Nightmare of Inefficiency Plagues Harwood

By David Park

When I was a little kid, my mom used to lie to me for my own good. "You are the smartest boy in the world," she’d say. "Yes, when we get home we’ll eat." "No, that’s just in the movies; no one gets presents on Christmas." But when it came to the important stuff, momma always gave it to me straight. One day she sat me down and told me, "Son, Claremont is a very very bad place to party." [con't]

Palatial Estate Sparks Storybook Fantasies

Doug Meyer

With all apologies to Ms. Sherwood, scrounging up a few Greyhound tickets, sleeping in some dingy, urine-spattered Freeway View motel replete with hypodermic syringes and smashed 40 oz. bottles trampled underfoot, and fretting about fraudulent IDs, is no way to do Vegas. (And isn’t curious how Las Vegas stands as the sole American metropolis that is perennially described as having been experienced in a manner akin to sexual penetration? Some semeiotics professor should write a dissertation about Vegas and the discourse of describing cities via erotic metaphors.) [con't]

Inherent Lust for Blood Defies Legislative Remedies

By Claire Christian

The Roman satirist Juvenal once remarked that "panis et circensis," or bread and circuses, would satiate the masses. At the time, many Romans amused themselves by watching gladiators fight to the death in the arena. When Christianity grew in popularity, those accused of practicing this new religion were thrown to the lions. Roman citizens liked to see people die. Some disdained this practice, but many found it necessary to appease the hunger for blood in the common people. The violent movies and video games that outrage parents and politicians so much seem tame in comparison to these violent games, but they take the blame for most of the violence so rampant in society, including most of the violence in our schools. [con't]

Lack of Practice Space Incites Musical Doldrums

By Phil Garrison & Aaron Weiss

As anyone who attended Harwood Halloween can attest, there is something very wrong with the music scene at Pomona College. We all feel cheated by those few disgruntled residents of Claremont who, time and time again, call CPD to bust up our fun on those rare occasions when one of our parties is cool enough to really make some noise.

Nevertheless, the response from students over the last few days has been largely inappropriate and displays a great deal of ignorance. While it may be easy and convenient to misdirect our frustrations in general on the town and people of Claremont, we must realize that the problem extends far beyond the courtyard behind Harwood dorm. [con't]

Senate-Admin Alliance Circumvents Students

By Jonathan Vanasco

Pomona’s first town meeting was this past Monday. It was sold to us nobly: students and administrators getting together for a semi-formal discussion to address concerns over the $16 million-plus embarrassment of the Smith Campus Center. What actually transpired was as much a cruel joke on students as the Smith Center itself, and left many students feeling as deceived as the past promises of the center’s completion and functionality. [con't]

PC Standards Restrict Academics

By Peter Cook

American society has become far too focused on the terms people use in their arguments as opposed to the meanings behind said terms. Certain events had brought this fact to my attention before, such as the incident that made national headlines six months ago in which a Washington, DC city employee was fired for using the term ‘niggardly’ (which means ‘miserly’ and has an entirely different root than the derogatory term it resembles) on the grounds that the word sounded similar to a very offensive one. (He was eventually reinstated.) Absurdities such as this make me wonder at the sanity of our society, and my experiences at Pomona College have made abundantly clear the great emphasis people are willing to put on how one says things as opposed to what one actually says. [con't]