words to use in answering them, in viewing the sublime and wracking our brains for how to express that beauty through art, and in struggling through our pains.  AI can make words, make art, and transform our echo chambers into sinister halls of mirrors. It can present our desires as solutions for our problems. No amount of code can make AI sob, shudder, or save a trinket of the past for the fantasies of the heart. No amount of code can make AI human.  The Medieval European folk tale of the Pied Piper tells of a musician whose song is so beautiful that it lures a town’s children to a riverbank and off into their demise. AI is our Pied Piper, and our society is at the riverbank. We may already be tossing our children in.  This article was published in conjunction with The Claremont Independent .

With the current ASCMC term ending at Spring Break, the time has come again to elect a new executive board for the 2026-2027 academic year. The CMC student body will elect a new Student Body President, Executive Vice President (EVP), Vice President of Student Activities (VPSA), Dormitory Affairs Chair (DAC), and Senior/Junior/Sophomore Class President on Tuesday, March 3rd, 2026. Join with fellow students on Monday, March 2nd, at 10:30 pm for Collins Late Night Snack and watch your candidates as they present their platform proposals. Voting will then open at midnight and will be open for 20 hours, closing the following evening at 8:00 pm, March 3rd.  ASCMC uses an instant run-off system. Voters are asked to rank candidates. If no candidate has a majority, the least popular candidate is eliminated and ballots for that candidate have their next highest choice counted instead. This process is repeated until one candidate holds a majority, for each position.  These are your candidates for this year’s election in alphabetical order by position: Student Body President: Eliot Advani, Amrit Dhaliwal, Katie Hodge, Violet Ramanathan Executive Vice President: Leah Gaidos, Dhamar Ramirez Gomez Vice President of Student Activities:  Alex Bruno Dormitory Affairs Chair: Jonmathew Caballero Hernandez Senior Class President:  Tanveer Grewal, Reid Jones Junior Class President: Ibukun Owolabi Sophomore Class President: David Yusten Jr., Meera Jakhar, Zoey Marzo Read below to learn more about each candidate: their aspirations for ASCMC and the CMC community as a whole. Student Body President Candidates Eliot Advani Hello! My name is Eliot Advani, and I am incredibly excited to run for Student Body President. With President Dudley joining CMC next year, there is potential for major positive change in the student experience. I am eager to be your voice as CMC goes through this transformation, and I intend to revitalize dorm culture, help clubs access more funding, and champion new campus events. Before I share my platform and ideas, here are some things you should know about me. I grew up in Massachusetts, though I am a proud resident of Appleby Hall these days. I love sports, especially soccer, and am a huge fan of the intramurals at CMC. I am majoring in PPE, and I am in the RDS program. I compete on CMC’s Model UN team, give campus tours for admissions, and am currently in a heated battle to find employment. The question remains - Why am I running? I love CMC most for our community, and I feel that we need someone who is unafraid to push new, creative ideas to the leadership of the college. Having helped lead a club, played on club sports teams, and worked with admissions/deans, I know where there is room for improvement in the CMC experience. Here are my plans for new initiatives that I would start: Work with RA’s and Dorm Presidents to create inter-dorm events and competitions (think vintage CMC North Quad baseball tournaments). Increase outreach to connect alumni with clubs, teams, newspapers, etc. to secure funding for new events and travel opportunities. Establish office hours with President Dudley, where clubs/groups can sign up for times to discuss their goals, budget, and place at CMC. Create new recurring events on campus, including big-screen outdoor movie nights on Parents Field, a Student Flea/Thrift market, and team trivia at Late Night Snack. Establish connections with Claremont restaurants and businesses for student discounts. Abuse my power to get an intramural t-shirt The goal of my platform is primarily to have more students voices be heard. I want all student groups to feel that they have an equal chance at creating unique opportunities for their members, and I will ensure that dorm culture is as communal as possible. I will be a fierce advocate for your interests with the deans, board, and the president. I hope to be a part of our new era of leadership. Amrit Dhaliwal Hi everyone, my name is Amrit Dhaliwal and I am running for Student Body President! Over the past two years, ASCMC has been one of the most meaningful parts of my CMC experience. As Sophomore Class President and now Student Body Vice President, I’ve had the privilege of working with and for this community in ways both big and small. I’ve gotten to plan different events like class pregames and 4 Corners, as well as run Senate each week this term and work directly with students to address their concerns.  My focus in ASCMC has always been community! As Class President, that meant building connections through events that brought our class together, and as Vice President, it has meant listening to what you all need and following through. Some projects I have been working on this term are getting outdoor heaters outside the Hub installed over the summer, water bottle fillers in North Quad lounges, and bringing back lost CMC traditions like Hub Royalty and 4 Corners. Running Senate has given me the amazing opportunity to hear directly from students who care deeply about improving our campus, and I have loved every minute of that work!  As President, I want to take that one step further. My goal is to make ASCMC more accessible, more visible, and more responsive to every student on this campus. Working in ASCMC has shown me that a lot of students have important things to say, but often feel like they can’t. Every student should feel comfortable bringing ideas and concerns, even small quality-of-life issues, to ASCMC, knowing that they will be heard. ASCMC is a student organization run by students, for students, and at its best, it strengthens our community and improves everyday life at CMC. No issue is too small if it affects student life. Whether it’s improving campus spaces, supporting new traditions, or solving everyday problems, ASCMC should be the place students turn to first. CMC’s community is its greatest strength. As President, I will work to protect and grow it, and ensure ASCMC remains rooted in what matters most: all of you. I would be honored to continue serving this campus as your Student Body President! As I have famously said:  “”The ballot is stronger than the bullet."             - Abraham Lincoln”                        - Amrit Dhaliwal Katie Hodge Hi everyone! I'm Katie Hodge, and I'm so hyped to be running for ASCMC president this year. I'm in my third year in ASCMC, currently serving as the chair of the Academic Affairs Committee. I’m also an Ath Fellow and the president of 5C Triathlon Club!  I'm running for president because I love and enjoy all the freedoms that we have as students (using DOS Vans, so much funding, events, etc.). These freedoms depend on the student’s relationships with staff, DOS, the board of trustees, faculty and so many others. I want to represent students well, using everything I’ve learned about responsible leadership in the past three years at CMC, to keep up those relationships and ensure we continue to empower students. A lot of these freedoms are in the hands of ASCMC, where we have control over club funding, student life, events, and academics. I want to use the power ASCMC has to improve our community: bringing back events like the charity dodgeball tournament, enriching campus traditions, and improving dorm culture. While I don’t have exact solutions for some of the issues on campus — like improving dorm culture and campus traditions and lowering the stress of club and job application season — I want to have conversations about them. In order to have those conversations I want to make sure all students have a voice in ASCMC. By having more curated exec and senate information, you’ll get the information, and participate in the conversations you care about without having to sort through information you don't.  In summary, I will ensure that everyone can contribute to conversations about issues on campus. I will help solve those issues using the power we have as students. I will make sure students continue to be empowered through relationships with DOS, Admin, the Board, and faculty. I hope that encourages you to vote for me but more importantly, I hope you vote — period. Ballots are open from midnight - 8pm on March 3rd! Violet Ramanathan Hi everyone! My name is Violet Ramanathan, and I’m running to be your Student Body President. I am a junior majoring in PPE with a Gender & Sexuality sequence. On campus, I have served our community as an Ath Fellow, a student journalist, and a FYG (twice!). As Student Body President, I want to focus on two main things. The first is accessibility. ASCMC should feel approachable: everyone should know what our student government does, and everyone should feel like they can be a part of it. ASCMC should work for the students, not the other way around. It should be easier for clubs and affinity groups to get funding, and it should be easier for students to host events — whether those are parties or smaller events like movie nights. As president, I will also be approachable. I am so honored to know so many of you, and I love meeting new people. I want to listen to you, learn from you, and work with you to turn your ideas into reality. The second thing I want to focus on is guiding our new college president when he comes to CMC in the fall. President Dudley will be spending the upcoming year learning what CMC is about and figuring out his leadership style, and he will be looking to the ASCMC President for guidance. I want to use this opportunity to make sure that our college administration values student voices in their decision making process. I will push President Dudley to spend time on campus and be visible to students, and I want to organize monthly forums where he talks with us about important policy decisions. Students should have a say in the design of our campus, the structure of our curriculum, and the policies that guide how we live. In my time at CMC, I’ve noticed a trend: every year, something unexpected happens that ASCMC needs to respond to. This means that it’s important for us to have people in ASCMC that we trust to respond to situations with integrity and composure while confidently standing up for our community. Throughout my many roles on campus, I always carry myself with courage and focus on what is best for our community. Please reach out if you have any thoughts, questions, or just want to talk! I would love to hear from you. Email: vramanathan87@cmc.edu Campaign IG: @Vi4Prez Executive Vice President Candidates Leah Gaidos I’m excited to be running for Executive Vice President! As your current Dormitory Affairs Chair, I’ve spent this year working directly within ASCMC, collaborating with RAs, fellow executive members, participating in Senate, and navigating the behind the scenes logistics that keep fun dorm activities happening. Because of that experience, I understand how ASCMC operates from the inside and can step into the EVP role ready to immediately focus on strengthening Senate and supporting our committee chairs. If elected, I want to make Senate more engaging and connected to students’ everyday experiences. When we don’t have club budget requests, I’ll use that time intentionally, spotlighting committee initiatives, fostering collaboration, and creating space for meaningful dialogue. By better integrating the work of our committee chairs, Senate can feel less siloed and more unified, operating as one cohesive team. And yes, MOST IMPORTANTLY, I’ll be bringing back the weekly Senate snacks. Beyond ASCMC, I’m also on the CMS Women’s Golf team. EVP is a role that requires organization, reliability, and the ability to support others, qualities I practice every day as I balance academics, athletics and my current ASCMC responsibilities. I care deeply about making student government effective, transparent, and engaging. I would be honored to serve as your EVP. Dhamar Ramirez Gomez Hello! My name is Dhamar Ramirez Gomez, and I’m excited to be running to serve as your next Executive Vice President! As an ASCMC Senator since my freshman year, I’ve learned a lot about the inner workings of ASCMC and what students want from their representatives. It would be an honor to bring that experience into the EVP role to ensure that Senate meetings are as accessible, productive, and engaging as possible for the student body.  During my term, I plan to strengthen relationships with CMC clubs and organizations by making communication and expectations more transparent, continue school-wide traditions like Four Corners, and introduce student-serving initiatives that last beyond my time in office. I won’t drone on about institutional reform, so I’ll keep it simple: I want more students to feel comfortable voicing concerns and suggesting campus improvements, and I’m committed to turning that feedback into changes the entire student body wants. ASCMC is meant to serve you, not just be emails that you skim while waiting for a caprese chicken sandwich. If you have questions or ideas, please reach out. I can’t wait to hear your thoughts! Yours truly, Dhamar Vice President of Student Activities Candidate Alex Bruno No photograph submitted. I’m running for Vice President of Student Activities (VPSA) because I want to make our campus more fun, more connected, and more memorable for everyone. My goal is simple: improve school spirit, maximize our budget, and make sure there’s always something exciting happening on campus. Dormitory Affairs Chair Candidate Jonmathew Caballero Hernandez No statement or photograph submitted. Senior Class President Tanveer Grewal Hi! My name is Tanveer Grewal - or tan - and I am running for senior class president. From being a first year guide to wrestling on fight night, I love and admire every aspect of CMC. Whether it's wristbanding and attending Pirate Party or sitting at the hub laughing with an unpredictable group of 5, I think we have an amazing grade and will have a memorable senior year. As I reflect on my time at Claremont, I am most grateful for the moments that seem small and subtle, like dinner with my dorm or hammocking on Appleby lawn. I extend this gratitude to the community we have formed as a grade.  Now that we step into our final year, I want our class to come together with a shared commitment to making memories. By hosting consistent events to attend- grounded in the pillars of inclusivity, unity, and organized action- I hope to bring our class closer. From scheduled class pregames to a camping night at Baldy resembling the WOA trip we didn’t have, I want every weekend to offer the opportunity to create memories. My favorite thing about campus is our connection to each other, which is unparalleled to any other school. My experience with the Event Committee and being a FYG gives me insight into how to create spaces for collaboration and fun, unifying events. Although senior year tends to naturally be full of changes, another change we are preparing for is our shift to a new CMC President after President Chodosh retires. This change requires a President able to facilitate dialogue, not just between him and myself, but between anyone who has a need or change they want addressed. As a member of the DOS Advisory Board, I understand what these conversations have to look like and how essential it is to uplift others to voice their needs. My plan to connect students and our administration aligns with my passion for inclusivity.  As much as I love meeting new people and smiling at the people I see on main street, I want to see more opportunities for everyone in our grade to be together. I understand that this requires keeping students at the forefront of my presidency– this means doing polls, holding conversations, reigniting the class instagram, and inviting everyone to the table to make sure this happens.  Vote Tan! Reid Jones As you may know, I’m running again for Senior Class President. I’m honestly really excited for the opportunity to represent our class one more time. Senior year is going to be special, and I want to make sure we make the most of it. From 200 Days to 100 Days to everything in between and after! I’m ready to plan events that bring us together and make this last year unforgettable. I hope this past year has shown you that I genuinely care about our class, that I listen to feedback, and that I try to be someone you can always come talk to. I want to keep building that community going into our final year. I’d really appreciate your vote. Let’s make senior year the best one yet. Junior Class President Ibukun Owolabi I think I did a good job this past year and I'd love if you guys vote for me again. Sophomore Class President David Yusten Jr. No statement or photograph submitted. Meera Jakhar No photograph submitted. Sophomore year at CMC is where everything starts to feel real. We declare majors. We apply for internships. We step into leadership roles. We stop being “new.” But in the middle of that ambition and momentum, there’s one thing that matters just as much as resumes and recruiting cycles: community. That’s what I’m running to build. I’ve always been a people person. Growing up between two cultures, India and Japan, where connection, hospitality, and bringing people together aren’t just social habits, they’re values. In both cultures, community is created intentionally: around food, celebration, and shared space. Some of my strongest memories are of rooms filled with laughter and music. That’s the energy I want to bring to our sophomore year. As your Sophomore Class President, my priority is simple: make this year unforgettable. And yes, that means throwing the best parties we’ve had yet. But more importantly, it means creating spaces where everyone feels included, excited to show up, and proud to be part of the Class of 2028. CMC works hard. We grind through problem sets, case interviews, and late-night study sessions at Poppa. We deserve social events that match that energy. Events that feel intentional, creative, and actually fun. I want themed parties people talk about weeks later. I want collaborations across the 5Cs. I want formals that feel elevated but still effortless. I want spontaneous pop-ups that break up stressful weeks. Sophomore year shouldn’t just be productive, but also electric. I’m someone who genuinely loves bringing people together. Whether it’s planning a birthday surprise or convincing everyone to stay out “just one more hour,” I care about making sure no one feels left out. Social life isn’t about exclusivity, it’s about connection. The best nights aren’t about who’s there, but how everyone feels while they’re there. Beyond events, I want to make sure our class feels heard. If you want something different like a new theme, a daytime event, a 5C collaboration, or a cultural celebration, I want that feedback. This role isn’t about one person planning parties. It’s about representing what our class actually wants. Sophomore year is our chance to define our identity. Let’s make it bold. Let’s make it fun. Let’s make it something we’ll look back on and say, “That was the year.” If you want a president who will bring energy, creativity, and genuine love for this community, vote for me. Let’s make sophomore year iconic. Zoey Marzo Hi everyone! I'm Zoey Marzo and I'm running to be your Sophomore Class President. I'm from Whitefish, Montana, love skiing, baking, and pickleball, and I've been your First Year Class President this year. Getting to know you all has honestly been one of the best parts of freshman year, and I really enjoyed planning events like Freshman Frat and spending time with you guys. My term as First Year President ends next week, but I'm not ready to stop serving our class! As Sophomore President, I want to finish out this semester strong with events like Freshman Throwback Day (writing letters to our future selves, making slime, playing with Legos, and eating good food) and a class pre-game for Wedding Party in the coming weeks. Through this year, I've learned how to navigate the whole ASCMC system and, more importantly, what events you all actually want to attend (not dating games). I know I can do better with gathering your input and feedback. This past year I tried emails and GroupMe but I want to test out new tactics to make sure everyone's voice is heard. If you have ideas on how to improve, I'm all ears! I've loved being your president this year and would be honored to continue building our class culture into sophomore year. Vote Zoey for Sophomore Class President!