Editor:

I do not want to appear to be one of those aging malcontents who hurl imprecations against their alma mater long after leaving it. In fact, I have every reason to be thankful for my four years at Pomona College.

If I had not gone there, I would not have met the mother of my two sons or now be on close terms with either Father Hayes or Professor McCumber. I meant my jibes in the piece about Jake Oken-Berg to be gentle. I admit that Smith Student Center rather makes me gasp at its grandiosity, and saying that it looks as if it had been designed by Albert Speer is not, honestly, a stretch toward hyperbole. Have you ever seen the plans Speer drew up for the Berlin Hitler would build after the war? The Smith Student Center would fit comfortably in that dreamed-of Berlin. Jake did remark, and I did quote him on it, that the new center was not "student-friendly," but his remark was superfluous, because one grasps that at a glance. It is, as I wrote, an ideal backdrop for a torchlight rally, and it would make an excellent train station.

In my (implied) criticism of Dean Quinley, I was, oh, ever so deft and indirect. The occasion of my encountering her was a meeting of a committee to search for a new director of career development. I was following Mayor Oken-Berg around like a pup, and I am afraid the good dean had no idea why I was sitting at the table and, in my affable and disarming way, contributing to the discussion, or, rather, attempting to. In the article I wrote, I said that Dean Quinley, through long years of dealing with undergraduates, had schooled her face to express varying shades of disdain and dubiety. I wrote this not to make a dig at the dean but as a reporter who prides himself on getting it right. I am sure that scores of students at Pomona College, reading that passage, would remember having observed something similar.

As it happened, one of the students on the committee remarked at the beginning of the meeting that many Pomona students are going to CMC for career development services. Somebody else remarked that these are probably mostly econ students (i.e., a special breed). I stated that I had worked for 13 years at CMC and had observed from close by the evolution of the career development office there, and I may have intimated that Pomona would do well to emulate CMC. This, of course, never goes down well at Pomona College, which has always, since 1946, looked down its long straight nose at CMC, and the other northern colleges. CMC is an upstart institution and very Republican and business oriented, no doubt, but it does a few things well, and career development is one of them. Dean Quinley seemed to be of the opinion that a good career development director should be, first of all, well acquainted with academia. Au contraire, I argued in my charming Gallic way. An astute career development director will, perforce, pick up what is needed about academic practices. What she or he needs most, I maintained, was a first-hand knowledge of the corporate world, with a background possibly in executive recruitment. Academia is a world to itself, with its own tribal practices and prejudices, and graduates quickly learn that the world off the campus operates on different assumptions and prerequisites. I had the sense that my words were falling on deaf ears, at least as far as the dean was concerned. She turned on me a look of Olympian disdain. Well, because I am the likeable kind of guy I am, that made me press my point harder. Every time I said "CMC," the room temperature dropped about five degrees, and I think if I had said it a few more times, frost would have glazed the dean’s porcelain face.

I left the meeting convinced that the committee had not a clue as to how to go about recruiting an effective career development director, but who knows? Maybe just the person is installed there now, doing a crackerjack job. Although an astute student of human nature, I err from time to time, and I have a clear sense that Dean Quinley doesn’t, so the advantage is hers.

Sincerely,

Robert Daseler ’67

This letter has been edited at the request of the author, a Pomona alumnus, who recently wrote an article printed in The Pomona College Magazine on student Jake Oken-Berg ‘01. His letter is in response to an inquiry regarding an e-mail we had received suggesting that the author had had his article radically edited, omitting criticism he had expressed about some administration and the new campus center. –Ed.