May 2014

e d i s t r o p NT O EM R A L the C

’ the rockin

01 may 2

4|v

XI | olume

issue

4

Who Are Millennials?

boat

staff + editor’s note

STEPHANIE STEINBRECHER

editor-in-chief

BENJAMIN HACKENBERGER

JAYA WILLIAMS

co-publisher

co-publisher

COPY EDITORS ASSIGNMENT EDITOR

SAAHIL DESAI

campus editor

RAE BROOKSHIRE

international editor

national editor

ANDY WRIGHT web editor

NINA POSNER, KRISTI SUN, ALY MINAMIDE + JENNA HUSSEIN FRANCES WANG

EDITORS-IN-CHIEF EMERITI

TIM REYNOLDS + SAM KAHR

ART STAFF

JEWEL MENSAH (photographer)

COVER

MARYL EVANS

MARYL EVANS

Editorial: The ‘We We We’ Generation Entitled yet independent, skeptical yet optimistic, lazy yet motivated, narcissistic yet considerate. Socially conscious and self-expressive, techminded and hyper connected. Researchers and commentators generalize that these are among the many qualities that we, the Millennial Generation, possess as the faces of the modern era.

Born between the early 1980s and early 2000s, American Millennials are around 80 million strong and comprise 24% of the national population. Defined by our parallel upbringing with the digital age, Millennials are on the cutting edge not only of technology, but also of politics, science, entertainment, and everything in between. If we are not already calling the shots from the Silicon Valley to Capitol Hill, we certainly will be soon.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates Millennials will make up 75% of the global workforce by 2030. To reach us is to reach the future, so it’s no surprise that everything from markets to political campaigns to social research projects are narrowing in on our generation.

Commentators are keen on making observations about who we are and speculations about what we will do. Time dubbed us the “Me Me Me Generation;” media outlets regularly publish articles with

headlines like “Marketing to Millennials” and “Why Millennials Will Save Politics.” But try as the world might to prepare for the dawning Millennial domination, the legacy of our generation is largely to be determined.

Everything about our perspective and the social, political, and economic conditions we’ve inherited is unprecedented, though the same might have been said for Generation X or the Boomers. As we come to the forefront of the global arena, we’re shadowed by the expectation that we will reach new heights that nobody could or dared to reach before us. Is the world ready to take us on? More importantly, are we ready to take on the world?

To answer these questions and to act under the spotlight already beamed on us, it seems important that we understand the incredible potential we possess.

Here are the facts about American Millennials. We are the most ethnically and racially diverse cohort ever — 61% of our generation is white while 19% is Hispanic, 14% is black, and 5% is Asian. A groundbreaking 26% of Millennials identify as religiously unaffiliated, and only

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26% are married. We are the most educated generation yet: in 2008, 39.6% of 18-24 year olds were enrolled in college, the highest percentage to date. Unmoored from traditional institutions, varied in background, and multifaceted in terms of identity, we are the most demographically diverse generation in history.

Our heterogeneity alone is enough to render the future unpredictable. It could, however, prove to be our biggest asset in achieving progress. We bring fresh perspectives that, when melded together, can lead to innovation, collaboration, and cooperation across the globe.

Our generation has an immeasurable capacity to make meaningful change. However, how we’ll wield the influence our size gives us, or the tools available to us, is for us — and only us — to decide.

So what will our legacy be?

Letters, Questions, Comments? editor@claremontportside.com

table of contents

the

compass international 4 | DEMOCRACY AND THE DEATH PENALTY

jess davis 6 | MILLENNIALS BEYOND THE FRAY

sam pitcavage 10 | CYBERIA: POST-COLD WAR REALITY?

andy wright 12 | THE RENEWABLES FUTURE

becca marx

campus

national

8 | THE 1969 CLAREMONT BOMBINGS

saahil desai 13 | RANKINGS AND REPUTATIONS

michelle saipe + maria bradvica 14 | 5C BUBBLE

giselle garcia + nimrah imam 16 | DATING AT THE 5Cs

frances wang + kristi sun

7 | MILLENNIALS AND SOCIAL MEDIA

nick browne 11 | ACTIVISM ON COLLEGE CAMPUSES

emily long

ABOUT US: The Claremont Port Side is dedicated to providing the Cla-

remont Colleges with contextualized, intelligent reports to advance debate among students and citizens. We are a progressive newsmagazine that offers pertinent information and thoughtful analysis on the issues confronting and challenging our world, our country, and our community. Each article in the Claremont Port Side reflects the opinion of its author(s) and does not represent the Claremont Port Side, its editors, its staff, or the Claremont Colleges.

Generation Progress works to help young people—advocates, activists, journalists, artists—make their voices heard on issues that matter. Learn more at genprogress.org.

[SINGLE COPIES ARE FREE. TO PURCHASE ADDITIONAL COPIES, PLEASE CONTACT PUBLISHER@CLAREMONTPORTSIDE.COM]

claremontportside.com | volume XI issue 4 | may 2014 | page 3

international

Democracy and the Death Penalty On capital punishment, the US is in bad company

By Jess Davis Staff Writer, CMC ‘16

T h e Un i t e d St a t e s r a n k s f i f t h i n A m n e s t y In t e r n a t i o n a l ’ s 2 0 1 3 l i s t of countries with the highest numb e r o f e x e c u t i o n s . We e x e c u t e more of our prisoners than any other country in the world, barring the comparatively illiberal nations o f S a u d i A r a b i a , C h i n a , Ir a n , a n d Ir a q . A l t h o u g h w e o f t e n c h a m p i o n our commitment to human rights and condemn the rights abuses that occur in these countries, we too retain an archaic and ineffective system of capital punishment.

Our country is the only advanced Western democracy that has executed its own citizens within the past year, as reported by the American Civil Liberties Union. The United States’ continued reliance on the death penalty comes up against a powerful trend of abolition, as 140 countries have replaced capital punishment in law or in practice, and the majority of the remaining 58 retentionist countries are highly illiberal. In light of this clear shift in international standards of criminal justice, why does America continue to rely on a broken system of capital punishment?

Death penalty proponents argue that the abolition of capital punishment in other liberal societies should not impact our domestic policies. According to George Bessette, death penalty expert and Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College, research indicates that in several European states, a majority of the public supported the death penalty at the time it was abolished.

This suggests that the dramatic decrease in the use of the death penalty internationally is not entirely reflective of public opinion.

“There’s no question that political elites in Europe are against the death penalty…but just because Europe doesn’t want to have the death penalty, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have it,” said Professor Bessette.

While we should not be blindly guided

by Europe’s policy choices, it is valuable to consider the impact replacing the death penalty has had on crime abolitionist states. In several European countries, data reflect a causal relationship between abolition and a reduction in violent crime.

“Scandinavian countries were among the f irst to abolish the death penalty in the history of modern nation states. They currently have among the lowest murder rates in the world… In the wake of abolishing the death penalty their murder rates have gone down precipitously,” said Phil Zuckerman, Scandinavia specialist and Professor of Sociology at Pitzer College.

While Scandinavian countries’ social circumstances differ from America’s, there is no conclusive evidence that the death penalty deters crime domestically. In fact, the 18 states that have replaced punishment with life in prison without the possibility for parole enjoy lower homicide rates.

Besides casting a shadow of moral doubt on America’s criminal justice system, European opposition to the death penalty has created practical problems for our execution process.

Largely thanks to the lobbying efforts of a London based nonprofit called Reprieve, European drug suppliers are refusing to sell the United States drugs used for lethal injection.

This shortage has forced states to turn to compounding pharmacies to obtain the execution drug cocktail. These

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pharmacies are often referred to as the “underbelly of the industry,” as they lack substantial federal oversight.

In his 2008 Opinion of the Court, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, “The f iring squad, hanging, the electric chair, and the gas chamber have each in turn given way to more humane methods, culminating in today’s consensus on lethal injection.”

While we may have made progress in our application of the ultimate penalty through adopting new execution methods and exempting the developmentally disabled, we will never be able to perfect this inherently flawed system of state-sponsored killing.

Since 1973 alone, 144 people have been wrongfully convicted and later exonerated from death row. On average, these innocent men and women have spent 10 years behind bars before proving their innocence.

So long as the Court upholds the death penalty as constitutionally permissible, this crucial issue will be controlled by the states, and by extension, the electorate. Although the majority of Americans still support the death penalty, there have been important shifts in public opinion in recent years: in 1994, 80% of Americans favored capital punishment, compared to just 60% in 2013, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Additionally, states are sentencing prisoners to the death penalty far less frequently. In 2013, 39 citizens were executed, compared to 315 in 1994. Even though 2014 marks the f ifth consecutive year we have been one of the top f ive executing countries in the world, the trends indicate that we are slowly moving to join the majority of the world’s liberals societies in putting this cruel practice to rest.

Capital Punishment Top 5 countries by executions per year

169+

79+ 39

1000+

369+

$137 mil

$11 mil

current CA expenditure with death penalty

potential CA expenditure without death penalty

A dilemma for Turkish youth

By Sam Pitcavage Staff Writer, CMC ‘15 Walking through Taksim Square late on this chilly night in March, you would never know that just hours earlier hundreds of police equipped in full riot gear were squaring off against college students in bandanas and makeshift helmets. Yet just before midnight, I am presented with a reminder: a group of young men with gas masks board my bus on the way home from their Thursday night protest.

With long hair and patchy beards, they are completely unintimidating. They look bored and talk amongst themselves. From my limited Turkish, I can discern that one of them is talking about a midterm tomorrow morning.

Another takes a post-protest Snapchat. Life goes on in Istanbul.

Yunus Sözen, Assistant Professor in International Relations at Özyeğin University, has followed the protesters, like the ones on my bus, in their continued demonstrations against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). “Grievances are clearly piling up among students in the opposition camp,” Sözen observed.

Current political unrest within our generation in Turkey is perplexing. CNN’s incessant B-roll of police brutality, water cannons and burning busses is not a misrepresentation — all of that actually happens.

But what the news media does not show is just as important. Istanbul is a city of fifteen million, about half of which is under the age of 30, meaning there are about fourteen million, nine hundred ninety-nine thousand, five hundred and fifty people who did not protest this week. Life goes on, through protests, through corruption, through elections. What the media can’t help you understand is the pervading apathy.

As Sözen noted, Millennials “can’t imagine that a different power, different set of social [or] economic policies are possible, or was in place in Turkey.”

This is not to say that protests aren’t important or interesting. They are. And they’re terrifying, but not for the reason I assumed before coming here. Viewing political unrest in Turkey as impassioned liberal Millennials fighting an illegitimate and corrupt autocrat is tempting. But this isn’t Egypt. This isn’t the Arab spring. A real understanding of the situation in Turkey is more complex and requires a Western onlooker to step outside their assumptions of protest, popularity, and revolution.

bilingual, but obtaining visas to work and travel is difficult with a Turkish passport.

This is why they are willing to stand on the wrong end of a fire hose.

A week ago I had a conversation with my good friend Zeynep. She studies industrial engineering. She has good grades, speaks almost perfect English, and has acquired enough German to study in Germany next year. Other than an (adorable) addiction to Snapchat, she’s a vision of future employability. Still, Zeynep is pessimistic about the future. Turkey’s economy today, although booming through the early 2000s, is very unstable. In the last three years — especially in the last six months — the Turkish lira has fallen steadily, totalling over 40% since 2011. The government publishes an unemployment rate of nine percent, but in reality it is much, much higher. Without supporting the AKP, Zeynep says she has slim chances at getting the job she wants after college. Nepotism runs deep.

However tempting it is to ignore, the fact remains that Turkey is a developing nation. The Turkish electorate is poorer, more conservative, and more Islamist than what you would think from watch-

“Sometimes I think I want to go out there and protest,” Zeynep said, “but my parents definitely will not let me.” This impasse is common for most Turkish Millennials. Another Millennial, Mertep, who wants to work in the Foreign Ministry, earned a degree in International Relations and speaks English, German, Swedish, and Russian. Yet, he does not support Erdogan’s regime, so he has spent the last few years unemployed.

This is the bind of a Turkish generation raised on the Internet. They see how governments are supposed to function, but live under a corrupt one. They have more education than their parents, but few jobs available to them. They are globalized and

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But perhaps the toughest pill to swallow for the Turkish twenty-something is this: despite police atrocities, graft charges, and allegations of billion dollar embezzlements, the AKP still has, by far, the most support of any political party, even in Istanbul. Erdogan, although corrupt, is legitimate.

“

This is the bind of a Turkish generation raised on the Internet.

These Millennials see how governments are supposed to function, but live under a corrupt one.

“

international

Millennials Beyond the Fray

ing CNN. Until that changes, there is little hope for the cornered Millennial.

Erdogan’s regime isn’t terrifying because it’s undemocratic or unelected; the AKP is terrifying to Turkish Millennials because it is. In this way, Turkish Millennials aren’t protesting for the will of the Turkish people — as was the case in Egypt — but against it. This is the hardest thing to understand; these college students don’t take the bus to the protest because they think they can win something, they do it because they can’t.

Sam Pitcavage is currently studying abroad in Istanbul.

Communication in the information age

By Nick Browne Staff Writer, PO ‘15

The internet fundamentally changed human interaction. The pervasiveness of the internet led to the perception that Millennials are socially inept. There is still a significant lack of psychological and sociological studies discussing the actual effects of internet communication, although it is hard to deny that social interactions look much different now than in years past.

“You’ll catch yourself speaking to a professor in the way that you think you’d speak to a friend on Tumblr that you don’t really know,” said Adrien Redford PO ’14. “Some things are so ingrained in my lexicon.”

Millennials have come of age in an era where interaction through social media is assumed, perhaps even mandatory.

The internet as a new medium of communication rose to prominence in an unprecedentedly rapid fashion. Indeed, the internet became commonplace so

% Social Media Use by age 18-29

50-64

46%

65%

65+

78%

When asked about how the internet may make one more likely to engage in antisocial behavior, such as quarreling and acting rudely, Thompson speculated that the general principle of distance divides online and in-person interactions.

“The further you are from seeming to be the agent of your actions, or the more removed you are from the effect, the easier it is to do things that might be socially unacceptable, or reflect badly on you,” she said.

Additionally, the internet may feed a desire for attention, particularly among teenagers. “Adolescents care more about social cues. They’re more likely to do things that people ask them to, or join a group,” she said.

“The internet has a huge influence on risk taking, and since your social status and what other people think of you figure very largely, the internet offers an opportunity to be presented in a way you want yourself to be seen.”

Redford expressed similar views about people’s lack of caution on the internet.

“There are incriminating things online, and people weren’t really thinking about that a couple of years ago, until it became more apparent that people were looking. People are just now becoming aware of it.”

30-49

90%

quickly that the accompanying social and psychological effects have not been heavily studied. The Port Side spoke to two Professors of Social Psychology at Pomona College, Adam Pearson and Suzanne Thompson, both of whom said that the internet is not often studied in this context.

Pew Research Center Data from Pew Research Center

While little appears to have been published about the internet’s ef fect on behavior, Pearson and Thompson suggest that there are real ef fects Millennials experience from engaging in social media’s promotion of attention-seeking behavior. The ubiquitous nature of today’s social media sites has changed how individuals communicate. In addition to the changes in diction cited by Redford, Pearson, who has studied how minor

disruptions called “ disf luencies” affect comfor t during conversations, speculated that uniquely text-based conversations may change people’s impressions of one another.

“When there’s more ambiguity in situations, then that leaves more room for imbuing meaning, and that means that our expectations matter a lot,” Pearson said. “If we’re interacting with someone and expect it not to be a good interaction and we have negative thoughts, then it’s possible that in those cases where it’s unclear what somebody’s doing, such as taking longer to respond to a text, it’s hard to know how to read that.”

Redford also talked about the dynamics of being able to ignore messages.

“When there was no such thing as caller ID, you’d have to deal with answering them, and now someone will text you, and if I say nothing, it’s almost better than saying ‘I can’t right now.’ It’s easier to kind of use [that] route and not reply at all.”

It is tempting to tie changes in technological interactions to changes in verbal exchanges, but the ef fects of this booming change in the way our world communicates are still playing out. Redford believes that there remains a dichotomy between the two spheres. While he thinks that this could lead to negative consequences, he said that presenting a dif ferent version of himself over the internet had helped him, in some cases.

“It thickened up my skin a bit, and it was nice to face rejection online as opposed to my face,” he said of his experience with an online dating service.

Given what Redford, Thompson, and Pearson told the Port Side, it seems that the preponderance of social media does have a significant social effect, and that many people seem to be aware of this. What remains to be studied, however, is how ingrained these effects are and how they may spread into reallife interaction .

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national

Millennials and Social Media

campus

the Paradise Lost Revisiting the 1969 Claremont bombings

By Saahil Desai Campus Editor PO ‘16 “Frank, Frank, am I going to die Frank?”

Mary Anne Keatley’s frantic cries for help to former Pomona Government Professor Frank Tugwell are as poignant today as they were 45 years ago. On February 25, 1969, two explosions, first at Scripps and then at Pomona, left Claremont rattled and seeking answers with few to be found.

Earlier this year, the Port Side received an anonymous tip urging us to investigate this event, which–especially among students–has largely been lost to the annals of time. Little public information exists detailing this paramount moment in Claremont’s history. While unearthing the specifics of that fateful Tuesday is hard enough, making sense of the bombing in terms of the present day is perhaps even more challenging.

Shaken and Stirred 19-year old Mary Anne Keatley was nearing the end of her workday as secretary for the Pomona Government Department when she went to check the faculty mailboxes at the right of the main entrance to Carnegie Hall. Keatley picked up a shoebox wrapped in brown paper from the mailbox of Professor Lee McDonald PO ’47 when it instantaneously exploded in her hand, spewing shrapnel in all directions.

Frank Tugwell was attending a faculty meeting in nearby Carnegie 107 when the explosion shook the building.

“I happened to be the first one out,” he told the Port Side in a phone interview. “Mary Anne was very badly hurt… I used my necktie and my belt as a tourniquet to stop the bleeding. I didn’t rec-

ognize her because she was such a bloody mess.

When I first got to her, she was still conscious, and we spoke for a little bit. I tried to calm her down, and then she went into shock.”

Documents held in Denison Library, nevertheless, seem to indicate that the bomber was Timothy Peebles, a 19-year old freshman at San Francisco State University (SFSU).

About 40 seconds before the bombing in Carnegie, an identical bomb exploded in the basement bathroom of Scripps’s Balch Auditorium. While windows were broken, no injuries were recorded.

“I believe myself, and so did the district attorney, that the person who was blown up at San Francisco State was the person who planted the bombs down here,” noted Scripps President Mark Curtis in 1990, decades after his retirement from Scripps. “We have some reason to believe he was the problem… Someone believes that they saw him down here.”

Considering the severity of her injuries, it’s a miracle that Mary Anne Keatley managed to survive the vicious incident. The bomb “essentially tore her right hand apart and blinded her in one eye,” said Government Professor Leo Flynn, who taught constitutional law at Pomona from 1967 until his retirement in 2008.

Within six months, Mary Anne and Bob Keatley CM ‘70 returned to their home in Boulder, Colorado. “I was at a conference in Boulder in the 1990s,” said Flynn, “and so I called up [the Keatleys] and we went out to dinner. Mary Anne looked great.”

The gruesome events seem to have fueled her career path: Keatley—who declined to comment— works as a speech-language pathologist and helps individuals return to productive lifestyles after traumatic brain injuries as President of the Brain Injury Hope Foundation.

The Primary Suspect The bombings left the Claremont community stunned and aghast: a period of eerie silence descended on the 5Cs as students struggled to interpret the senseless violence. Strangely, no one was ever indicted or even arrested in the ensuing investigation. “After a while,” said Tugwell, who left Pomona in 1988, “[the incident] kind of died out, and that was the end of it.”

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As life returned to normal in Claremont, Peebles made national headlines when he was critically injured while surreptitiously planting a bomb at SFSU. Aided by his accomplice William Pulliam, Peebles entered the Creative Arts Building carrying a briefcase during an evening opera rehearsal on March 5th. When the bomb detonated in his hands, Timothy Peebles was found “staggering bleeding and screaming through a dust-filled corridor,” reported United Press International.

If, as President Curtis acknowledged in his 1990 interview, Timothy Peebles was the primary suspect in the investigation of the Claremont bombings, why was he never charged? More importantly, what brought him to Claremont in the first place? Though Peebles’s presence in Claremont during the bombings is unconfirmed, his connections to Claremont make sheer coincidence an unlikely explanation.

Flynn was unsurprised by Curtis’s allegations.

“The Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department detective who investigated the case told Bob Keatley that they suspected a [female] black student at Pitzer,” Flynn said. “The reason the sheriff suspected that it was a girl was that… another bomb went off at the same time in a Scripps [women’s] bathroom.

campus

The Black Backlash Whomever this girl at Pitzer was had a boyfriend that blew himself up at San Francisco State.”

John Doggett CM ‘69, founder of the 5C Black Student Union (BSU), said that the rumors surrounding Timothy Peebles “were the same mentioned 45 years ago. I heard that [Peebles] was the boyfriend of a Scripps student.” Though the identities of any students matching the profiles given by Doggett and Flynn could not be verified, it is possible that Peebles had a girlfriend from Scripps or Pitzer at this time who either orchestrated the bombings herself, or served as his accomplice. Peebles may have had a connection to the 5Cs via Danny Wilks PO ‘71, the President of the BSU in 1969. Online records indicate that Peebles graduated from Ravenswood High School in 1967, and Flynn mentioned that Wilks attended the same school. “I know Danny went to Ravenswood H.S.,” Flynn confirmed in a follow-up email. “He was in my freshman seminar, and since we were both from the San Francisco Peninsula, we often talked about [Palo Alto].” Assuming Wilks entered college right after graduation, he would also have graduated from Ravenwood in 1967. That Wilks and Peebles both graduated from the same high school in the same year makes Peebles’s appearance in Claremont seem to exceed mere coincidence.

Peebles’ potential motives for shaking up peaceful Claremont are elucidated in light of the tumultuous period of the late 1960s. Computer Science Professor Everett Bull PO ‘71 describes the campus environment as “pretty tense” even before the bombings. With the Vietnam War in full swing, male students were in continual fear of the draft; cIvil rights issues remained at the heart of both campus and national dialogue.

For Barry Siegel PO ‘71, the Carnegie bombing was not even the most memorable event of the year. “What most stands out from that time is the anti-war protests,” said Siegel. “Demonstrations often involved building takeovers.” As Managing Editor of the now-defunct publication the Claremont Collegian, Siegel–a Pulitzer Prize winner–recalls staying up four nights in a row to publish updates on the bombings.

Black students on campus often were at odds with administrators over their desire to found a Black Studies Center, an autonomous establishment focused on African American history and the black experience. Many students and administrators “questioned the black experience and the study of black history as a legitimate disciple,” recalls Doggett.

“How dare people say that our entire existence has no academic legitimacy?”

With all these hints placing Timothy Peebles as the primary suspect in Claremont bombings, why was he was never arrested? With no DNA testing, authorities were likely never able to mount strong enough evidence to place Peebles precisely at the crime scenes in Claremont. The sheriff’s office “had strong suspicions about who [the bomber] might be,” revealed President Curtis, “but the district attorney never got enough evidence to bring a change against anybody.”

The BSU was an easy target in the wake of the bombing. While never reverting to violence, both Barry Siegel and Everett Bull noted that the BSU’s efforts became more “intense” in early 1969. Doggett recalls meeting to rally-up support for the Black Studies Center when he heard the explosion of the bomb in Carnegie. Within minutes, campus police arrived to escort all the black students off campus. “There was reason to believe that there would be retaliation against black students,” said Doggett. “We spent the next 24 at [Dean] Burt Hammond’s house.”

Through background checks and online records, the Port Side was able to piece together strands of Timothy Peebles’s life after 1969. At age 64, Peebles resides about 100 miles from his childhood home in East Palo Alto. No documents indicate that Peebles ever had children or a partner.

Himself a prominent member of SFSU’s Black Student Union, Peebles potentially came to Claremont to stir up the campus dialogue, as he felt the BSU was being too cordial in its dealings with administrators. At the 5Cs however, BSU members were thoroughly committed to addressing their concerns through nonviolent actions.

An impromptu news conference by Governor Ronald Reagan exacerbated the backlash against the Black Student Union. The bombings in Claremont, said Reagan, were “a pretty good symbol for faculty and students who have kept silent during periods of campus unrest.” Reagan seemed to imply that the 5C Black Student Union had orchestrated the bombings, a fundamentally baseless claim.

In the Collegian, BSU leaders chronicled the harassment and threatening phone calls received in the aftermath of Reagan’s accusations, which they also addressed in their own press conference.

Back to the Future 45 years later, it’s hard to know what to make the bombings. Students today should recognize the importance of the BSU and its unwavering demands for equality. Though the administration never caved to the BSU’s request for an autonomous center, the black studies department was formulated in late 1969. Far too often, one gets the sense that the 5Cs are isolated from incidents of race that frequent national news headlines. Today, racism rarely–if ever–manifests itself as a virulent issue on campus. The idea that anyone would question the validity of a black studies department seems ludicrous in 2014. Claremont students largely focus on combating forms of systemic racism through nonviolent means, as evinced by the demand for a 5C Native American and Indigenous Studies Department: a student alliance recently created an online petition for this cause that garnered hundreds of signatures. 45 years from now, will students at the 5Cs scoff at the idea of resistance to such a department?

“It was a difficult time on campus, when there were a lot of angry people [and] a lot of angry students,” reflected Tugwell. “It was not only our campus, it was campuses all around the state. It would be a shame if the message were lost that even a quiet, lonely campus could be a place where hatred manifested itself terribly.”

To see photos of the bombings from Honnold-Mudd Library Special Collections, visit claremontportside.com.

claremontportside.com | volume XI issue 4 | may 2014 | page 9

Our biggest fears might come from the data we openly share in] Colorado,” said McFaul, continuing that Russia has been in line with the US on “90% of the big issues.”

By Andy Wright Web Editor, PZ ‘16 As the adage goes, “war has changed,” and so has our fear. The parents of many 5C students grew up under the constant threat of nuclear annihilation. Yet as quickly as the Berlin Wall fell and America ascended to claim the title of “righteous superpower,” Millennials should have also entered into world stage devoid of danger in the form of the usual suspects.

In his April visit to CMC’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, Michael McFaul termed this recent wake the “Post-Cold War Order.” McFaul, who served as the former United States Ambassador to Russia until this February, said the period “between East and West after the collapse” was governed by “two dynamics,” these being “internal transformation inside the Soviet Union” and the US “trying to bring Russia into the fold” via economic and societal integration.

“

Whenever you hear about a Silicon Valley company who doesn’t have a product, who is worth billions... you are the product”

Geoffrey Herrera

Professor of Political Studies, Pitzer

“

international

Cyberia: Post-Cold War Reality?

“This agenda is, I think, on scale and scope to the other great revolutions of modern history,” said McFaul.

Ideally, the union of superpowers should have made for a harmonious future. In some ways, it has; McFaul focused much of his later speech on the great economic strides Russia and the US have made together. “Just a couple of years ago… this was [Russian and American troops training together

Yet in many other critical ways, the Millennial world has become defined by immaterial threats and terrors. Just as 9/11, attacks may come to any nation at any time from any source. “[The events of 9/11] completely transformed foreign policy for most major powers,” said Pitzer Professor of Political Studies Geoffrey Herrera in a phone interview. Herrera categorizes the changes by the categories of military, foreign, and economic policies. “Doctrine is now the primary military concern,” Herrera said in response to how governments control their citizens. “Everyone’s tightening… anxiety is everywhere.”

In response to this, many countries have put in new policies to counter terrorism threats. With broad impacts, the policies have been widely described as imperialist and xenophobic, profiling individuals to fit the “extremist” build. Some, like Herrera, even believe that terrorism was a convenient “excuse for these nations” to implement such policies as the Patriot Act and to expand the breadth of surveillance including NSA probing.

Herrera also took note of how popular these policies are when justif ied in pursuit of national security.

Though Herrera was quick to conf irm that there were some protests to European governments tightening their controls on the people, the policies are as a whole “popular” abroad.

Luckily, “in the US, the policies are generally not as popular.” “Not as popular” is a kind way to put the large anti-surveillance uproar mounting in the wake of Snowden leaks.

One key difference in the fears of the Millennial generation from that before it can be attributed to the proliferation of the internet. With every scrap of information at the tip of our fingers, news travels fast, but so do our fears in the form of cyber-terrorism.

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Even less defined than terrorism, the specter of cyber-terrorism has attributed to everyone from Kim Dotcom to children home alone. When 14-year old Twitter user @QueenDemetriax_ recently tweeted she was “part of Al Qaida [sic]” and “gonna do something really big” to American Airlines, the corporation responded harshly: “Sarah, we take these threats very seriously. Your IP address and details will be forwarded to security and the FBI.” Even though that particular threat seems to hold as much weight as a call to the Cyber Police, Millennials are still paying more attention to these policies than recent Russian and North Korean acts of aggression. “At this point, I’m genuinely afraid of my government more than any ‘threat’ out there,” said one Pomona sophomore who wished to remain anonymous. “I’m friends with people from most of the places we are supposed to see as the enemy, anyways.”

Professor Herrera thinks some of these fears are spot-on, but worries more about the future. “An iPhone is the perfect surveillance tool,” he said. Millennials are constantly providing information about themselves to social media, and even though the government does not access this information right now, “it would be easy.”

“Whenever you hear about a Silicon Valley company who doesn’t have a product, who is worth billions... you are the product,” Herrera said. “To me, one of the defining political challenges [of the Millennial generation will be] the fight for information security at the individual level…

Autonomy is seriously threatened.”

Though Millennials are quick to note the many advantages that come from a global network, it is less certain to what extent our generation has weighed the internet’s costs in terms of international security. McFaul’s Post-Cold War Order might be less fear invoking than couldhave-been mushroom clouds billowing over Washington, but the actual security threats of our generations might come at the price of our most personal data and notions of autonomy.

national

Activism on College Campuses

Student approaches to bringing about meaningful change

The protests held at Scripps College in February may not have been isolated incidents, on a national scale. Scripps is one of many institutions experiencing heightened tension between students and college administrators. In early April, a group of Dartmouth students staged a sit-in at their president’s office to bring awareness to issues of diversity and inclusivity. President Phil Hanlon left after an hour, but some students remained in the office for almost two days. The students crafted a list of 72 specific demands, ranging from hiring more racial minorities as faculty to enforcing stricter sexual assault policies.

The sit-in garnered national attention and attracted both allies and opponents of the Dartmouth students and their actions. A Wall Street Journal article accuses the student protestors of forgetting their privilege, calling them “squatters” and “little tyrants”. Additionally, the article notes that most people “would love to be as oppressed as they are” and suggests that students transfer to a different school if they are unhappy at Dartmouth.

Students from Dartmouth, Harvard, Duke, and other colleges across the country support the actions of their peers at Dartmouth and call for increased student activism on college campuses.

Current Dartmouth student Andrew Longhi criticized the administration’s reaction to the student protests. “Since when do the victims have to get up and leave just for getting up and protesting?” he wrote in a recent article for The Guardian. “This mentality is unhealthy for college communities. This is misplaced criticism of basic activism.

This affirms institutionalized harm.”

Many students at the 5Cs share Longhi’s sentiments. In fact, student activism has become an integral part of campus life at the Claremont Colleges as well as a vehicle to implement meaningful change.

For example, the Claremont Colleges Divestment Campaign, though not an official club, is comprised of about 30 students dedicated to getting the colleges to divest from fossil fuels. On April 12, the group’s work culminated in an exciting announcement as Pitzer College pledged not only to divest from fossil fuels, but also to adopt a comprehensive plan to reduce the school’s carbon footprint.

“If students hadn’t been on the [Pitzer climate change] task force, divestment never would have happened,” said Morissa Zuckerman PZ ’16. Zuckerman has been involved in the Claremont Colleges Divestment campaign since it began in November 2012. She and Jesse Honig PZ ’16 are two of the core members of the Pitzer divestment movement.

Pitzer’s divestment campaign obviously did something right, since the college agreed to meet their demands and more. One contributing factor to the campaign’s success may involve the relationship between students and administrators. Unlike students at Dartmouth, Honig and Zuckerman did not experience a tense and strained relationship with the administration. “The [Pitzer] administration engaged with us and worked with us,” Zuckerman said. “Nothing was handed to us; we had to work for it. But it helps that student engagement is one of the core values of Pitzer.”

“Overall, I’ve been impressed with how open and willing to communicate the administration is,” Honig added. “At the same time, certain things – like the task force meeting minutes – were kept confidential. The administration could work on being more transparent and open about proceedings.”

Zuckerman views not only her work, but student activism in general, as a fundamental and essential component of college life.

“Students need to be there to push our administrations and people in positions of power to take the next step,” Zuckerman said. “We can push them to go where they wouldn’t have gone without being pressured.”

Historically, colleges have been activist hotbeds, and that legacy continues today with mixed responses. Today, student’s opinions and demands are not always met or even welcomed, as seen from Dartmouth’s example.

“

If students hadn’t been on the Pitzer climate change task force, divestment never would have happened

Morissa Zuckerman Pitzer ‘16

“

By Emily Long Staff Writer, SC ‘16

“While the [Dartmouth sit-in] approach gained attention, I’m not sure it was the most appropriate tactic for setting up a productive, two-way exchange,” Scripps College President Lori Bettison-Varga said. “[Student activism] can strengthen relationships, but it also can create divides when demands are made in a disruptive manner and when behaviors exceed college policies.”

Bettison-Varga acknowledged that student activism is an integral part of most college environments, and the 5Cs have protocol for student demonstrations for that reason. “I believe the role of student activism is to engage thinking and conversation,” Bettison-Varga said.

“At Scripps, we respond to activism in two ways – to understand the issues and also to encourage our students to understand the processes and channels open to them to seek change.”

However, students often become frustrated when the “processes and channels open to them” will not incur the immediate or appropriate change they desire. Thus, one can understand why students may opt for activism that supersedes these boundaries.

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Leading the charge towards renewables, Germany keeps costs low

By Becca Marx Staff Writer, SC ‘16

In the wake of the Fukushima disaster and mounting environmental protests, German Chancellor Angela Merkel reversed her former stance on nuclear power, declaring in 2011, “We want to end the use of nuclear energy and reach the age of renewable energy as fast as possible.”

More recently as part of its Energiewende, or “Energy Transition,” the Bundestag has reached a consensus on aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent by 2020 (compared to 1990) and 80 percent by 2050.

But while Germany is on the leading edge of the renewable movement, their coupling of denuclearization and decarbonization has struck many critics as overly ambitious.

Pomona Professor of Environmental Economics John Jurewitz argues that shutting down nuclear power plants “actually makes it more difficult to satisfy the Kyoto protocols” on carbon.

While the Energiewende program was initiated with cleaner energy in mind, that has not always been its result. Renewables — solar, wind, geothermal, and hydro-powered energy — depend on their often uncertain abundance.

“There’s no doubt that, past some point, people will resist paying higher prices for electricity due to phasing out nuclear and increasing renewables, but moderate price increases likely won’t cause a strong political backlash,” stated Jurewitz. “However, if there’s an actual electricity shortage or service interruptions so that Germans can’t operate their factories smoothly… or if it disrupts German life in a substantial way, that will really get some political pushback and possible second-guessing about phasing out nuclear and shifting to renewables.”

Many, however, remain positive that environmentally sustainable transitioning can also be economically advantageous, stimulating innovation of often cheaper green technologies.

“There’s a cost to running conventional power plants, day to day. But with solar and wind, the wind and the sun are free. The lack of moving parts with solar power also makes it really inexpensive to operate,” said Dustin Zubke HMC ‘13.

At Mudd, Zubke played an integral role in designing and successfully pitching a 7C water reclamation system to reduce campus water consumption by 42%. Now, Zubke is travelling on a Watson Fellowship, studying photovoltaics around the world, including in Germany, the leading PV electricity producer.

The EEG (or German Renewable Energy Act) was initiated in 2000 to provide financial incentives for the renewable system. A large part of the EEG system depends on long-term contracts with budding renewable energy producers at a retail rate above that of non-sustainably generated electricity.

“

Germany is in about as good a shape as anyone in Europe in terms of taking care of their energy situation. All the European countries have basically the same kinds of technologies available to them

John Jurewitz

Professor of Environmental Economics Pomona

“

international

Energiewende: the Renewables Future

While the Act has been attributed with a significant boost in the renewables sector, Zubke notes two key drawbacks.

One issue is that there’s a “cost for the EEG that’s continually going up — because you’re installing more renewable energy. But you also have a smaller number of people who are paying for it. That means the cost is just going to go up faster,” he said. “Renewable energy isn’t

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the only driver, because the government has been expanding the exemption.”

Additionally, many energy intensive manufacturing firms have sought exemptions from higher but sustainable prices, meaning that those who pay the full surcharge for renewables also end up with very high rates.

“Not everyone pays the EEG surcharge, not everyone has to pay for solar power. When the Germans created the Energiewende, they were very conscious of the fact that they have firms that are internationally competitive,” Zubke said.

As Zubke concludes, Germans wanted to proceed Energy Transition, but not at the cost of their manufacturers.

“In the beginning, all the internationallycompetitive, energy-intensive industries [had] a partial exemption from the surcharge. They paid around 5% of the surcharge,” he described.

However, it seems now that large portions of the commercial sector are seeking cuts, meaning exemptions will be used more broadly throughout German industry.

“I think Germany is in about as good a shape as anyone in Europe in terms of taking care of their energy situation… all the European countries have basically the same kinds of technologies available to them, and the Germans certainly have plenty of resources and expertise,” remarked Jurewitz.

There are many developments to come in Germany’s energy sector, but many critical steps, including nuclear plant shutdowns, appear to be on time or ahead of schedule.

When asked if Germany would encounter inequality and energy poverty, Jurewitz remained optimistic: “I don’t think that it will, but only because I don’t think the German public will let that happen. I think that the political pushback will be such that that won’t happen.”

College rankings at the 5Cs and the legacy of the CMC SAT scandal

By Michelle Saipe, Staff Writer, CMC ‘15 & Marie Bradvica, Contributing Writer, CMC ‘ 15 “S-A-T!” “S-A-T!” “S-A-T!” Even today, this Pomona-Pitzer chant is still a fan favorite used to taunt Claremont-Mudd-Scripps rivals at CMS vs. Pomona-Pitzer basketball games. In this rallying call, Pomona-Pitzer fans continue to reference the 2012 discovery that the Claremont McKenna Office of Admissions had been inflating SAT scores for seven years to increase CMC’s rankings. Even though these are simply innocuous taunts from CMC’s 6th Street rivals, does the SAT scandal have further reaching implications than jocular ridicule from opposing fans in the SCIAC Conference?

At the two-year anniversary of the CMC SAT scandal, the legacy of the scandal seems to have melted away.

“It feels like the incident with CMC misreporting SAT scores happened many years ago; it is a distant memory that comes up once in a blue moon,” said CMC Director of Admission Jennifer Sandoval-Dancs.

SC

2014 5C Admit Rates

PZ

HMC

PO

13%

10.1%

12.1%

13%

27%

CMC

CMC students seem to overwhelmingly agree that the scandal no longer affects them. “I don’t feel that the CMC scandal impacts me because I don’t think it was a reflection of the students,” said Stephanie Oehler CMC ‘14.

In 2012, the news of the scandal broke right before current sophomores were making their decisions on what college to choose. Jessica Barreno CMC ‘16 knew about the scandal before making her decision to attend CMC, but she knew that the caliber of students would still be high.

“The difference between the actual SAT scores and the real SAT scores wasn’t enough to deter me,” said Barreno. The SAT scores were generally inflated by an average of 10-20 points.

Many widespread news sources have highlighted the prestige and selectivity of the Claremont Colleges in recent ranked lists of universities. The U.S. News and World Report recognizes all five of the Claremont Colleges as being among the top liberal arts schools in the nation, ranking Pomona #4, CMC #9, Harvey Mudd #16, Scripps #25 and Pitzer #35. However, after the false reporting surfaced, Forbes issued CMC a two-year suspension from its rankings in 2013. To what extent do college rankings and reputation rely on each other, and how crucial are these elements in drawing new students?

As with many colleges around the country, CMC has seen an increase in numbers of applications in the past few years. However, unsure of the importance applicants place on rankings, Sandoval-Dancs believes that the rise in applications “has to do with our increase in travel and visiting more schools around the world.”

Applicants to Pitzer have the option to submit ACT and SAT scores. Angel Perez, Vice President and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid at Pitzer, acknowledges that this could bring down Pitzer’s rankings. Perez says that while some students will choose to

apply to colleges based on rankings, “most of the students that apply to Pitzer do so because they believe it is the right fit for them.”

For most, finding the right college goes far beyond choosing the highest-ranked school. “I used rankings as a way to determine which schools would be reaches, matches, or safety schools,” said Leah Soffer SC ‘14. “ Visiting, touring and interviewing at schools was much more important to my decision than the actual rankings. Rankings were more of a starting point. Some of my peers used rankings to value schools but to be honest, those friends ended up being much less happy in college because they made their decision based on a number and not based on their fit at the school.”

Marissa Wiesenberg PO ‘14, among others, relied more heavily on ratings than on name recognition in making the tough choice of which college to attend. “I justified my choice between Pomona and Columbia, in part, because the rankings assured that I was entering a highly regarded and well-respected institution,” she said.

International students also feel the need to rely on rankings. Avantika Saisekar CMC ‘16 feels that international students rely more heavily on rankings than domestic students do. “We don’t really know what the college environment is like because we haven’t visited, so I feel [college rankings] have a bigger impact,” she said.

Though the SAT scandal was a headlinemaking story two years ago, there seems to have been no major implications for the CMC community. In the year following the debacle, CMC recorded the lowest admission rate in school history at 12.4%. This was on trend with the other 5Cs, all of which saw significant decrease in admission rates. The incoming CMC class of 2018 admission rate is 10.1%.

Evidently, rankings and reputations show that 5C admissions can do no wrong — nationally-recognized data misreporting scandals or not.

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campus

Rankings and Reputations

campus

Living (and Thinking) in a Bubble

The geographical, political, and social isolation at the 5Cs

By Nimrah Imam, Staff Writer, SC ‘17 & Giselle Garcia, Staff Writer, SC ‘17 The “Claremont bubble” is a common pejorative 5C students use to reference our collective lack of awareness about the community we inhabit. Students at the Claremont Colleges often describe themselves as being isolated from all that lies outside the rigidly defined boundaries of the quaint Claremont Village. Implicit in this characterization, however, is the idea that students somehow fail to engage with the world beyond the 5Cs, or Claremont as a whole, instead remaining wrapped up in immediate campus climate and activities. While some may argue that the Claremont bubble permeates through the Claremont environment, proactive students have found ways to become better aware of the Inland Empire, California, and the world beyond.

The idea that 5C students live in a selfcontained bubble is nothing new. Even forty years ago, the Claremont community experienced a general feeling of disconnect from the rest of the Inland Empire and the Greater Los Angeles area.

“Things were a lot more isolated in those days,” said Gerald Bradley HMC ‘62, Professor of Math and Computer Science at CMC. “Even getting over to [the city of ] Pomona to see a movie or something, took a little bit of effort… it was pretty isolated in that sense.”

Since Pomona College itself is older than the city of Claremont, it is not surprising to learn that students at the 5Cs have long felt secluded from the events that occur off-campus.

However, in our modern age of ubiquitous internet connectivity, can we justify any disconnection to the world beyond our borders? Unlike past students such as Bradley, we have the ability to automatically connect with people from all corners of the globe. As students,

how isolated are we when when Facebook, Twitter, and continuous online news allows information to reach our fingertips instantaneously? The use of social media and the internet as a whole as a source of globalized information has become a principal tenet of today’s information era.

“With instant knowledge — either by way of computer, or smartphone — you can pretty much find out anything that’s going on at any time,” said Bradley. “So it’s hard to imagine that translating into a bubble.”

Nevertheless, there is a significant stigma attached to those who remain physically, and mentally, on campus. A criticism often thrown at students is that they are cognizant of the intricacies of their own college’s government but have no idea, for example, who represents Claremont in Congress (Congresswoman Judy Chu, a Democrat, represents the 27th District). Bradley believes this phenomenon can be explained by the fact that the College administration has a much greater effect on our daily lives than the actions of any individual politician or representative on a national, statewide, or regional scale.

Often, the Claremont bubble manifests itself in the manner by which students interact with important media events. There is a tendency for students to be fully invested in the news of the 5Cs and their hometowns, but not necessarily local and national news. “Back in high school, we would check the news almost everyday and actually talk about it, but here I feel like the only news that reaches students involves big events, such as the Malaysian plane crash,” said international students Angel Xing and Htet Htet Kant Kaw SC ‘17, referencing flight MH370, the downed airplane that has consumed media attention for weeks.

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While students are likely to read about such news headlines online, campus dialogues pertain more frequently to happenings on campus or topics relative to college students specifically.

“On Facebook, there is not a lot of real news,” said Kant Kaw about student discussions and access to news online. “The newspapers that we have access to are all mostly related to campus events.”

Pomona and Harvey Mudd provide free daily copies of The New York Times to students on a daily basis, but often these copies are snatched early in the day.

“One of the biggest changes in how students get news is the rise of The Daily Show and The Colbert Report,” said Chemistry Professor Nancy Williams HMC ‘95 in reference to the political satire shows that air on Comedy Central. “ I think that these shows are slowly being watched by more students so at least there is a news source that more students are paying attention to.” These satirical news alleys also reflect our generation’s love for news that pokes fun at otherwise serious topics. While students may not be keen on watching an hour long newscasting of ABC News after a midterm, many instead watch witty commentators to both de-stress and receive bits of nontraditional news.

“I don’t think that [5C students] are less informed than their peers at other small liberal arts colleges, even though they may be less informed than they wish they were,” added Professor Williams.

Contrary to the dominant narrative on campus, students at the 5Cs are not necessarily trapped in a bubble. If they are, this bubble can certainly be popped. Certain disciplines — especially Politics and International Retions — require students to at least have a rudimentary understanding of issues and broader connections relevant to life outside Claremont.

campus experience the region encompassing Claremont.

Photo Courtesey of Nimrah Imam

The proliferation of off-campus study programs offer students the chance to rework Claremont-oriented ideologies.

Shinara Sunderlal PZ ‘17, an international student from India who plans to study in Costa Rica next year, hopes that studying abroad will be a great way to escape the Claremont bubble. Study abroad programs allow students to experience new environments and cultures outside of the familiar. Time away from Claremont or hometowns can offer students the chance to gain a new perspective by looking at the world from a different vantage point, away from the immediacy of our campus climate.

“You’re given quite a bit of attention at the 5Cs, but abroad, you’re forced to learn how to do things on your own. Outside Claremont, you get to have a whole new experience,” said Sunderlal.

Certainly, the opportunities to engage with the world at large are plentiful. It seems to be a matter of choice not to branch out, to extend our scope of awareness beyond the parameters of the 5Cs. Why, then, do we often remain caught up in what is happening right in front of us, on our campuses? Perhaps more importantly, what do we lose by doing so?

Dialogues about campus life are crucial, undoubtedly. It is important that

Claremont students actively pursue the educational and social opportunities that we seek from our college experiences.

However, it is very easy to lose sight of the fact that the Claremont Colleges, and our four years here, do not exist in a vacuum. So much is constantly happening on the square mile of land we call home that extending our field of vision outside of this space takes a certain degree of effort and intention. Many of us become residents of Southern California only for our college years — what do we make of our time in this space?

Some colleges have initiated programs to put students in touch with the greater community while they are on campus. One such example is Pitzer’s Ontario program, a community-based research program that enables students to work with local youth organizers in Ontario to address important community issues dealing with the environment, race, labor, and other social and political problems. The program allows students to step out of Claremont and engage in local efforts for social change. Pitzer students enroll in specific courses that take place at the Ontario House and help better address issues that shape the lives of the people in the community of Ontario. This program also pushes students to really go off campus and

Far too often, student consider offcampus experiences to mean trips into the Claremont Village or the beach.

It is important to recognize when the Claremont bubble is a problem, and precisely what students can do to ameliorate the situation. We have seen students who strive to engage in community development on campus and in nearby cities as well as those who are knowledgeable about issues that do not affect Claremont. Of course, the first step to popping the 5C bubble is recognizing that there is a problem.

The Claremont Colleges form a close, dynamic community. Many of us are attuned completely to the environment in which we attend classes, reside, socialize, and otherwise conduct all matters of our lives. The people we interact with most frequently are on campus. The intellectual conversations we have are focused primarily on campus. Doubtlessly, our most immediate reality is centered on campus. Sometimes, we justify the fact that our sense of awareness often does not extend far beyond the borders of Claremont by the fact that our four years of college are not like so-called “real life.” While some sense of living in a bubble, removed to an extent from the dominant social, political, and cultural landscape, is inevitable on college campuses, it is important to keep in mind that we have many roles to play during our time in this physical space at this time in our lives. We are students, to be sure. But we are also individuals who make up a unique regional community; we are Millennials entering into a dynamic national and international arena. We lose out on the richness of experience by not fully embracing or exploring these other identities.

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the Dating at the 5Cs

Unhooking a dominant hookup culture

By Frances Wang, Assignment Editor, CMC ‘16 & Kristi Sun, Copy Editor, SC ‘16 Dating is largely absent from our current college scene: hookups and casual sex dominate conversations through dining halls and dorm rooms.

This seems fairly standard for college students today. Nevertheless, a surprising amount of couples thrive in the comparatively small and varied dating scene at the 5Cs. Naomi Bosch and Louie Lemus PO ‘15 share a relationship that few students at the 5Cs experience.

What began as a monogamous relationship has become more nuanced than the standard binary between relationship and non-relationship — Lemus and Bosch define their relationship as “open” or “polyamorous.” Naomi first met Louie nearly three years ago when they were both first-years.

“When I got to the 5Cs,” said Lemus, “I knew that if I did not immediately try to interact with people, it’d be very easy for me to just hide in my room and not deal with humans. So I went around introducing myself to people.”

On the first day of classes, she ended up knocking on Naomi’s door and introducing herself. “It was a combination of gender ambiguity and music that kind of brought us together,” said Bosch.

While Lemus and Bosch are currently each other’s only romantic involvements, it has not been that way for the whole course of their relationship. Opening up the relationship was an “organic” and “intentional” process that involved building trust and defining physical and social boundaries with other people.

After two and a half years, they have maintained an open/polyamorous relationship for most of their time together.

“Neither of us feel like it’s inherently damaging to our relationship for us to have physical or emo-

tional connections to other people,” said Bosch.

“It feels like room to breathe. Even when we’re not actively acting on the potential openness of the relationship, I feel more secure in the fact that we respect and understand each other and know that finding other people attractive or even acting on that in different ways doesn’t destroy what we have together. Those aren’t mutually exclusive.”

Regardless of the long-term outcomes of modern committed relationships, Millennials like Lemus and Bosch are redefining the notion of what a relationship is and should be. Just as the gender binary has largely been busted in recent years, Millennials are beginning to do the same to the relationship binary, which can often be stifling and confusing.

Lemus and Bosch are baffled by hookup culture and its popularity among many students at the 5Cs. Lemus sees it as primarily an upper-class/ white issue. “When folk of color, especially women of color, come into these spaces, they already have history of being fetishized or overly/ underly sexualized.”

Hookup culture has become dominated by heterosexuals, and often can be isolating for the LGBT community, Lemus and Bosch argue. “If you’re trans or nonbinary, as is my experiences, it’s hard to navigate hookup spaces that are inundated with straight cisgender people,” said Bosch.

Especially among non-Millennials, hookup culture is often portrayed perjoratively. One critique commonly repeated is that hookups lead to a lack

of emotional involvement. However, detachment between individuals who engage in hookup culture doesn’t have to be a component of the relationship. Sometimes, as in the case of couple, Erin Hoey SC ‘16 and Alex Brugger CMC ‘15, a hookup can be the start of a budding relationship. After meeting over the course of the three weeks after their first encounter, Hoey and Brugger officially began dating. Since then, they have had a stable, monogamous relationship.

“I think there’s the opportunity to date someone you meet in class, or some other social gathering,” said Brugger, “but there’s also the benefit of hooking up with someone on the first night and you know for sure this person does drive me wild, [which is] a very important facet of the relationship.”

Some feel a considerable social pressures to experiment sexually while in college. Hookups dominate the social scene in part because the rules are looser, the pressure can be greater, and the opportunities to engage in this culture are endless. “College is an intermediate place a lot of people may be just like looking for fun things,” said Hoey.

Hookup culture, for some students, is exaggerated and grossly overrated in comparison to the low-key nature of a more standard relationship. “I think there’s really not enough said about being with someone for a really long period of time and learning all these small intricacies to this person,” said Brugger. “Really getting into this groove with the other person is an amazing feeling.”

The underground dating scene is larger than most students imagine, perhaps indicating that surfacing this culture is the key to dispelling the idea that Millennials are weary of emotional attachments.

Ultimately, hookup culture may be glamorous, but there are other forms of more committed relationships that deserve just as much recognition in the modern characterization of college culture.