Farewells

The obituary section of today's Los Angeles Times mentioned the passings of two noteworthy Claremonters.

The first was former Pomona College president David Alexander, who died on Sunday. Alexander ran the college from 1969 to 1991 and is generally credited with taking Pomona to the top ranks of the nations liberal arts colleges. Pomona College's website has a news release on Alexander's death. It quotes current Pomona president David Oxtoby:

According to David Oxtoby, current president of Pomona College, “David Alexander was a passionate supporter of the liberal arts college in America and served Pomona College with distinction, creativity and compassion. During his tenure as president, Pomona solidified its reputation as one of the nation’s premier liberal arts colleges. In finance, admissions, and national rankings, Pomona grew in excellence during David Alexander’s 22 years of leadership. His dedication, his high aspirations, and his moral integrity were at the core of his extraordinary contribution to making Pomona College what it is today.

“It’s hard to think of David without acknowledging his wife Catharine’s contributions to Pomona,” added Oxtoby. “Theirs was a true partnership, and the College has benefited enormously from her warm, wise and ever-gracious presence.”

During Alexander’s tenure, Pomona’s endowment increased from $24 million to $296 million; faculty grew from 130 to 156; and new construction added 15 major buildings to campus. The geographic and ethnic diversity of the student body increased dramatically as the college made the transition from a primarily regional institution to a national liberal arts college with the majority of its students from outside California. The year after his retirement and in recognition of his leadership and commitment to the campus community, Pomona College named its new administration building the David Alexander Hall of Administration in 1992.

* * * * *

The LA Times also reported that Claremont ceramicist Rupert Deese died July 12. Deese was a graduate of Pomona College and later received an MFA from Claremont Graduate School. The Times noted that Deese at one time shared a studio in Padua Hills with fellow Claremont ceramicist Harrison Macintosh and was part of a circle of local artists that included the late woodworker Sam Maloof, and painters James Hueter and Karl Benjamin:

Deese created such functional yet decorative pieces as ashtrays and martini pitchers as well as bowls, vases and other stoneware for the home. The fired clay forms were usually finished with a soft matte glaze in natural colors. One of his cocktail pitchers with a deep blue sheen is in the permanent collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.

"He made elegant vessel ceramics in functional forms that were very well suited to the modern California home," Bobbye Tigerman, assistant curator of decorative arts and design at the museum, said. "They fulfilled contemporary needs.... He was very much in touch with how Californians lived."

Deese's pieces also are in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, the Mingei International Folk Art Museum in San Diego and many other museums, and have been exhibited at the Chinati Foundation in Marfa, Texas.

Almost Local Boy Almost Makes Good

John T. Oxtoby, staff assistant to Valerie Jarrett in the Barack Obama White House, saw his name spread all over the Internets today as the White House released salary figures for President Obama's employees.

John T. Oxtoby is the son of Claremont resident David Oxtoby, president of Pomona College. According to the White House list, Oxtoby fil earns $42,000 per year. This is a decimal point away from what the senior Oxtoby pulls down as president of Pomona College: $383,000 plus $70,000 in benefits as of June 30, 2008.

We suppose that $42K is not a bad salary for a guy a couple of years out of college--but looking at the list it seems that $42K is the minimum wage at the WH. Also, the White House has some cachet until you remember that as a staff assistant in intergovernmental relations you have to meet with the likes of Claremont Mayor pro tem Sam Pedroza. Oh well; that's why they call it work.

The real bennie is the contacts. It's not what you know, after all, but who you know.

One interesting aspect is that J. Oxtoby's White House salary was increased from $36K a year ago to $42K this year. We don't know too many people who bagged a 17% raise in last year's economy, but then Government is the fastest-growing sector.

This news item is a near miss both in the Claremont connection--JTO is not Claremont High--and in the "making good" department. But we have to work with what we're given.

A screenshot from The Hill (click to enlarge):

Antonovich Pans Wagner

Soundrack for the Holocaust

Claremont's County Supervisor, Michael D. Antonovich, weighed in on the plans by L.A. Opera to stage a "Ring" Festival next year, featuring composer Richard Wagner's famous work, Der Ring des Nibelungen.

Antonovich is not amused.

It seems Antonovich doesn't have enough to do riding in local Fourth of July parades, solving the County budget isses, doling out County largesse and getting backroom deals made. These days everybody's a critic, and Mike has become an opera critic.

He issued a statement Tuesday decrying the idea that that the "Ring" Festival should bring out any pieces by that ol' anti-Semite, Richard Wagner. His press release, which we haven't found on his County website, is quoted on LA Now:

“To specifically honor and glorify the man whose music and racist anti-Semitic writings inspired Hitler and became the de facto soundtrack for the Holocaust in a countywide festival is an affront to those who have suffered or have been impacted by the horrors of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialistic Worker Party.”

He goes on to suggest that maybe the Wagner "Ring" Festival could “delete the focus on Wagner and incorporate other composers as headliners including Mozart, Puccini, Verdi, Schubert, Schumann, Meyerbeer, Mendelssohn and others.”

So Supervisor Mike joins that band of modern-day censors--Pomona President David Oxtoby is another--who subscribe to the Cootie Theory of Historical Cleansing and Rewriting: Because we find objectionable something, somewhere, related to a piece, let's do some feel-good hand-wringing to put our own goodness and superiority on display and trash everything related to the "badness" we have identified.

Supervisor Antonovich in Claremont's 2009 Fourth of July Parade

Oxtoby: Pomona Alma Mater has Cooties; Torchbearers to be Revised

Music Critic

David Oxtoby has rung the death knell for the Pomona College Alma Mater, Hail Pomona, Hail! in this delicately-reasoned letter to the community. In his letter, Oxtoby tries gamely to have it both ways, but in the end, unfastens the song from its mooring to the college.

The Final Report of the somewhat Orwellian College Songs Committee appears here. Our interest was piqued by a sentence on page four, for which the committee appears to provide no reference to the "critical essay on the Choate Report by another alumnus". We see the Choate Report, but not the critical essay. This was apparently dispositive for the committee (see the second paragraph of the page below; click to enlarge). What are we missing?

As to Torchbearers, that old "glorification of manifest destiny", well, the College is going to sanitize it of the offensive words and even-more offensive "musical gestures", and only then let the choral groups sing it. If they want.

For the "Cootie" reference, see here.
For everything the committee posted, see here.

Torchbearers

It is little noted, but there is another Pomona College song with its figurative head on the chopping block. The song is Torchbearers, music by A.D. Bissell, words written in 1930 by Ramsay L. Harris.

If Pomona College cannot keep this song on its own merits, it is a College that has a more cramped vision of itself, its history, and its community than we want to believe it has.

Listen:

Drum-beats roll’d o’er the silence profound
Far above Pomona, above Pomona.
Chanting braves making echoes resound
Far above Pomona, above Pomona.
Garb’d all in feathers, each ghostly frame
Loom’d ‘gainst the embers while soft there came
Borne through the gloom like a feather of flame:
“He ne terra toma, ne terra toma”
“He ne terra toma, ne terra toma”

Southland slopes in their sunlit repose
Lie around Pomona, around Pomona.
Soft winds breathing of poppy and rose
Sigh around Pomona, around Pomona.
Stern was the promise our fathers knew,
Pine-clad ranges of misted blue,
Scent of the sagebrush and yucca that grew
High around Pomona, around Pomona.
“He ne terra toma, ne terra toma”

Ours be the faith of the builders whose dreams
Rais’d our fair Pomona, our fair Pomona.
Bear we the torch of their honor whose gleam
Blaz’d o’er fair Pomona, o’er fair Pomona.
Where bleak and barren the sagebrush roll’d
Rise green orchards of fruited gold,
Glory to those who, with vision of old
Gaz’d o’er fair Pomona, o’er fair Pomona.
“He ne terra toma, ne terra toma”
“He ne terra toma, ne terra toma”

Cootie Approach

[ A few weeks ago--November 23--we received this letter. There has been a flurry of conversation about the Pomona Alma Mater in recent days (see this link, especially Comment 1 by Professor Kim Bruce, and Comment 4, by Pomona alumna Rosemary Choate). Probably the renewed interest is because the committee referred to below has completed its report, will discuss it with President Oxtoby by Wednesday, and President Oxtoby will meet with the Trustees on Thursday. The emphases, links, and a few editorial style changes that in no way affect the content are ours]

* * * * * *

CARL OLSON ‘66
[address redacted]

October 17, 2008

Kim B. Bruce, Ph.D. and Jeanne Buckley ‘65
Co-Chairs, Committee on College Songs
Pomona College
Claremont, California 91711

Re: Pomona College: Thought Promoting Academy or Thought Police Academy

Dear Co-Chairs:

Your committee has been commissioned to look into the college’s songs, including the Alma Mater song “Hail! Pomona, Hail!” [Listen Here, Lyrics Here] and make recommendations.

In addition to being an alumnus, I am connected to this issue by being the General Editor for the 1968 edition of the school songbook “The Songs We Sing At Pomona”. It included background material on the 17 songs. For “Hail! Pomona, Hail!” I quoted the jacket notes from a 1958 record by the song’s composer Richard N. Loucks. He indicated the song was written for a blackface minstrel show at the school. In addition I wrote a letter to the Pomona College Magazine in 2002 about a photograph of a 1910 minstrel show at which the song purportedly debuted.

Apparently some anonymous advocates passed out flyers on campus last spring. It is truly a troubling indictment of persons at Pomona who are not willing to stand behind their own views. My name has been brought up in this issue with the implication that I somehow favor banning the song. This was done without my participation or consent. One purpose of this letter is to disown any support for or involvement in the ban advocacy.

In editing the songbook, I did not do any original research. Now some original source research has been done rather than secondary sources such as the record jacket. This is a hallmark of honest academic pursuits. The show in question was in fact a fundraiser for the baseball team. The Student Life of January 21, 1910, gave this account, “The Finale, ‘Blue and White’—the words and music of which were composed by Richard Loucks—sung by the whole troupe, was splendid.” No mention at all about “Hail! Pomona, Hail!” The Pomona College Handbook for 1910-1911 included “The Blue and White” but did not mention “Hail! Pomona, Hail!” The words for the two songs are not similar. In the next year The Pomona College Handbook for 1911-1912 included “Hail! Pomona, Hail!” along with “The Blue and White”. The conclusion is obvious that it was composed by Mr. Loucks sometime between the two handbooks. In 1958 Mr. Loucks’ recollection apparently confused his two fine songs as to their actual debuts within a year. That’s understandable after nearly half a century. We can thank Rosemary Choate ‘63 for this diligent research.

The ban advocates have the burden of proving their case, both for the facts involved and the proposed extreme punishment. They need to present evidence showing the song was ever used in the show. Right now the evidence shows it wasn’t.

It’s troubling that this original research was not conducted by the ban advocates months ago. I understand that thousands of dollars in grants were received for work over the summer on the issue. Why could not any of these faculty/students find these easily discovered facts? How about an audit by whoever made the grant?

Ban advocates contend that if “Hail! Pomona, Hail!” were contained in a blackface minstrel show, it should be shunned as being fatally tainted under a guilt-by-association process into an anti-Black/Negro/African-American song.

We should examine this assertion. As everyone knows from having sung the song many times, there is absolutely no connection to anything racial in the music or lyrics, let alone anything disparaging. This should be the end of the matter among responsible academics. What if the song had been written for a Plug Ugly show?

Ban advocates apparently have taken umbrage about the blackface minstrel tradition of the day a century ago. That’s their prerogative. But then they apply a “cootie” approach to the subject. This approach says that if something, in their opinion, is offensive in any way to them and is connected to any otherwise innocent bystander, then they can penalize or ban the bystander totally—and anything remotely connected to the bystander. Sort of a group punishment mentality. Sort of a modern “memory hole” from George Orwell‘s Nineteen Eighty-Four. Sort of “corruption of the blood” from the Middle Ages to go after relatives of criminals and so on. The ban advocates have appointed themselves to speak on behalf of some amorphous group which is “offended”. In this controversy, from what I can tell, none of the ban advocates has been elected by any such group to act as spokespersons.

Politically-correct fads and advocacy do not make good science, history, or college policy. Pomona has the important ideal as a thought promoting academy, not a thought police academy.

Actually, Pomona would do well to offer a freshmen course in Critical Thinking. Many colleges have this course on how honestly to pursue all lines of study. It deals with logic, fallacies, red herrings, false premises, group think, original source research, statistical measures, and valid scientific and historical evidence.

It has been put forth that some donors may refuse to donate to Pomona because it does not ban “Hail! Pomona, Hail!” as a patently racist song. This is truly a troubling assertion. Just how many closed-minded politically-correct donors are out there that we should fear? Remember, Pomona has a vast cash reserve in the billions of dollars in its renowned endowment fund. Even without any more donations from anybody—not just the alienated ones—the college could function just fine in its current mode for a half century. Actually, Pomona may gain from donors who favor academic honesty.

Even to outsiders the conflict seems like a petty cavil. Randy Cohen, "The Ethicist" of The New York Times Magazine in his column of August 10, 2008, concluded without much ado, “Sing out—full-throated, clear-conscienced.”

Finally, as to the remainder of your committee’s activities, you should hold open public hearings on this matter. You should publish your committee’s report in draft form on the college’s website, so that informed comments can be solicited before any action is taken. You should seek out free speech advocates for comment.

Frankly, I’m troubled by an Administration which has let this issue get this far and has imposed an interim ban. We should find out what written procedures the Administration followed in poisoning the well with such a preemptive prejudicial strike. The Trustees should weigh in. They have ultimate authority for the college. They should make the final decision.

Please let me know how you will proceed. I will be happy to contribute to your further deliberations in this important issue.

Sincerely,

Carl Olson ‘66

Cc: Committee Members
President David Oxtoby
Trustee Chair Stewart Smith and board members
Editor, The Student Life
Distribution

* * * * * *

Underage Drinking

Son of Claremont School Board Member
Involved in Incident

The problem of underage drinking is more or less hidden unless you are a college president or one of the unfortunates in a car plowed into by a pack of inebriated college revelers out for a good time. The reaction of some college presidents is to sign on to the Amethyst Initiative, now more or less stalled since summer at 134 signatories. The reaction of the hapless families of the prenominated unfortunates is to send a few bucks to MADD.

The policy issues of drinking on the Claremont campuses, and the accompanying behavior modeling (a favorite term of art among the Amethyst Initiative Presidents) occasionally makes its way to our local precincts. We recall several years back when a planning commission decision allowing demon rum to be served at the Sagehen Cafe on the Pomona College campus was appealed to city council. If memory serves, those old tee-totalers Paul Held and Sandy Baldonado voted to deny the permit. Al Leiga and Karen Rosenthal voted to uphold Planning, and Lew Miller was kept on the bench by a conflict of interest. It was interesting to hear the staid college administrators lobby council for their liquor license. (on a tie vote of an appeal, the Planning Commission decision stood, and liquor is served at the Sagehen Cafe)

More recently, we read that every month or so another undergraduate is hauled by ambulance down to Pomona Valley Hospital for a drinking-related problem as described last February about Claremont McKenna.

Teddy Bingham
So it was of interest that a perfect storm of underage drinking and its consequences converged around Teddy Bingham, class of 2011 at Pomona College (Go Hens!) and son of Claremont School Board member Beth Bingham, a 23-year-old former Marine (Semper Fi!) attending CMC, and The Bottle.

This incident was first detailed here, here, and here, but there are so many political and personal agendas swirling around in those posts and the comments thereto that it's hard to extract the facts, let alone the truth.

A narrative without much serious challenge has it this way: In the wee early hours of Saturday, September 27th, Teddy Bingham (b. October 1989, and therefore not quite 19 on the date in question) was drunk on the CMC campus. He was seen in the company friends filling a shopping cart with rocks near Ducey Gymnasium (near the corner of 6th and Mills). As the others scattered, Eric Yingling, CMC class of 2012, the 23-year-old former Marine, approached and asked Bingham what he was doing. Bingham lunged at Yingling, who cold-cocked Bingham with one punch, opening up a cut that bled like the proverbial stuck pig.

Claremont police were called to Benson Hall at 1:30 a.m. and filled out a contact report: "PVHMC has a victim of a 242 that occured tonight at the above location. Victim was 242'd by unknown suspect, negative on prosecution." It is unclear whether the phrase "negative on prosecution" was at Bingham's request, on the officer's own initiative, or because Bingham was at the hospital and thus there was no percipient witness.

According to Beth Bingham as reported here, Teddy was stitched up at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center.

By 3:41 in the afternoon on the 27th, and presumably having "lawyered-up", Bingham appeared at the office of Campus Safety wanting to file a police report on the incident. Which would probably be a prerequisite to any possibly-contemplated legal action.

Bingham brought an action against Yingling at a CMC Judiciary Board (J-Board) proceeding which was heard on Friday, November 14th. While these Star Chamber Proceedings are held in secret, the upshot appears to be that Yingling was found guilty of the assault and sentenced to CMC probation, which means, "If anything like this ever happens again..." Since no one thought to charge Bingham with anything--stealing rocks, drunken lunging, operating a shopping cart while intoxicated--or since his boozy behavior is more or less the norm on a Friday Night in Claremont, Bingham is in the clear.

Pomona College President David Oxtoby's "behavior modelling" hasn't filtered down to his sophomore class 18-year-olds yet, but just wait for the Amethyst Initiative. We presume he will not be modeling the behavior of drunkenly filling a shopping cart with rocks in the middle of the night and lunging at a former Marine. Or understated graceful and refined underage projectile vomiting in The Wash.

Beth Bingham

When asked her role in Teddy's activities following the incident and trip to the hospital--the filing of the police report--Claremont Unified School District Board member Beth Bingham demurred. When asked about Teddy's underage drinking, she was quoted as saying it's a "reality that high school and college students drink." C'est la vie. Nothing to do about it. Boys will be boys.

So much for instruction in the home; maybe Beth will be more proactive with your kids.

A tip of the Insider Sherlock Holmes cap to the Claremont Conservative for the lead and legwork.

The Amethyst Initiative: David Oxtoby is On Board

The Amethyst Initiative. It sounds soothing and beautiful and soft and loving. A carelessly tossed necklace on a wooden nightstand in a honey pool of Sunday morning sunshine. Or, as in the screenshot above from amethystinitiative.org, it might be a pair of 30- or 40-something professors sharing a little après-lecture bubbly with a couple of coeds. (Oh. You say they aren't coeds? We say, "Card 'em.")

Actually, it's an effort by college presidents and chancellors to "rethink the drinking age". It began only last month, in July of 2008. If you somehow thought that this sounds like an initiative that Pomona College president David Oxtoby ought to get involved in, since his Alma Mater decision has now been ruled on by the New York Times, you would have thought right. He's already there:

"I support this initiative because it will allow our colleges to engage in real education of our students about responsible use of alcohol, as well as model moderate behavior. At present we are constrained only to talk about abstinence, since anything else is against the law. Treating college students as adults will help them to make more responsible decisions."

~David Oxtoby, Pomona College

He has signed on with some 113 (as of this writing) other college presidents. At this time, no other 5C president has signed on. Probably the news hasn't made it to the hinterlands.

What has President Oxtoby committed his campus to do, apart from beginning to "engage in real education"?

"...Signing the statement commits you [the college president] to describing, as clearly and fully and compellingly as you can, the place of alcohol in your own campus community [that should be a great convocation]. Signing the statement, finally, commits you to making sure the discussions in which you are engaged, or which you will lead, are civil, informed, and dispassionate [none of those shrieking parents of dead children, killed by a drunk driver], weighing all evidence, excluding no credible participants [always, always keeping control of the guest list], and considering all policy alternatives, no matter how controversial, assuming that, once the discussion has run its course, and all voices have been heard, either policy and reality will be seen to be in alignment or policy will be changed to reflect reality more clearly." [here is the page this paragraph quotes]

It sounds as if the college presidents won't be changing the world on this topic. If their students want to drink, if the reality is a dozen or more per semester carried off to hospital on a gurney, well then let's change policy to reflect reality. Let's define the problem away.

The signers of the Amethyst Initiative believe that amending a provision of federal law relating to highway funds, and lowering the drinking age to 18, will solve their own problems with their students. This is in line with the magical thinking of the fable of Dionysus, Amethyst, and Diana that led to the naming of the initiative:

The word Amethyst is derived from the Ancient Greek words meaning “not intoxicated” (amethustos). According to mythology, Amethyst was a young girl who incurred the wrath of the God Dionysus after he became intoxicated with red wine. Amethyst cried to Goddess Diana for help. Diana immediately turned the girl into a white stone. Upon discovering what had happened Dionysus wept, and, as his tears fell into his goblet, the wine spilled over the white rock, turning it purple.

The purple gemstone amethyst was widely believed to be an antidote to the negative effects of intoxication. In Ancient Greece, drinking vessels and jewelry were often made of amethyst and used during feasts and celebrations to ward off drunkenness and to promote moderation.

Maybe they ought to follow the classical tradition and the suggestion of this 1997 post and just give out amethyst drinking cups to all frosh.

Magical Thinking.

Pomona College

As promised (and see this link for some explanatory material) here is a look at Pomona College as of June 30, 2005 (the latest date for which information is readily available).

Tuition and Fees: $44,422,000 (added to post on 6/4/08 by request)

Room and Board: $14,415,000 (added to post on 6/4/08 by request)

Total Revenue: $191,927,000

Total Expenses: $109,616,000

Excess for the year: $82,311,000

Net assets on July 1, 2004: $1,441,080,000

Net assets on June 30, 2005 (includes $54M in unrealized gains): $1,577,641,000

Corporate Officers

David W. Oxtoby, President
Compensation: $322,891
Benefits and deferred compensation: $92,036
Expense account: $30,000

Carlene C. Miller, VP and Treasurer
Compensation: $230,648
Benefits and deferred compensation: $43,757

Christopher Ponce, VP and Secretary (Advancement or Development)
Compensation: $218,080
Benefits and deferred compensation: $45,091

Gary R. Kates, VP and Dean of the Faculty
Compensation: $181,628
Benefits and deferred compensation: $54,315
Expense account: $23,000

Five Highest Paid Employees other than Officers, Directors, and Trustees

Gary N. Smith, Professor
Compensation: $197,700
Benefits and deferred compensation: $43,473






Laura L. Mays Hoopes, Professor
Compensation, $190,890
Benefits and deferred compensation: $52,569

Deborah M. Burke, Professor
Compensation, $189,583
Benefits and deferred compensation: $49,059





Richard A. Fass, VP for Planning
Compensation, $176,998
Benefits and deferred compensation: $38,986









Hans Palmer, Professor
Compensation: $170,500
Benefits and deferred compensation: $31,824

Compensation of the Five Highest Paid Independent Contractors

Cummings LLC, Mission Viejo, Architect, $1,321,594

Cambridge Associates, Boston, MA, Investment Management, $1,204,898

Mayo Investment Advisors LLC, Boston, MA, Investment Management, $484,867

Wellington Trust Company NA, Newark, NJ, Investment Management, $459,429

Jennison Associates, New York, NY, Investment Management, $373,975

Pomona Song Police

The Claremont Conservative had a post last Friday about Pomona College's decision to not sing Pomona's Alma Mater at this year's commencement. The post included an image and the text of an email from Pomona College President David Oxtoby explaining the decision. The song, "Hail, Pomona, Hail," has is origins as part of a 1910 student minstrel show.

The Daily Bulletin's Will Bigham also wrote an article about the Alma Mater issue, and the Bulletin's website includes an excerpt of the song. Bigham's article said:

CLAREMONT - Responding to concerns about the potentially racist origins of its alma mater, Pomona College has suspended performance of the song for next month's graduation ceremony.

Information surfaced in February that "Hail, Pomona, Hail," was originally written nearly 100 years ago to be performed at the conclusion of a blackface minstrel show.

For some on campus, that revelation "generated great distress that the alma mater would be sung" at graduation, said Dean of Students Miriam Feldblum.

"(Administrators) had a choice between causing distress and performing a song that, certainly, gives great joy," Feldblum said. "They did not want to be in a position to cause distress."

We originally covered the issue in February after an email from Pomona Dean of Students Miriam Feldblum was circulated. Now comes another email from the Pomona College administration. As with so many things academic, Oxtoby's email concludes with the news that a committee is needed to study (or over-study) the "issue of college songs." (Is there such a thing?)

Oxtoby may need another committee to study the origins of neuroses in acadamia. We saw one familiar name on the committee list: Pomona alum and current Director of Alumni Relations Nancy Treser-Osgood who occasionally runs letters in the Claremont Courier.

Treser-Osgood certainly has no problems having her opinions imposed on the larger community as public policy, so she seems to have found a place on campus. Offensive Song Committee - is "song" a noun or an modifier here? - is a fitting assignment for Treser-Osgood and makes a lot of sense: Over-educated, under-thoughtful Caucasian woman deciding what is or isn't offensive to people of color.

It's tempting to poke fun at these sorts of things, and the best comedy has been done by the professionals.

From Song Nazis to Thought Police isn't too large a step. Is it really any wonder that the First Amendment is out the window at the 5-C's? Here's the Alma Mater:

Hail! Pomona, hail!
We, thy sons and daughters, sing
Praises of thy name,
Praises of thy fame.
Til the heav'ns above shall ring:
To the name of Pomona
Alma Mater hail to thee!
To the spirit true of the White and Blue.
All hail! Pomona hail!

We here at the Insider are always thinking ahead and have already made our proposal for a replacement Alma Mater.

Better Late Than Never Department: Free Speech at Pomona College

The Pomona Students Union attempted to sponsor a debate last Thursday (November 8) between representatives of the Pro-and Anti-Immigration factions. A group of protesting students apparently shut down the event before listeners could engage the speakers with questions. We have been looking for a concerned letter to The Community from Pomona College president David Oxtoby, but must have missed it.

This fracas was covered by the Daily Bulletin (the link might go down soon), the College OTR blog (crude language alert: be warned), and KCAL 9 with a video.

By the way, we might have posted this earlier but we have been caught in an endless mind loop trying to parse this quote, which appeared in the Bulletin article:

"I think the debaters could have used this opportunity to express their ideas instead of using the platform as a soap box," said Kelly Natoli, a Pomona College [student]. "I don't think learning should be threatening."Maybe Kelly knows what that means; we don't.