Claremont 'Bedroom Community': Consider Relocating
By David "the Jaguar" Lydon
Opinions Writer

Here at Pomona, we have something of a reputation among our neighboring colleges for being all spoiled and elite and generally full of pretentious icky-ness. I find this somewhat ironic, as I’m fairly sure that CMC is every bit as spoiled and over-privileged as we are, but it’s hard to argue against stereotypes, and in this particular case it probably isn’t worth it. That said, I always get a little self-conscious when I whine about problems with the food, or some other very minor aspect of college life. Fortunately for me, since I plan to keep whining about the food until Frank stops their recent, stupid “wait forever for a lousy hamburger” policy, Pomona’s spoiled-whiny-jerk reputation has of late been completely and utterly outdone by the good people of Claremont.

So who didn’t find Jeff Horowitz’s Harwood Halloween story last week completely ridiculous? I wound up missing Harwood Halloween this year, so I’m not going to comment on the merits, or lack thereof, of the noise complaints per se, but I am going to comment at great length on several interesting things I learned from the article. First, apparently Claremont’s post-10 p.m. noise restriction outlaws the sound volume of a normal speaking voice. I lived in the North corner of Smiley last year, and it always annoyed me when the cars and motorcycles without mufflers would make a lot of noise accelerating past the stop sign at 2 a.m., but I never in my wildest dreams thought that it might actually be illegal. If you live in Smiley 101 this year, you may want to exercise your rights, and call CPD every time you hear a car accelerating. I’m sure they’d be glad to hear from you, and it might distract them from charging students who steal golf carts with grand theft auto (which, apparently, covers the theft of any electric vehicle over $200 in value—a category that includes those “Power Wheels” cars I always wanted when I was a kid).

If I’m sounding a bit annoyed by all of this, well, it’s because I am. I’m not a big noise fan, and often wish people in general would be quieter. Local residents have an undeniable point in that Harwood Halloween produced a lot of noise. But Harwood Halloween isn’t a weekly event or even a monthly event—this happens once a year, and it’s not unreasonable to have a big party once a year. But attempts to explain this to the Village fall on deaf ears. CMC Professor Edward Haley views us as some sort of evil empire, whose response to noise complaints is to “turn the volume up...and intimidate [the residents] into not complaining.” (Fun fact: Before moving into Claremont 20 years ago, Haley lived in the center of an active volcano, where he constantly filed police reports, complaining that the presence of molten lava was “completely inappropriate for a residential community.”)

Frankly, I wouldn’t have a problem with the accusation that we intimidate the people of Claremont every now and again except that (a) we clearly don’t, and (b) even if you think we try to, you’ll have to admit that we do a crappy, crappy job. As Ethan Ganz said, quoted in last week’s article, informing residents of the event in advance only causes them to call in noise complaints at 2 p.m., before the band even sets up—far from living in fear of us, the people of Claremont seem to delight in preemptively spoiling our fun whenever possible.

I don’t know why we even put up with this nonsense. The City of Claremont was founded because of the college, and the college is the only reason why Claremont is a nice enough place that CPD has nothing better to do than find new and innovative ways to arrest college students. Despite this, we get nothing but crap. The people of Claremont seem in a constant state of amazement and indignation that college students stay up later than they do, and occasionally make a good deal of noise. Now, I realize that not all of the residents of Claremont have experienced the benefits of a liberal-arts education, but I’m a little surprised that none of them seem to be able to grasp the notion that living next to a college confers some disadvantages from time to time (not the least of which being, on an unrelated note, the risk that they’ll be killed by a falling “branch,” which is Pomona Doublespeak for a “very large tree,” while they’re lounging around on our quad.) Claremont’s zoning laws make it hard to build new buildings, the village has nothing a college student could possibly want, the neighbors all hate us, young college freshmen aren’t exempt from the curfew, and despite this, Claremont residents still come down to Wig Beach every weekend to teach their kids how to play softball. We deserve more respect than this.

And if we can’t get it, secession may be our only recourse. Claremont’s residents are old and weak—we can take them.