Uncompromising commitment to inclusivity and justice.
Professor Wins Service Award, Raising Concerns From Alumni and Students Due to Controversial Emails To Alumni Signatories of Israel/Palestine Solidarity Statement
By Frances Walton ’26 and Belén Yudess ’25
Copy Editor and Copy Editor Intern
Request to Readers: People we have interviewed, including Professor Weinberg and all interviewees, have expressed concerns for their safety. We, as writers and a publication, do not want any harm or harassment to be directed at anyone in this article. We, the writers of this article, have also received allegations regarding our integrity as reporters and fear retribution. These serious issues concerning the Israel-Palestine conflict should be handled in an empathetic manner towards restorative justiceoriented conflict resolution, not further aggravation. We encourage all readers to use this lens both when reading and responding.
AScripps professor who won a prestigious, $5000 teaching award last month has been embroiled in an email controversy since October when she messaged former students and advisees of hers who had signed an alumni solidarity petition with Palestine. In the email, she broke off contact with them, asking them never to contact her again.”
A group of alumni had reported philosophy professor Rivka Weinberg’s unsolicited communication to them, which Weinberg described as “intentionally harsh,” in response to their signing of the petition following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks in Israel.
Weinberg had sent at least five emails to recent alumni who had signed the “Scripps Alumni Solidarity Statement: Demanding a Ceasefire and an Immediate End to Israeli-Led Genocide and Occupation in Palestine.” It is unclear if the wording of this petition has changed between the alumni’s time of signing and writing this article. Weinberg’s emails contained the same message:
“Dear [alum name],
Thank you for signing a factually false rabidly anti semitic ‘Alumni Solidarity Statement.’ It’s good to know that you’re an ignorant antisemite.
Kindly refrain from contacting me ever again.
Rivka”
Weinberg said in an email to The Scripps Voice (TSV), “I sent one message, privately, to a handful of alums – private citizens – with whom I had
IN THIS ISSUE
SCORE Staff Departure a Result of Incompatible Visions, Office Left Disoriented
had close relationships, regarding a statement replete with gross factual inaccuracies and antisemitic tropes that they signed shortly after the October 7th attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas terrorists in Israel. The message was private and should have remained private. I will not publicly comment on private communications other than to say that my message was intentionally harsh and not in my usual style to show that I saw the matter as exceptionally offensive and dangerous. I dared to stand up to a very fashionable form of campus hate. I am not sorry.”
One of the alumni contacted by Weinberg, Ishta Nabakka ’23, said she was astonished by the message. “When I received the email, it was shocking because I'd never initiated a conversation about [Israel or
Palestine],” Nabakka told TSV. “And I couldn’t believe I’d gotten a hate email from my professor for signing a ceasefire petition. I just thought that was ridiculous.”
Two other alums contacted by Weinberg agreed to talk to TSV on condition their names not be used in order to avoid jeopardizing job prospects.
One alum who received the same message said she was less shocked. “It was disturbing yet not surprising to receive this email from Weinberg,” the alum said via email.
Nabakka had a long-term working relationship with Weinberg, adding to her frustrations. “She was my philosophy advisor and she knew me in that context and to say that I was being ignorant about something [caused me to] undermine my
own knowledge or [ability to analyze and] be objective about a situation,” Nabakka said. “I couldn’t believe that my professor, someone that I looked up to and had supported me through my academic career, had said this to me. For a minute, I questioned myself and felt insecure but ultimately I knew I wasn’t in the wrong and I felt confident about attaching my name to the petition that was calling for, at the bare minimum, a ceasefire and aid to Gaza.”
Shortly after receiving the email, Nabakka connected via Instagram with other alumni who received similar messages from Weinberg. Another alum also received an email regarding the alumni petition from Scripps philosophy professor, Yuval Avnur. Avnur confirmed that he sent an email to an alum regarding the petition.
The aforementioned emails raise questions as to how students and faculty navigate their relationships in the face of conflicting perspectives on global political events. Although these differing viewpoints may cause tensions between faculty and students, these exchanges illustrate the need for a larger conversation about student-faculty communications.
The recipients of Weinberg’s email were all academically acquainted with her through the philosophy major, recommendation letters, or Weinberg’s classes, Nabakka explained.
Two recipients of emails from the Scripps full philosophy professors wanted to note that a majority of the alumni contacted were former students of color with names that may reflect their racial or ethnic identities. “[Most] students affected are people of color,” an alum said.
“I had received an email from [Weinberg] on my Scripps email as well as my personal email which I had never given her. I presume she searched my name, found my website, and proceeded to email me on my personal email,” this alum said by email. “I also received a notification from LinkedIn stating that Rivka Weinberg had viewed my profile about a week after receiving the initial email. The lengths to which she has gone to [contact] her former students is deeply disturbing to me.”
Nabakka received an email from
Continued on page 3
Madeleine Nakamura Shatters Stereotypes with New Novel “Cursebreakers”
Cornel West Discusses Palestinian Liberation and His Upcoming Presidential Campaign
Photo Courtesy of Anonymous Source
The Village’s Newest Sweet Tooth Oasis: Nobibi
SCORE Staff Departure a Result of Incompatible Visions, Office Left Disoriented
By Ishita Jayadev ’26 Staff Writter
SCORE (Scripps Communities of Resources and Empowerment) is currently awash with uncertainty in the wake of both the office’s former Director and Assistant Director leaving within mere weeks of each other. Former Assistant Director Elba Mandujano resigned from her position on March 5 and former Director and Assistant Dean of Students, Dr. Marissiko Wheaton-Greer, followed 10 days later.
Mandujano had worked at Scripps since January 2022, and Wheaton-Greer since the start of the 2020-2021 school year. Both directors have had a rocky tenure at Scripps as their approach to running SCORE often conflicted with students’ visions. Their departure has created both a vacuum of leadership as well as an opportunity for new beginnings.
Megan Yee ’26, a current SCORE Programming Intern, expressed feelings of shock and confusion after she found out Wheaton-Greer was resigning. Although the interns are temporarily reporting to Vice President of Student Affairs and Dean of Students Dr. DeMethra LaSha “Sha” Bradley, Yee emphasized the fact that they now have no direct supervision and leadership in SCORE. “We’re gonna have nobody manning our office,” she said. “I was like, ‘how does this work?’”
Yee elaborated on the interns’ current state. “I think a lot of it has been trying to adjust and figure out, who are we reporting to?” Yee said. “What exactly are we supposed to do? Where do we get our resources from? It’s just a lot of transition time at the moment and it’s just because of bad timing.” Yee made sure to state that she understood both Wheaton-Greer and Mandujano’s decisions to leave but that the timing of their departures was unfortunate.
When reached out to, WheatonGreer responded via email that she felt no need to be featured in this article after her departure and specified, “During my 3.5 years at Scripps College, my expertise and contributions to the community were rarely engaged with or recognized.” Despite this, she encouraged students to “truly invest in building relationships and partnerships” with the new directors.
The misunderstanding and lack of recognition Wheaton-Greer refers to was echoed by older students who worked at SCORE or were affiliated with SCORE clubs and organizations (CLORGs) around the time the leadership of SCORE was changing. Wheaton-Greer joined Scripps in 2020 at the start of the virtual school year with the challenge of keeping SCORE active with nobody able to meet in person. Mandujano joined two years later in January of 2022, taking over most of the supervision of interns and CLORGs as Wheaton-Greer handled more administrative work.
As the two got more involved in SCORE upon the return to campus, complaints began to emerge from students as they felt their own demands for the space were not being heard or answered.
Emma Tao ’22, a SCORE intern from 2020-22 and Asian American Student Union (AASU) Co-Head in
2022, spoke about her experiences with SCORE during this transition period as well as her perception of what SCORE was like before the virtual year and change in leadership.
“I think a huge part of it was that before the pandemic and before Marissiko and Elba joined it was very heavily student focused,” Tao said. “Like students basically ran a lot of the stuff and it was more like the directors were just sort of there as administrative guidance.”
This changed after students returned to campus when certain intern positions were merged and the amount of hours that interns could work were cut down. “I don’t know if there had been some funding things that happened during that time, but essentially over time, there’s a clear indicator of how it did appear that SCORE was trying to cut down on interns,” Tao said.
Yee elaborated on the choice, “They cut down on interns because they [Mandujano and WheatonGreer] wanted it to be easier I guess to manage, but also for us to be close-knit and work together more.”
This change also allowed interns to work more hours.
Whatever the reasoning behind the shift, it has resulted in only six interns in three groups of two this year. One group, which Yee is part of, does general SCORE programming, another does programming for first-generation (first-gen) college students, and the last one plans programs for international students.
Former SCORE intern Dahlia Wang ’24 seemed surprised at this drastic cutdown. Before the International and First-Gen Intern positions were incorporated by SCORE, there were 14 SCORE interns, including an “Artivism” position that helped run Our Sound zine (a student led zine that had been running since 2013), as well as “Pomona Hope” interns who worked with the nonprofit Pomona Hope to support high school students in preparing for college, until the positions were ended abruptly in 2022 and 2023, respectively.
Tao elaborated that this could have also been due to the First-Gen Intern and International Student Intern positions becoming part of
SCORE in the fall and spring, respectively, of 2022.
As hours decreased, the availability of interns who could be on shift in SCORE at different times did as well. Tao identified how this made SCORE less accessible for students.
“Before, SCORE events would be hosted at all hours of the day, even after hours,” Tao said. “But then with Elba, there was a sort of push to have all your events hosted during your office hours. So that sort of limited attendance even further for events because obviously no one wants to go to a SCORE event at 11 [a.m.] on a Wednesday.”
Tao also mentioned how students used to be able to sign up for swipe access into the SCORE building. “It was more open for students to basically interact with each other in a safe space,” Tao said. This changed as SCORE became only accessible to interns and heads of CLORGs.
Additionally, Tao emphasized how student concern about changes implemented by the directors were related to SCORE’s origins in student leadership and organizing. An early iteration of the office was founded in 2002 because of discussions among Scripps committees in protest of Scripps’ previous underfunded Multicultural Resource Center. This was amplified by a 2001 teach-in held by students at The Motley called “Whose Voice, Whose Vision,” challenging the “Women of Voice and Vision” title of Scripps’ 75th anniversary celebration.
Regarding prior students’ concerns, Tao noted how “It changed from more of a student collective organization of safe space created by the students, for the students, into a sort of business being run from eight to five.”
In light of the oft-forgotten radical history of SCORE, upperclassmen’s concerns in the post-virtual school years were given a different dimension. These concerns culminated in a meeting with Wheaton-Greer and Mandujano in April 2022 followed by a letter of demands asking for “a publicization of SCORE’s history” to the student body so that students would be “aware of the endless possibilities that can result from vocalizing discontent with Scripps’
treatment of students from marginalized communities.”
Other demands included compensation for all work put in by interns, budget transparency, a way to sign up for 24-hour swipe access to SCORE, and “reinstating the collaborative and accommodative work culture that SCORE had before the pandemic.”
A more general demand included “building solidarity with trans and non-binary members of the community,” with a suggestion to “bring back Family as a trans-centered CLORG.” Family had taken a hiatus during the COVID-19 online year.
Continued on page 3
TSV Editorial Staff 2023-2024
Aanji Sin ’24
Editor-in-Chief
Ellen Hu ’24
Editor-in-Chief
Alyssa Wend ’24
Editor-in-Chief
Ellen Wang ’25
Editor-in-Chief
Isabel Suh ’24
Head Design Editor
Elita Kutateli ’26
Design Editor
Nawal Hassan ’27
Design Editor
Hannah Fawley ’27
Design Editor
Juliette Des Rosiers ’26
Copy Editor
Frances Walton ’26
Copy Editor
Belén Yudess ’25
Copy Editor Intern
Ashley Ta ’27
Copy Editor Intern
Carah Allen ’26
Webmaster
Anna Odell ’27
Social Media Manager
Ellen Hu ’24 • The Scripps Voice
Professor Wins Service Award, Raising Concerns From Alumni and Students Due to Controversial Emails To Alumni Signatories of Israel/Palestine Solidarity Statement
Continued from page 1
Weinberg to her school account and a request for a LinkedIn message.
Weinberg has never acted in a way that has directly impacted Nabakka’s potential career or ability to receive a recommendation, Nabakka said. But Weinberg “is farther along in her career, established and well connected, [while] I was at the beginning so [I] was worried about what she could do by virtue of being in her position,” she said. “You need letters of recommendation for grad school, jobs, etc., and so a lot of us felt like, if there was any retaliation from our professors, it could fuck up our current or future prospects.”
One alum described that their “heart aches for philosophy students who had counted on her for letters of recommendation. More than that, my heart aches for Middle Eastern students on campus (as well as all students of color) as well as anti-Zionist Jewish students.”
Four of the alumni whom Weinberg contacted wrote a three-page letter in October addressed to (titles reflecting positions in October 2023) Scripps President Amy MarcusNewhall, Interim Associate Dean of Faculty Jennifer Armstrong, Associate Dean of Faculty Warren Liu, Vice President for Student Affairs and Dean of Students DeMethra LaSha “Sha” Bradley, and Associate Dean of Faculty for Racial Equity Mary Hatcher-Skeers.
“We talked about the kind of power imbalance that was very palpable between us and Rivka because she does have a lot more power than us,” Nabakka said. “It was not something we expected with a professor that I felt like I trusted.”
Nabakka then explained the timeline of the email communications with administration. “We sent it on Oct. 25 and there was no reply,” they said. “Then, a couple weeks later, I sent an email [asking the administrators to] acknowledge that [they] received it. Jen Armstrong was the only one that actually responded.”
Dean Armstrong’s email to Nabakka read:
“Dear Ishta, Thank you for reaching back out.
I want to assure you that your concerns and experiences have been heard. The College takes them seriously and is taking steps to address them. As these involve personnel matters, I am unable to share any specific information.
Sincerely,
Dean Armstrong”
Dean Armstrong has not responded to TSV’s request for comment.
The dean was “basically saying nothing, [she] didn’t really respond to anything,” Nabakka said.
Although Nabakka and other alumni expressed concern regarding the administration’s response to Weinberg’s statements and the political atmosphere on campus, 150 named 5C professors, 36 anonymous, and four departments (Intercollegiate Department of Africana Studies, Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies, Intercollegiate Department of Chicano/a Latino/a Studies at the Claremont
Colleges, Scripps College Department of Spanish, Latin American, and Caribbean Literatures and Cultures) signed the Claremont Consortium Faculty Statement on Gaza dated Oct. 31. It read in part, “We further share our outrage that Zionist advocacy organizations have subjected and continue to subject Palestinian, Arab, and Muslim students and faculty, students of all backgrounds who advocate for Palestinian rights, and faculty of all backgrounds who teach on Palestine and Israel to bullying, harassment, and suppression of their right to free speech.”
On the same day that Nabakka and the three other alums sent the email to Scripps administrators, 5C students participated in a national student walkout for Palestine. Scripps students gathered outside Malott for a teach-in at 1:30 p.m. followed by a march at 2:00 p.m., according to the plans posted on @claremontsjp’s Instagram page.
Sophia Heffner ’26, participated in the walkout. Heffner described that she “was standing out on the Bowling Green, and [...] saw [Weinberg] towards Balch. [She was] recording students and laughing.”
Students note that faculty responses to protest help dictate the environment of protest on campus. “That faculty wouldn’t be behind us and wouldn’t be supporting their students [in their freedom of speech] made the protest itself feel more sketchy and more unsafe,” another student protester said in an interview. The student felt “antagonized by staff and faculty [...] I think taking out your phone to take a picture shows that you think something is wrong.”
Weinberg responded to reports that she was seen taking photographs of students at the Malott protest. “I did not film students. I took some private photographs at one public rally to assess crowd size because I understood slogans chanted at the rally to be dangerous to Jews on campus. I was appalled. Some Jewish students were crying. How many people were there chanting? The pictures were not intended for identification or publication and were never shared or published,” she told TSV.
Heffner and three other student attendees did not report seeing any students crying during the duration of the protest.
A Scripps sophomore attended the protest and said, “I thought it was really strange to see [Weinberg] taking pictures of us because it seemed like it didn’t align with what Scripps is about and why I came to a place like Scripps because I wanted to come here to be around professors and faculty that would uplift my voice as a woman at a women’s college. [...] This just felt like the opposite. It felt like a scare tactic.”
One student was concerned about being photographed, as she “fear[s] suspension if identified. [It would mean] the end of my collegiate career and any chances of getting into internships or post-bac programs, especially as a student of color.”
Scripps Associated Students (SAS) President Lily Dunkin ’24 acknowledged the harmful ramifications posed by photography of
protesters. “In my capacity as SAS President I meet weekly with a plethora of different administrators throughout the institution,” Dunkin said in an email. “I have been told multiple times, by different people, at all levels, that when actions occur photos and videos are routinely sent by Scripps community members (this includes faculty) to administrators who then identify students involved.”
After hearing about faculty writing emails to alumni regarding their signing of the Scripps alumni solidarity statement and capturing images during a student walkout, some Scripps students said they felt wary about pursuing a philosophy degree and engaging in future interactions with Weinberg.
Students did not take issue with Weinberg receiving recognition for her quality of teaching or ability to head the philosophy department, but rather, the timing of her award in the context of the larger discourse surrounding her. “I’m not going to deny [...] she is the foundation of the philosophy department and knows everything and is very knowledgeable, and I respect her [but] every time I dread going into office hours,” a Scripps philosophy student said. “All that shows to me [is] that admin is on their side. [...] The award kind of seemed like a slap in the face to anything that we’ve been trying to say about her.”
Weinberg was one of the 12 faculty who received the Mary W. Johnson Faculty Achievement Award last month for her excellence in service towards the college.
This award was given to Weinberg in March despite the Dean of Faculty receiving an email in October from a group of alumni who had reported Weinberg’s unsolicited communication towards them in response to their signing of the petition. The award guidelines note that “normally two of the awards will be given for community service [...] In exceptional years, the selection committee may give more awards in community service at their discretion.” Weinberg, among two other faculty members, was awarded for her service.
A Scripps philosophy student said in an interview, “As someone who is Jewish and pro-Palestine, I think [Weinberg’s communication with alumni] makes me incredibly uncomfortable because even amongst peers or faculty or teachers, I don’t think you want to have anyone [bother] you for any political point of view. As we’ve seen at Scripps, freedom of speech is being called into question amongst the students [...] and having [Weinberg’s emails] follow you outside of Scripps, I think, is a big threat and really inappropriate to our rights as students.”
Weinberg responded to the report that students feel uncomfortable taking classes or majoring in the philosophy department due to fears of bias based on political beliefs. “I am skeptical of this report as the Philosophy Department does not teach Zionism or the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and has never had a single thesis remotely related to this topic. The Philosophy Department does not take a stand on matters other than academic philosophy, as
it is our job to teach philosophy, not to indoctrinate students with particular political views. In contrast, several Scripps Departments and intercollegiate programs have published statements taking a political stand on these issues, which would potentially be of concern to students with opposing views,” she said via email. Nabakka responded to student frustrations towards the Scripps administration’s reaction to student protest. “It seems like the way that Scripps and the other colleges are responding to student activism is in a way of fear-mongering students and going directly against the core value of education which is to encourage thoughtful and engaging conversations, and action, with your peers and professors,” Nabakka said. “If I was on campus, I would be both scared and pissed about admin limiting my freedom of speech and protest.” Their comments came before the events of April 5, when 19 5C students were arrested at a sitin practicing civil disobedience after the Pomona College administration ordered the removal of the mock apartheid wall on Pomona campus. Administration will not stand up for students who criticize faculty views, said one alum who was contacted by Weinberg. “The powers that be will always protect tenured white professors,” the alum said. “What I truly want is for Professor Weinberg (and Zionist/Zionist-sympathizer professors alike) to take a step back from their vitriolic email rampages and educate themselves on the plight of the Palestinian people. [...] If I could, I would grant her the skill and power of empathy, not just empathy towards people to whom she can relate, but for all people – that would be my ideal response to this situation.”
Nabakka urged students and the Scripps community “to, if possible, boycott her classes and let other students know where she stands. […] But, it is a bit of a catch-22 because sometimes you just really need to take a class with someone to fulfill whatever requirement.”
One of the alums who received an email from Weinberg addressed, “I imagine Prof. Weinberg may read this article and feel irritated to see her former students engaging in emotional discussions about the genocide of Palestinian people at the hands of the Israeli government. She has expressed in classroom settings her belief that Gen Zs are too sensitive, too used to having our hands held through life – I believe this mindset led her to send such an inappropriate [...] email. I cried about the situation to my mother, feeling very confused how a Professor who watched me grow up from ages 19-24 could oversee the years of our academic and personal relationship, and label me an ‘ignorant antisemite.’ Professor Weinberg, respectfully, has no idea what she’s talking about when it comes to her students, their connections to Judaism, or the ongoing genocide in Palestine.”
If Scripps staff or faculty have contacted you about your political views and actions, and you wish to connect with a community of contactees; please email scrippsvoice@gmail.com.
Madeleine Nakamura Shatters Stereotypes with New Novel “Cursebreakers”
By Lucy Jaffee CMC ’26 Staff Writer
Madeleine Nakamura spoke at The Motley Coffeehouse at Scripps College on April 4, sharing the path to publishing her debut novel Cursebreakers and her experiences with how the publishing world treats intersectionality and uplifts marginalized voices.
Nakamura is a Los Angeles-based writer and editor who has received accolades such as a Kirkus Star and starred review from Independent Book Review for her novel. A graduate of Mills College with a degree in creative writing, Nakamura’s personal website states that “she began writing her first novel the day she realized a computer science degree wasn’t happening.” She currently works at Scripps College in the marketing and communications department.
Cursebreakers , which was published in 2023 by Canis Major Books, an imprint of Red Hen Press, follows protagonist ex-physician and professor of magic, Adrien Desfourneaux, on a quest to stop a curse from spreading in the city of Astrum. In addition to facing pressure from competing factions, Adrien “must survive his own bipolar disorder and self-destructive tendencies,” according to Red Hen’s website.
The lunchtime conversation with Nakamura was hosted as a part of the Scripps Presents @ Noon Lunchtime series, “a unique opportunity to engage with renowned scholars, writers, and performers, and thinkers in an intimate daytime setting,” as the Scripps website states. The events are open to the public and free for students to attend.
Nakamura was in conversation with Rachel Warecki ’08, a Scripps
College alumna and novelist who is a current MacDowell fellow.
Marcy Robinson, Director of Events and Conference Services at Scripps Colleges, said she invited Nakamura to speak to highlight her experience as an emerging writer. In particular, the event was designed to create a space for students to discuss writing as a craft and learn more about Nakamura’s writing process. “We want to inspire others,” Robinson added.
Nakamura discussed the often hypocritical messages the publishing world sends to writers of color. As a Japanese woman, she shared that publishers are often only interested “in finding new and interesting ways to leverage your identity to their benefit.”
She recalled getting asked once why her writing did not feature a samurai — a medieval Japanese soldier often showcased in American media. “There were many times when I felt myself reduced to just a list of characteristics,” Nakamura said.
Moreover, she experienced the confined scope in which publishers
and readers define a “good” representation of mental health. She wrote Adrien, the protagonist in Cursebreakers, based on her own experiences with bipolar disorder, a mental illness that affects over six million Americans. Copies of her book were for sale after the event and Nakamura independently donated 20% of the price of each book sold to the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
Her inclusion of a queer, bipolar character challenged fears that portraying a queer person as lessthan-perfect would contribute to antiLGBTQ+ rhetoric. “I think critics and readers feel like you cannot portray a queer person as romantically maladjusted because there are all these stereotypes of queer people being ‘unhealthy’ in that way already,” she said. “But the risk that you run there is demanding perfection of queer people.”
In particular, the fantasy genre presents a unique challenge as writers must decide whether to include realworld societal issues in the fantasy
world they craft. “A lot of people have this sense that if you are not tackling issues like in-world homophobia and discrimination in your fantasy, then you’re kind of abandoning your duty as a queer writer to speak on these issues,” Nakamura said. “Other people feel it’s a matter of normalization and escapism to not include these issues.” She found herself unsuccessful in pursuing the traditional publishing route, as agents were looking for a specific type of queer narrative. Instead, she found “a home” for her book at a team-building event at her work. At the time, Nakamura was an assistant copy editor at Red Hen Press, which calls itself the “biggest little press in LA.” She unexpectedly sat next to Red Hen’s co-founder who expressed interest in her book.
While many other writers define success as being published by one of the “Big Five” publishers, such as HarperCollins and Simon and Schuster, Nakamura felt her story was better suited for a small press. It also allowed her more discretion as to how the novel was marketed. “You need to check really carefully that, if you pay someone to promote your book, they understand what the book is about,” she said.
Nakamura is currently editing the sequel to Cursebreakers, which will be released in 2025. She also hopes to write new manuscripts and describes her writing process as spontaneous and undisciplined.
As a college student, Nakamura wrote her first two novels in three months each, to which an audience member asked how Nakamura handles imposter syndrome, common among aspiring creatives in college. “The cure is to surround yourself by people who will be fair and honest with you,” she said. “Listen to the people you trust.”
A Not So Simple Herstory: Creating Historical Fiction
By Aviva Vic Maxon ’24 Staff Writer
Scripps Presents welcomed back alumna Jocelyn Kuritsky ’04 and her podcast A Simple Herstory to Balch Auditorium on March 21.
Joined by writer Jonathan Goldberg and producer Jennifer Hall, Kuritsky detailed the process of creating the historical fiction podcast, which follows the stories of women who have run for United States President.
The event began with a presentation before transitioning into a Q&A. During the presentation, Kuritsky, Goldberg, and Hall discussed many of the artistic choices they made in the podcast, such as only casting women, no matter the gender of the character. They expressed a desire to push the audience to contextualize why people generally prefer a man’s voice over a woman’s.
“[Historical fiction is] about using the past to comment on our present,” Goldberg said. “We write the past to communicate our feelings of the present.”
Further expansion on the recording process revealed that the first season was recorded live over Zoom during
the pandemic, so the actors could respond in time to each other. The trio also discussed the ability to have more varied casting in an audio format than in other theater mediums, because the actors are not seen.
One of the main themes of the podcast is the complexity of history and people. The story is not told linearly, advocating for an understanding of history that does not need to be linear. In that same vein, the story of Victoria Woodhouse, the focus of the first season, is full of contradictions.
Woodhouse ran for president before women could vote, and she was not old enough to run. She announced her running mate as Frederick Douglass, without his permission; Woodhouse advocated ‘free love’ and eugenics and published the first English version of the The Communist Manifesto but was publicly denounced by Karl Marx.
All this messiness lends Woodhouse as an ideal character to gain an understanding of our modern context; like so many figures today, Woodhouse is complicated and there is no single narrative about
her that is true. Instead, there are many contradictory narratives that all contain truths.
With so much to juggle, Goldberg also shared his process of writing historical fiction. His biggest suggestion to young Scripps students: read, and then read some more about the topic or person, then forget things, then write, and start with reading again.
He argued that this repetitive process will bring to light the things that are most important to a writer and the elements of the story that are most striking. Everyone can tell the same story differently.
Similarly, Kuritsky noted that she is a person in the present day trying to make a clear narrative about her characters from the past, and is constantly starting over. She employs the narrative tool of going in circles to help illustrate how we understand history.
The podcasters emphasized the necessity of making tough choices in creating art. Goldberg and Kuritsky discussed grappling with questions about narrative: who is allowed to create the narrative and who is included in the narrative?
These questions are reflected in the podcast’s two core themes: ‘what is truth’ and ‘who is telling the truth.’
They were intentional about choosing to have the character of Susan B. Anthony played by a trans woman in the show. Anthony, a prominent suffragette, has been taken as a symbol for white, cisgender, heterosexual women fighting against racial, sexual, and gender-non-conforming inclusion. By having this character portrayed by a trans person, the show is changing the narrative around what Anthony’s legacy could be.
One person cannot be summarized easily in one podcast episode. The guests expressed that retelling someone’s story from many directions helps uncover many truths. It pushes people to have difficult conversations and develop an understanding of how views change as people evolve.
Over time, history is smoothed and simplified to create a clear(er) divide between good and bad. In grappling with the complexities of important historical figures such as Woodhouse and Anthony, the podcasters reveal it’s not so simple.
Ellen Wang ’25 • The Scripps Voice
The Fight for Summer Storage for First-Gen and International Students
By Charlotte Korer ’27 Staff Writer
Reyna Manriquez ’26 and Bernice Abanda ’25 have been working to secure school-sponsored summer storage for First Generation LowIncome (FGLI) and international students at Scripps. Manriquez and Abanda felt that students who identified with these groups often had a harder time storing their things over the summer. For international students who fly halfway across the globe and have to pay for checked baggage they won’t touch over the summer, the process can be difficult and stressful. FGLI students who live as close as Los Angeles also find themselves in similar situations.
“A lot of times, students end up relying on their friends in order to adapt … that's the role that the institution should play, but you know, they end up having to do all of that work on their own, or maybe through friends,” Abanda said. “If you're going to bring people here, you should be able to support them through things.”
The original plan was to rent a storage unit for the summer and allow FGLI and international students to store their baggage. Pomona College
has a similar system, allowing up to six boxes per person for those who need it. Abanda took advantage of this program last year but still ended up needing to send some of her things home with friends. After talking with Manriquez who has experienced similar problems, they decided Scripps needs a program like it. However, Manriquez and Abanda are trying to work through setbacks regarding money and space with the help of SAS President Lily Dunkin ’24. They are not worried about participation; they know students in the Scripps community need a program like this.
“I need a place to store my stuff over the summer because I can’t bring everything home,” Willa Baker ’27, an international student from Switzerland, said. “I can totally understand how this would also be a big problem for low-income students who don’t have places to store their things. Or for anyone in general who doesn’t want to deal with their mini fridge over the summer.”
Unfortunately, Abanda and Manriquez have faced challenges in finding institutional support and funding. But, with summer quickly
approaching, time is running out.
“I’ve briefly brought it up to case management and Scripps itself as financial aid but they always say they don’t provide any funding for summer because students aren’t giving any money during summer,” Manriquez said. “But, people’s lives and financial needs are not paused at summer.”
Manriquez and Abanda looked to other options, not to much avail. SAS cannot directly fund the project because it becomes a liability to them. SAS can fund CLORGS, but it didn’t look like there would be enough money to support all the FGLI and international students who would rely on this program. And worse, Dunkin emphasized, they didn’t want to have to revoke the resource after a year or two when SAS runs out of funding for the program.
“We have to make sure that we're willing to consistently show up for that community, and that SAS is not creating some sort of false promise, or that there is an expectation that then we're not able to meet in the future,” Dunkin said. “So it's not just about whether or not we can fund it this time, we have to make sure that we're willing to fund it. And that might
look like setting a term saying, we're committing to funding a storage unit for the next three years, and in three years we’ll revisit.”
Earlier this week, the Funding Advisory Committee approved Manriquez and Abanda’s request for $500 towards the storage unit. While this is a great start, the two are well aware that it will take much more funding and resources to get this project on track. In a meeting with Manriquez, the administration explained that the SCORE budget can’t be used for planning because it is meant to be used for programming.
After meeting with Dean of Students Dr. DeMethra LaSha “Sha” Bradley earlier this week, it seemed finding the remaining funding might be possible within other school-funded programs. However, being on such a time crunch, Manriquez and Abanda are committed to looking into other, more time-efficient ways to raise the funding.
Summer storage isn’t the only problem. “It's about meeting students where they're at,” Abanda said. “Accurately identifying student need. And right now, SCORE and Scripps College are falling short.”
SCORE Staff Departure
Continued from page 2
While Family’s recent revival points towards some progress, Wang said she was doubtful how much change actually came about from the letter. She mentioned that many of the students who wrote the letter were seniors who reasoned that since they were graduating anyway, they had few stakes in the issue.
“I think the people who were unhappy just left,” Wang said. “And I think that the people who stayed weren’t unhappy in the first place.”
Wang also pointed to the somewhat secretive cutting of intern positions as her own “Artivism” role went from two people to one without explicit notice. Wang described her own feelings on the issue as not
explicitly unhappy. “I was mostly just annoyed because I was like, I think it’s weird that you're getting rid of my role and not saying anything,” Wang said.
However, Wang also expressed sympathy for Mandujano and Wheaton-Greer’s positions as new directors. “I think there were a lot of the seniors wanting what was before the pandemic,” she said. “But I think that's really hard just because Marissiko and Elba weren’t even aware of what it was like.”
Wang also pointed out how the brunt of the blame was being put on Mandujano and Wheaton-Greer as the interns’ direct supervisors, which she felt should have been put on Scripps administration. “I do feel like a lot of the student dissatisfaction, especially with
pay and with budgets and a lot of those things, were kind of out of their hands,” she said.
Wang expressed her own ambivalent feelings, “I wasn’t here before the pandemic. I didn't have any expectations for space. So whatever it is right now is just what it’s like. I don’t feel a sense of loss of what the space needs to be because I wasn’t there.”
Regarding the seniors, Wang said, “I guess they did feel some sense of loss of a space that used to be nice, but I don’t have a solution for that, and now there’s no one there.”
While it may be difficult to go back to the way things were before 2020 or even implement changes, Yee said that she was optimistic for the future of SCORE. “I think Dr. Sha really is trying to hear us out
and hear what we want and how we want to change,” she said.
SCORE interns are currently having conversations with Bradley as well as a consultant with experience at the 5Cs on DEI work who was recently hired to help host workshops and meetings to help create a concrete plan for the reimagining of SCORE. Yee said she felt optimistic about these conversations.
“That’s what SCORE is — a space for you to delve deep into who you are, your identity, and be in community with others who share that identity and also gain perspective from other people,” Yee said. “And I just hope that through conversations, we stay connected and focused on that goal of just being a space for anybody to come in.”
Ellen Hu ’24 • The Scripps Voice
Exploring the Breadth of the Senior Thesis: Part 2
By Aviva Vic Maxon ’24 Staff Writer
The required senior thesis is the culmination of our learning at Scripps. The thesis is written over one or two semesters and utilizes many skills a Scrippsie learned during their college experience. With so many theses produced every semester, many of them go unnoticed and underappreciated.
The following Q&A highlights three of the thesis projects from the class of 2024: Soleil Laurin ’24, majoring in Organismal Biology; Rebekah Bodner ’24, majoring in Art History with a minor in Chemistry; and Larkin Barnard-Bahn ’24, majoring in Economics with minors in Data Science and Spanish.
The Scripps Voice (TSV): Tell me about your project.
Soleil Laurin (SL): I was looking at forest distribution essentially along a polluted river in my hometown. I grew up in the area [rural Massachusetts, along the Housatonic River] and was surrounded by … [contaminants in the Housatonic River] growing up. As I was growing up, the river was being remediated. They’ve only managed to do about three miles of the river in the last 30 years. The EPA does not move quickly, especially in rural Massachusetts. It allowed me to do my thesis over the summer when I was home and go out and do field sampling in my hometown, and it was also relatively cheap to do. I bought a plant identification book and then I just grabbed my tape measure, a jacket, a mosquito net, went out in the woods, and just measured out transects and identified plants.
Rebekah Bodner (RB): My thesis topic is a discussion about the separation between art and science. I’m arguing that they’re not separate, but are interdependent. And the way it shows that is through a timeline of anatomical studies from the Renaissance through the model here. My specific focus is with Italian Renaissance artists. I talked about Leonardo da Vinci and connected him as both an artist and a scientist and that those weren’t separate fields for him but his work in one completely influenced his work in the other and vice versa. I talk about the Baroque period, and artists like Rembrandt who are depicting scientists in their field doing what they’re doing. Showing that it is an integral part of his artwork, that he is depicting these doctors in these positions … and that the terminology that we have in the modern
period, to be anatomy theater, is inherently that term ‘artistic display,’ and that we would not have anatomical textbooks without artists or illustrators. And so therefore, the two are completely intertwined.
Larkin Barnard-Bahn (LBB): My thesis topic is how the public release of ChatGPT has affected the relative demand for soft skills and hard skills in the job market, as proxied through the job board Indeed. It was meant to be just a semesterlong economics thesis, but after my challenges with finding data, Professor Pedace very generously offered to use some of his Endowed Chair funds to purchase a dataset so that I could really work on a thesis that was meaningful and I’ve been really grateful for that. Then I … refined [the scope] due to the availability, or lack thereof, of [data] related to AI. I have been cleaning this dataset and getting it ready for analysis. Most of the fields aren’t numbers, this introduces a lot of challenges. So, for example, in order to get to the conclusion of how the relative demand for soft skills and hard skills [have] changed, I need to quantify the percent of soft skills and hard skills present in each job description. So I’ve been working on gathering a list of soft skills and hard skills and making sure that they are formatted in a way that won’t lead to double counting. That has been taking a long time, just because I currently have over 100,000 rows of skills and I need to iterate over each of them and compare each row to all of the other rows essentially. And so there I have run into issues, computing resource issues. And I’m very glad that I have my data science background, [I] would not be able to do this thesis without it. So I’ve learned a lot through the data challenges of this project.
nation, the EPA has started a cleanup process in the river because [PCB] was found to be possibly carcinogenic or cancer causing. So they started a removal process in which they were dredging the river, removing all the river sediment, soils, anything that was contaminated with PCBs and replacing it. So my thesis was look ing at how that remediation process can impact forest communities and species composition of plants
As an art history major, but a pre-med student, I often get when people ask me what my major is, and then what I want to do with it, and I tell them that I don’t really want any intention of doing any thing with it, because I want to be a doctor. They get confused why I would be an art history major but I want to be a doctor. And I think that throughout my undergraduate experience, I’ve become more in tune with explaining that they are not in fact separate but along two beats. Things I’ve learned in art history are applicable to things that the doctor does, like looking at the body for the unusual and analyzing images and trying to [make] observe[ations] [and] conclusions.
comprehensive data set that I can find that would be available to me about either the use of AI or the growth of AI.
TSV: What is something that you learned through this process?
SL: I learned a lot about the scientific process, just how much thought goes into selecting specific areas to do a study. For me, I was comparing areas that had not been remediated and areas that have been remediated, and then as my control, I was looking at areas that were so far up the river that they had never been touched by contamination and also had a base level of environmental management. […] All of the pre-research before I was able to even actually go out and start my sampling took about a month to two months just of me researching, trying to contact people, and asking questions. All of that was difficult. I was able to call a few people and get a few answers, enough to do my research and enough to make a decent enough thesis out of it.
RB: I certainly learned more about how I use my art history degree in my daily life, and I hadn’t really taken the time to think about that before. It pushed me to look at connections between the two things and then to argue them but in a concise and cohesive way that I hadn’t really thought about arguing before.
TSV: How did you choose your
I chose this topic because I grew up in my area of Pittsfield Massachusetts and we have this river, [ the] Housatonic River, that flows through our region. It goes through the whole western side of Massachusetts, and down through Connecticut and empties into the Long Island Sound. Starting in the 30s, the company General Electric started pumping PCB waste into the river. In 1979, PCBs were officially outlawed by the US government by the EPA [and after] 40 years of river contami-
LBB: I knew I wanted to do something with AI because it’s been something that I’ve been really interested in. I’ve taken a machine learning class and it has been something that’s been on my mind because it’s clearly going to change the world, whether we like it or not. And it’s also something that’s moving at such an incredible speed and growing at an exponential rate, that we are potentially crossing boundaries and making changes before we know that we’re doing so. I think it’s really important to do research on how AI is affecting different aspects of our society because it is such a revolutionary technology that can be used for so many different things, and that to me is really exciting. I think it’s really important to understand what it is affecting and how. It was this whole long process because the data on AI use is actually very difficult to get. One of the main hurdles in my thesis has been data, and it is the reason why I ended up switching my thesis topic from how AI use or how the growth of AI has impacted the relative demand for soft skills and hard skills to specifically ChatGPT, because that was a concrete date that we could look at. There is no
LBB: I’m really excited for the results. I feel like today, we expect data to be so accessible to us because of the internet and because we can find things in a second. And so the inability to find quality, freely accessible data on artificial intelligence that I could use for analysis was really surprising to me, because artificial intelligence is such a hot topic. Of course, it’s new and that’s the reason why there isn’t data … but even still that surprised me. How expensive data is [also] surprised me, because I talked with a lot of different vendors who sell data. They were offering us a discount because we’re an edu cational institution, and even then it was incredibly expensive. So seeing those barriers of entry was definitely surprising to me for research, as someone who hasn’t engaged in this type of research before and other surprising things or things I’ve learned.
Interviews were edited for length and clarity. For more senior thesis highlights read volume 32, issue 7.
Ellen Hu ’24 • The Scripps Voice
5C APIDA Night Market: A Revived and Future Tradition
By Alyssa Wend ’24 Editor-in-Chief
Excitement and music filled the air as hungry 5C students gathered on Bowling Green Lawn in anticipation of the spring 5C Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) night market on March 22. This is the third time that the event has been held since the return to campus post-pandemic.
Claremont Taiwanese American Student Association (TASA) has hosted the 5C APIDA night market yearly since at least 2015, but the event has grown significantly in recent years, both in size and frequency. The night market brings together 5C APIDA clubs and organizations (CLORGs) to showcase various Asian foods and cultures.
Although some of the history of the 5C night market was lost during the pandemic, the TASA executive board revived the event in the fall of 2022. Emma Tao ’22, Dahlia Wang ’24, and Jennifer Hu ’24 took the lead in these efforts.
“We brought [the night market] back pretty much only based on our past president, Emma Tao, who had experienced the night market before the pandemic,” Wang said. “She wasn’t on the board, she had only gone as a participant, so everything that we tried to build for the first one was based on what she was just saying.” This year’s TASA Co-Presidents Wang and Hu, as well as Vice President Niketa Kou PO ’25, were the driving force behind organizing this event.
The loss of generational knowledge surrounding the event in the wake of the pandemic gave TASA a chance to start fresh for Wang. “Because we’re kind of reviving the night market from nothing — no one who’s currently a student had experienced the night market — we’re pretty much establishing what it is now,” she said. “It’s been nice because we’ve had a lot of influence on how people perceive the night market.”
The return of the night market in the fall of 2022 was a huge success. Although TASA had only prepared for 100 students to attend, they had 300 attendees. Participation has only increased since then and the turnout demonstrated the student body’s efforts to build relations amongst the 5C APIDA community. This, alongside positive feedback from attendees, led to TASA’s efforts towards further night market expansion.
However, this ambition also demonstrated the difficulty of organizing a large collaborative event. “When we did it in fall 2022, we were just like, ‘It’d be so cute to have night market,’” Wang said. “We didn’t think, ‘Let’s make a collaborative community.’ Yes in theory, but in actuality, it’s pretty hard because you’re organizing multiple people from the boards of 10 different clubs.”
Each year TASA has borne most of the organizational responsibility as host of the event. These responsibilities have included communicating with participating CLORGs, requesting funding from external sources,
managing budgets and reallocating funding, and handling day-of-event logistics.
In the fall of 2022, “[Organizing the night market] was a lot more disjointed,” Wang said. “We had one Zoom meeting, and then we organized everything through just an email thread. There was a lot less collaboration.”
Wang, Hu, and Kou first made internal changes to their logistical system to make the day-of-process run smoother. During night market in fall 2023, TASA implemented a new check-in system that allowed the organizers to keep track of who attended, reach out to potential new members, give out commemorative stickers designed by Wang, and more easily inform attendees of the participating CLORGs. As attendees checked in, they also received a stamp card, which included a list of the participating CLORGs, the foods being offered, and allergens for those with dietary restrictions.
Even with these changes, the level of responsibility for TASA’s team of three members actively working on the night market demonstrated a need for more collaboration. “When all of the tasks accumulate it’s so much work,” Kou said. “But if we just delegate greenwear, or a playlist to each club [...] it feels like everyone’s working together.”
Other APIDA CLORGs faced similar scale issues, specifically regarding their budgets. “The first [night market] was smaller because some clubs just don’t have enough in their yearly budget to buy that much food,” Hu said. “So this year, we were applying for a lot of outside funding.”
To mitigate the monetary struggles of smaller APIDA CLORGs to ensure that everyone who wanted to could participate, TASA reallocated over half of the money they received from
outside funding to individual CLORGs for the 2024 market. “We wanted to assist the smaller clubs who don’t have as much funding, which is super important to us because we also want them to participate but we don’t want them to feel like they can’t because of budgeting limitations,” Kou said.
While the night market has been viewed as a chance for the 5C APIDA community to come together, Hu expressed how this can be difficult in practice. From feedback forms that participants filled out, “From feedback forms that participants filled out, they said that they loved seeing all the APIDA clubs come together in community, which is a great sentiment, but this spring was probably one of the first times it felt true from the host’s perspective,” Hu said.
The participating clubs for the spring included the Claremont Cantonese Club (Canto Club), Claremont Buddhism and Tea Circle (Tea Circle), Southwest Asian North African Alliance (SWANA), Thai Students Association of the 5Cs (THSA), Claremont South Asian Student Association (SASA), Claremont Colleges Shanghai Culture Club (SHCC), Japanese Student Organization of the Claremont Colleges (JSOCC), and 5C Circus Club.
Although many clubs were unable to participate this spring, Wang expressed that there was an overall stronger sense of collaboration for this night market. “It was very nice this semester, even though we had less participants, to see that people were really willing to help and willing to contribute with the communal tasks and wanting to make it not just TASA a host but genuinely an APIDA night market,” she said.
THSA returned to the night market this spring, serving a Thai custard called sangkhaya made by club mem-
bers. For THSA Co-President Chadinthon “Minnie” Kittivorawong HMC ’24, the night market was a chance to both introduce the broader 5C APIDA to the Thai dessert and encourage club participation through an event to make the sangkhaya. “I feel like there’s some people who are afraid to try [the dessert], but overall, I think it was really fun.” Kittivorawong said. Kittivorawong also noted that these night markets help connect the international APIDA community. “Most of the Thai students here are international students, so night market is a big thing for us,” she said. “I think street food, being able to walk out of the school and then there’s something we can just go and eat [...] is something that the United States doesn’t really have, especially around here. So night market is definitely something that makes us feel like we’re going back to our Thai culture a little bit.”
This spring’s night market also saw new club participation, such as SWANA and Circus Club. Circus Club performed during the second half of the night market, executing selfchoreographed circus skills such as silks, lyra, unicycling, tumbling, and juggling.
Although this was the Circus Club’s first time performing at the night market, Circus Club President Rina Nagashima ’24 attended last semester’s event. “That was one of my favorite events of last semester,” she said. “I love trying the different foods from the different clubs. I was really excited by the opportunity for our club to help contribute to this event that I think is really important for the 5C community.”
Nagashima noted the thoughtfulness that went into their artistic choices of what circus skills to high-
Continued on page 9
Ellen Hu ’24 • The Scripps Voice
Cornel West Discusses Palestinian Liberation and His Upcoming Presidential Campaign
By Amy Jayasuriya ’26 Staff Writer
Over 200 students gathered in Garrison Theater to hear esteemed professor and activist Dr. Cornel West speak on March 19. Throughout his speech and conversation, West touched on his run for president in the upcoming 2024 presidential election, his history with political organizing, and the question of Palestinian liberation.
The event was organized by the Claremont Muslim Students Association as part of Palestine Liberation Week, an event series where various clubs and student organizations hosted talks and information sessions regarding Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.
Dr. West is an alumnus of both Harvard and Princeton University. West went on to become a professor at Harvard and has been a committed political activist, actively supporting the Black and Palestinian liberation movements since his time as an undergraduate student.
West noted that his history of activism goes back to his teenage years. “It was when I was 14-years-old, brother Martin Luther King Jr. was shot down like a dog in 1968, when I wanted to be a force for good, to make the world safe for him and his legacy,” he said.
West opened his speech by establishing the importance of dealing with uncomfortable truths, emphasizing that what unsettles people causes them to examine their own integrity when faced with the reality of those who are oppressed. “You can’t predicate your project on the efficacy of lies. Now you’re gonna come to terms with the truth,” he said.
He went on to contextualize this concept of the ‘truth’ regarding the Democratic party’s unwillingness to use the word “occupation” when discussing Israel and Palestine. Despite the party’s inability to address the genocide,
however, West demonstrated how in Oct. 2023 the ‘veil’ Democrats were hiding behind had been ripped off. People are now bearing witness to the “raw power [and] outright criminality, immorality, illegality, and mendacity” of Israel’s occupation of Gaza, he said.
When questioned about his dedication to the liberation of the Palestinian people, West emphasized how his activism has always been grounded in a “faithfulness to a tradition of resilience and resistance that has always had to do with a quest for truth and beauty and goodness and God.”
He elaborated on how this quest for truth is essential to the liberation of any and all oppressed people, including the Palestinians. West went on to highlight how the truth surrounding the occupation of Palestine has been systematically silenced for decades. He spoke on how Western media has continuously perpetuated “the Zionist
myth that there were no people in [Palestine],” while scholars have the pressure of losing tenure if the truth surrounding Palestine is discussed in universities.
He also emphasized how “the United States and its imperial policies have facilitated this and turned back and provided an ideological cover for losing sight of the suffering of Palestinians.”
The US media, government, and educational system are trying to obscure the essential truth that “if 13,000 precious Jewish babies had been killed in four and a half months, the response of the White House or Congress and the European elite would be qualitatively different,” he said.
“A Palestinian baby has exactly the same value as an Israeli baby. [And] an Israeli baby has exactly the same value as a Palestinian baby,” West said. “And if we can’t be consistent in our responses, the forms of domination
and oppression, then it is very clear that there’s also a racist element here in addition to an imperial one.”
The talk ended with a Q-and-A where students submitted various questions that were then posed to West. One student asked a question surrounding the legitimacy of academia and higher education spaces as ideal epicenters for radical political movements.
“They’ve gone corporate,” West responded. “You have more and more administrators opposed to faculty, got big contracts, got benefactors, and donors feel more and more they ought to be shaping what the curriculum is that is market driven like any other institution”.
West’s answer mirrors the ongoing battle 5C students have been fighting against Pomona’s administration to get them to divest from all weapons manufacturers and institutions that aid the ongoing occupation of Palestine. Pomona has continuously denied students’ escalating efforts for divestment, even concluding with the arrest of 20 5C students protesting inside Pomona administration building Alexander Hall.
However, West also acknowledges the importance of outside social movements to put pressure on universities. He also acknowledged his fight for divestment at his alma mater, Harvard, where he and other student activists took over the president’s office to protest their investment in South Africa apartheid in 1972.
The event was closed out with questions that addressed West’s presidential campaign for the upcoming 2024 election and running for president “rather than building blocks of power outside mainstream state institutions.” West simply responded by saying that we’ll never be able to vote our way into the kind of revolution that he is calling for. Instead, he emphasized that his purpose when running for President is to “head the empire in order to dismantle the empire.”
Scripps’ Day of Giving Gives Insight Into Student-Centered Initiatives
By Belén Yudess ’25 Copy Editor Intern
Students received an email on March 20 from Scripps Associated Students (SAS) President Lily Dunkin ’24 promoting Scripps Day of Giving. Day of Giving is a 24-hour donation period, which gives students, parents, alumni, and benefactors an opportunity to financially contribute to a specific area of support.
This year’s entries included: Scholarship Aid, the Jesse R. Swan Jr. Scholarship Fund, The Scripps Fund/ Parent Fund, Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery: Mary Davis MacNaughton Endowment, Internships, Heath Stokes Campbell ‘63 Memorial Endowed Scholarship, Campus Enhancement and Preservation, Denison Library, Dance, Other, Academic Programs, Mental Health Support Fund, Racial Justice and Equity General Fund, Career Planning and Resources, CMS Athletics, Garrison Theatre, and the Scripps Access Initiative.
This was the first year SAS was invited by the Department of Philanthropy to directly participate in Day of Giving. This gave the organization the ability to support initiatives that have the power to directly support student accessibility and success, such as the Student Access Initiative.
“Scripps Access Initiative is awesome and totally aligns with the SAS priorities for this year,” said Dunkin. “[SAS aims to support] firstgen, low-income, and undocumented and mixed-status students. Due to post affirmative action decisions coming out of the Supreme Court, and a rise in xenophobic action and rhetoric towards immigrant and
undocumented communities, we found that it was really important for students that identified within those groups to have networks of support at Scripps and be supported not just in their application process, but also making sure that they had resources once they came here.”
Dunkin expanded on how the purpose of this specific initiative and the types of funding allotted during this year’s Day of Giving would aid in SAS’ aforementioned goal. “The Scripps Access Initiative is raising money to increase scholarships for Pell eligible, POC, and undocumented students,” she said. “There was a four to one match program, which means that for every $1 spent, $4 are donated. We had a few students give, and I think it’s going to start a really interesting collaboration between Scripps, philanthropy, and the student body.”
The Scripps Access Initiative was the top-funded program during Day of Giving, receiving 93 donations that accumulated to $55,893. Other popular funds included scholarships and donations to the Ruth Chandler Williamson Gallery and Denison Library. Dunkin attributes these results to a new aspect of this year’s Day of Giving: departmental campaigns.
“Scripps reached out to specific departments including Denison Library, the Gallery, CP&R, Garrison, and then we were their department for students; and they gave them each the opportunity to raise money for specific needs that they had,” she said. “What the philanthropy department tries to do is raise a certain amount of unrestricted operating funds and what’s really cool is that they met those funds earlier this semester; so what they were able to do with Day
of Giving is instead of just focusing on unrestricted operating funds, they could actually raise money for endowed funds.”
Overall, the Philanthropy Department exceeded their goal for the Day and met 104% of their goal. Although they were met with an overwhelming amount of success, the Philanthropy Department critiqued SAS’ performance in contributing to this result.
“It was actually very upsetting, but I went to this meeting that I thought was going to be a recap, and I was really excited that I had been invited as the only student in the room,” said Dunkin. “The meeting turned into what SAS should have done to increase student philanthropy, and I don’t know many 21-year-olds who see themselves as philanthropists.”
Dunkin was surprised by the Department’s reaction and expanded on how the Department could rectify their concerns regarding student donations. “I was just caught off guard because [fundraising for their department] is not my responsibility or job,” she said. “I made it very clear at the meeting too. So when they asked what SAS should have done more of and in what ways, I said, ‘what are you going to do next semester?’ They were asking us how we were going to get more students to contribute, and I think that’s really a challenge for the Department of Philanthropy to figure out.”
Dunkin elaborated on how she believes SAS can support the Department of Philanthropy while remaining true to the organization’s purpose. “They were looking for SAS to implement changes, and I think SAS affirmed that we are not the operating body of Scripps Philanthropy,” she said.
“If they want to increase funding by students, they need to host events and have student campaigns. When there are initiatives like the Scripps Access Initiative that we see a particular student interest in, then we won’t hesitate in supporting that interest. But we’re representatives of the student body, not of Scripps College. Tuition has gone up every single year I’ve been at Scripps College, and to be honest, I think that my return on investment remains to be seen.”
Following this meeting, Dunkin proposed feasible and transparent solutions for the Department, including bringing in vendors where a part of the profit goes towards an initiative and maintaining open and honest communication with the student body about where their donations are going.
As SAS continues to build their connection with the Department of Philanthropy, Dunkin acknowledges the vitality of this collaboration and the positive impact it can have for students.
“I think that it is so important for SAS and students to be involved in every facet of the Scripps experience because at the end of the day, Scripps is a college that is here to educate and support students; so the more students that can be involved on every level in every room where decisions happen, the better,” said Dunkin.
The relationship that SAS will have with this department will continue to be on a case by case and initiative basis. If the interests of Scripps and the student body align, SAS will always be there to support that interest and unequivocally represent the student voice.”
To learn more about Day of Giving and the different types of funds, check out their website!
Photo Courtesy of Aaron Morgan PO ’25
The Heart of Denison: Expanding Your Liberal Arts Education
By Alexandria Smith ’27 Staff Writer
With its beautiful architecture and phenomenal collection of archives, Denison is a hub at Scripps for learning, diversity, creativity, and the arts. I had the privilege of seeing some of the most special and unique items from its collection with Head Librarian Jennifer Wormser ’95.
Through this exploration, it became clear to me that Denison is not just about books. In viewing Denison’s oldest items and moving beyond to a variety of artifacts, it’s clear that Denison pushes the bounds of the conventional idea of a library. It provides a space for understanding how human beings work to communicate in so many ways across time, and the significance of learning from these diverse works.
Denison’s oldest items are a set of three cuneiform tablets from 20003000 B.C.E.. These tablets are made of malleable, dried clay and were used to keep permanent records because of their long-lasting nature and easy accessibility. The library’s collection hails from modern-day northern Iraq where cuneiform was the predominant form of cataloging and coding.
Wormser noted that these tablets’ significance goes beyond a cultural artifact but calls to our similar nature across time as human beings. “A big piece of it is that humans want to carry their information in the palm of their hand,” Wormser said. “They want
information to be portable, which could be a book or a laptop. We talk about tablets today, but we have a different idea in 2024. We still want to carry our information with us.”
Denison offers students the ability to touch and examine the tablets upon request or in classes. They reveal how human nature has grown and our shared links, to have a greater understanding of human nature as a whole. “Access to these materials provides students with the chance to hold a piece of history in their hands to get a greater understanding of history, society, humanity, and economics,” Wormser said.
Wormser also invited me to view other artifacts across a variety of cultures. The first was an Ethiopian codex book of the life of Mary where the traditional bound codex form shows the impact of colonization on local life and storytelling. Unique to this book, its cover image depicts Jesus and Mary riding on a zebra, showing the translation of biblical texts across cultures. This unique and incredibly significant piece tells a story of colonization, cultural heritage, and history. Looking at these texts helps students develop what Wormser calls “reader empathy.”
In contrast to the European-style codex book, Wormser also presented a palm leaf book from Southeast Asia made from dried palm leaves. The books were used to write religious texts and catalog information.
The presentation of these two styles of books illustrates Denison’s efforts to create a wonderful holistic
and diverse education for students by showing both sides of the story. Often in archives and libraries, there is a dominant emphasis on European cultures over others, and Denison works to alleviate that. Offering students this multicultural education is all the more crucial because Scripps is a predominantly white institution.
“Going back to that piece of cultural heritage [makes us] better people, [helps us] create a better society when we have access to information and can learn more about cultures and lifestyles that may or may not be similar to our own,” Wormser said.
Departing from the traditional library model, Denison features material culture through photographs, toys, and fabric to explore societal constructs and enhance education. One of their eye-catching collections is a set of paper dolls entitled “Perfect Lady Collection.” Hailing from the early 20th century, these paper dolls raise questions about gender identity and femininity, and the way these ideas are pushed onto girls. It reveals a long-standing history of consumer culture, women’s purchasing power, and how that has changed in different eras.
In the photography collection, Denison has something incredibly special: an image of Sojourner Truth from 1864. She had her portrait taken various times and sold to support her advocacy work and travel to give lectures. This modest piece gives a glimpse into her genius. It shows Truth’s awareness of the need to tell her story and advertising as a
mode for her to do so. On the back of the image is a quote, “I sell the shadow to support the substance.” Both wise and haunting, it reveals to us the nature of the early days of photography in which your “shadow” self was exhibited and also the means such an influential figure took to advocate.
Through all of these books and forms of media, it becomes clear how literary education is so much bigger than most of us expect. Denison is a place to be inspired by these pieces, somewhere you can gain something new. Wormser encourages students to be more “willing to stop and look at these materials because it helps to better frame their own experiences in the world today.”
Wormser said her goal is “to see that lightbulb go off, see the enthusiasm, and make that connection between the student and the object and the book. I don’t know what is going to flip that switch for every person … [but] I would love for every student to have that experience at Denison. I want them to walk through those doors and feel a meaningful connection to the place and the stuff here. Never say ‘I should’ve spent more time there.’”
We can all take something away from the beauty of this collection and see how it was never just about the books, but about exploring gender, race, and holistic education within Denison’s walls. I hope this article inspires students to dig deeper into the lesser-known collections in the library. It is worth your time.
5C APIDA Night Market
Continued from page 7
light and the kind of music they used. “Because this was the APIDA night market, we chose music all by APIDA artists,” Nagashima said.
The night market was the Circus Club’s first time choosing their own performance music. Featured musicians included Joji, Mitski, Kolohe Kai, X Japan, New Jeans, wave to earth, Anderson .Paak, Israel Kamakawiwo’ole, and Joe Hisaishi.
“It was honestly my favorite performance that I’ve done at the colleges,” Nagashima said. “Probably a lot of it was due to the fact that this is an event that I think is important to the community, we were able to choose our music, we had a supportive audience, all those things coming together just made it my favorite performance at the Claremont Colleges.”
The night market has also been a space to bring together the larger 5C community, specifically through mutual aid efforts. The night market has collaborated with Frid-Aid since the fall of 2022, previously in the form of QR codes around the event for participants to donate to mutual aid. Although Wang stated that a large part of the appeal was that it was a free event for students to try new foods, this spring they suggested a $2 or pay-what-you-can entry fee.
In total, $1024 were collected for Frid-Aid who is currently working to redistribute these funds to individuals and families fleeing Gaza. “[The
amount raised] means that everyone donated more than they needed to, and that’s a really small cost, $2 or $3 per person [...] I’m excited to see how people continue to use the event for greater good,” Wang said.
Kou, who will be President of TASA next year when Wang and Hu graduate, is hopeful of collaboration with other CLORGs increasing in the future.
“Since most people on the board right now will continue to be on the board, for the future for other clubs, it’ll probably be easier to collaborate and have people put in more effort to
work together,” Kou said. “We would be able to provide so much more to the community.”
Wang, Hu, and Kou have even more ideas to continue expanding the event, such as including more desserts, drinks, and carnival games like Taiwanese night markets. However, their biggest hope is for the night market to establish itself as a 5C tradition.
“One of our hopes is that the 5C APIDA night market is like something that you think of as something that happens during the semester … we want it to establish itself as an event that
people know about and look forward to,” Hu said.
Although Wang and Hu are graduating this semester, they share the sentiment that the night market will continue to thrive when they are gone. “It has been really fulfilling reviving and reestablishing the event throughout our past couple years,” Hu said.“We are excited to see how this event will continue to grow after our graduation but are sad to see it go.”
To stay updated on future night markets, follow @claremont.tasa on Instagram!
Ellen Hu ’24 • The Scripps Voice
The Shot Clock Has Run Out on Ignoring Women’s Basketball
By Juliette Des Rosiers ’26 Copy Editor
Asa long-time sports fan and former basketball player, I have always appreciated women’s basketball in all its radiant glory. However, when swapping stats with other basketball fans, I felt dismissed and at times was ridiculed when I mentioned women’s athletes. Therefore, the overwhelming success of the 2024 Women’s March Madness college basketball tournament has controlled my past month and tugged at my heartstrings more times than I can count.
For the first time in my life, the general sports-watching public has become disillusioned with the misogyny that silences women’s basketball players — shocked that so much talent has flown under the radar. Though I am disappointed by their naivety, I am grateful they can finally listen to the generations of women who have called for equitable and appropriate recognition of the athletic powerhouse that is women’s basketball.
This year, nine of the 15 finalists for the John R. Wooden Award, the most prestigious award for men’s and women’s collegiate basketball, were women. Additionally, four out of the six most recognizable names within collegiate basketball were women’s players. The attention on women’s basketball is long overdue and reflects the power that women’s athletics can contribute when taken seriously and genuinely uplifted by institutions.
This was only the third year the Women’s March Madness has existed, though the Men’s March Madness tournament has existed under that name for over 40 years. Before 2022, the women’s NCAA tournament was excluded from any March Madness branding and, by extension, viewership.
In 2024, however, the women’s tournament was averaging more viewers than the men’s tournament on Fox Sports as early as the first round. From the get-go, the tournament
drew an unprecedented amount of attention due to the mesmerizing skill exhibited in the regular season.
Among a plentitude of unprecedented viewership this season, records were continuously broken and the championship game between Iowa and South Carolina averaged 18.9 million viewers while peaking at 24 million viewers in the last 15 minutes. The game set the record for the most-watched nonfootball sporting event across all networks and had an average ticket price of $481.
Retired NBA legend, four-time NBA champion, and Hall of Famer Shaquille O’Neal told People that he exclusively watched Women’s March Madness this postseason. "I haven't even been paying attention to the guys, only been paying attention to the girls,” he said. “It's just a better game.”
While you should support women’s sports regardless of a man’s opinion, his sentiments speak volumes about the talent and entertainment ubiquitous within women’s college basketball. To start, the newly minted champions from the University of South Carolina exhibited some of the most poetic basketball I have ever watched, as starters like Kamilla Cardoso, Chloe Kitts, and Te-Hina PaoPao were so well-complimented by bench players such as Tessa Johnson and MiLaysia Fulwiley. Additionally, South Carolina coach Dawn Staley, newly awarded Coach of the Year, made history as the first Black coach in collegiate basketball to complete an undefeated season.
She was not the only one who blew viewers away this season; players from across the country proved how extraordinary they are. The list of star players, coaches, and teams goes on and on because that is simply how amazing women’s basketball truly is.
One of my favorite things I witnessed this season was what I refer to as The Caitlin Clark Effect. The senior point guard playing for Iowa wowed the NCAA stage this season, as she always has. But after Iowa’s loss to Lousiana State University last season, more people
are talking about her (as they should). Clark broke six records in six weeks, including the most 3-pointers made in women’s NCAA tournament history, the women’s single-season scoring record, and the all-time Division I scoring record, men’s or women’s. Her impact on basketball, however, extends past her numbers. In a press conference ahead of the national game, she expressed how she doesn’t want her legacy to be reduced to numbers. “I hope it's what I was able to do for the game of women's basketball,” Clark said. “I hope it is the young boys and young girls that are inspired to play this sport or dream to do whatever they want to do in their lives.” I can only hope that the support for women’s basketball does not end with this season. I hope that the institutions that have undervalued women’s contributions to basketball recognize their misjudgment. I hope that the media increases coverage of women’s basketball and airs high-
profile games on national television. I hope the voices of athletes in the NCAA and WNBA continue to be elevated so fans celebrate young women athletes as much as their male counterparts. I hope the success of this NCAA season carries over to positive attention in the upcoming WNBA draft. I hope the newly popular respect for women’s basketball and women’s athletics in general cultivates the proper reverence that it deserves. It’s acceptable to say you prefer one version of the game over the other. However, it is no longer socially acceptable to justify that preference due to one having an innate lack of skill. If there is one thing this collegiate season has shown us, it's that women’s basketball can perform just as well as men’s because they are just as entertaining and talented. Discriminating against women’s sports is misogynistic, and always has been.
The ‘Silent Majority’ of Keyboard Warriors on Fizz, Let’s Face the Facts.
By Anonymous
So everyone wants to talk anonymously?
Let’s talk anonymously. The community reaction on social platform Fizz to the students who were arrested in Alexander Hall on April 5 was a bigger surprise to me than Gabi Starr’s response to the protest.
Fizz is an unreliable social site, and I doubt the accuracy of upvotes, but the sentiment expressed toward the protest, especially in the first five or so hours, was shocking. So, here’s my similarly anonymous response to some of the top posts … since y'all will downvote any posts otherwise.
“I don’t speak for everyone but I think most people support Palestine but not this performative”
Do I think that some of the people who were arrested will enjoy wearing this as a badge of honor? Yes. Do I think they are being performative or virtue signaling? No. There is a distinction between being performative and performing in the name of justice. I feel that the protesters who were arrested on April 5 were doing the latter. They put their academic and legal status on the line to make a point to Pomona College; I wouldn’t call that performative.
I truly think that the people who were there, protesting for hours into that cold night, care about furthering the cause. Or, what is the issue if they did it to virtue signal? At least they’re doing something. “student protestors throwing the word ‘privilege’ around as if they arent attending some of the top liberal arts schools in
the country with incredibly lenient and forgiving faculty... its beyond me”
This is not speaking to people who can’t afford or aren’t in a position to protest (e.g. if you have scholarships, like me, that can be taken away or if you are a student of color and fear police violence).
Many posts profiled the protesters as white, upper-class students who wanted to virtue signal. However, it should also be noted that at the protest, I definitely saw more students of color than any typical 5C class. Many of the leaders in SJP, Pomona Divest Apartheid, and other social justice organizations are students of color, low-income, etc. Not that they have no privilege, of nationality, ability, etc., but just to say that I don’t think this characterization is correct.
Not to mention that an Instagram post by @pomonadivestapartheid alerted that “we have a disproportionate number of institutionally vulnerable folks INSIDE,” referring to the students inside of Alexander Hall and asking that “if you are in a privileged position, PLEASE come INSIDE Alexander Hall.” I’m not asking you to take everything as fact, as they don’t have statistics on the demographics of students inside (it was a very chaotic and ever-changing environment), but they were calling privileged students to the protest. Then, we blame them for having privileged students there. Or do we have a problem with @pomonadivestapartheid highlighting that privileged students should come to the protest to protect others?
“Protest this arrests that...Caitlin Clark
and Paige bueckers are literally giving us an all time matchup rn”
Not much to say about this other than I’m disappointed in the NCAA gays. And listen to these Noname lyrics from the song “namesake”:
“The same gun that shot Lil Terry Out west the same gun that shot some Samir in the West Bank
We all think the Super Bowl's the best thing.”
“Honestly, you guys need to start putting your money where your mouth is.
The kid in Gaza who is suffering doesn’t give AF about your protest, he needs money food, clothes, etc.”
and
“In the past 24 hours so much has happened, but the sad part is nothing has happened for the innocent people in the war itself.
The protesters believe they have done so much, but no change for the innocents in either country.
Yall should be ashamed! Ashamed that you’ve spent all this energy on virtue signaling, when it could have been spent 1000 different ways to actually make a true difference.
Also, assuming pomona divested, even, assume the 5cs divested, that wouldn’t change shitttt.
It will just be for yall to be able to tell your friends and family that ‘our school isn’t racist/supporting the war’ thats it. No benefit whatsoever for the people that are dealing with the war directly. SMH.”
Recently, Israel has blocked aid and resources (like the money, food, and
clothes Anonymous speak of) from reaching Gaza. And let us not forget the bombing of World Central Kitchen employees providing aid to Gaza. So, what feasible way can students make a difference on the ground? Alternatively, they could advocate for divestment, a proven form of activism on college campuses since the 1960s, that cuts off funds to weapons manufacturers and other firms or institutions that aid Israel’s genocidal acts to create a financial incentive for Israel to stop starving Gazans.
Not to mention,
Yes, Pomona or even the 5Cs divesting wouldn’t end the oppression of Gazans, but starting divestment in college institutions will influence more institutions to divest as well. In 1987, Barclays Bank divested from South Africa due to pressure from students. Perhaps if we weren’t condemning students for protesting and calling them virtue signalers, we could redirect “all this energy” into pushing for divesting. The unified call from students everywhere for divestment is more powerful than dividing our campus.
To close, I encourage people to chew on this quote from Alice Walker:
“It is justice and respect that I want the world to dust off and put — without delay, and with tenderness — back on the head of the Palestinian child. It will be imperfect justice and respect because the injustice and disrespect have been so severe. But I believe we are right to try.”
If we adopted this mindset toward the protesters at Pomona, we would be in a better place.
Ella Lehavi ’24 • The Scripps Voice
5C Flavors: Nobibi is the Village’s Newest Sweet Tooth Oasis
By Juliette Des Rosiers ’26
Copy Editor
Move over, I Like Pie! A new dessert place has opened just around the corner and should be moved straight to the top of your ‘Sweet Treats Near Me’ list. Nobibi is an Asian-owned, woman-owned, family-owned chain located across Southern California that serves creative, sharable softserve, coffee, and tea-based desserts. The frozen treat eatery began out of the kitchen of co-founder Shirley Shinn and, joined by co-founder Tyna Tran, opened its first storefront location in Chino Hills during the pandemic.
Stroll down North Indian Hill Boulevard and into the Claremont Village to find Nobibi tucked into the corner of the plaza holding the Laemmle Claremont 5 movie theater. From the pink neon sign to pink heartshaped spoons, Nobibi is serving aesthetics. Though the seating is minimal, the small tables create a casual vibe conducive to a witty catch-up with friends or a quick stop while on a walk in the Southern California sunshine.
Starting strong, Nobibi will not leave you hungry. The servings of ice cream in their four soft-serve cups toe the line between satisfying and overflowing. I recommend it be shared between two friends since I struggled to finish my Strawberry Blush Cup before it melted into ice cream soup. Inadvertently, this promotes Nobibi’s value of connection as sharing encourages a cozy chat with a friend over a delicious frozen dessert.
The Strawberry Blush Cup is the soft-serve of your choice (I went with the default vanilla flavor), topped with clear crystal boba, fresh strawberries, strawberry syrup, strawberry sprinkles, and strawberry Pocky sticks. Surprisingly, the dessert was not a strawberry flavor overload. Instead, the strawberry flavor was
refreshing and, if anything, became too subtle as the syrup mixed into the soft-serve. However, if you are looking for a switch-up from the rich ice cream of Bert & Rocky’s, you should opt for a Strawberry Blush Cup for a light, summery sweet.
Additionally, I tried two variations of the Red Bean & Taro Cup: one with the default vanilla soft-serve and one with mango. Although the mango ice cream had the delightfully nostalgic flavor of mango yogurt candy, the vanilla ice cream was definitely the way to go. The combination of the vanilla ice cream with the layers of taro paste and red bean blended into a seamless, delicious, extremely-loving marriage of flavors in each spoonful.
The smooth texture of both softserve cups was only interrupted by the layer of cornflake cereal at the bottom of the dessert. The crunchy texture was appreciated, but the introduction of the cornflakes confused my palate. The flavor of the cereal immediately
overshadowed the lighter, fruity flavors in the dessert and seemed almost savory. Though I applaud the architecture of the dessert that kept the cornflakes surprisingly crunchy throughout the dining experience, I cannot say I appreciated the outof-the-box addition as much as the dessert developers intended.
The star of the show was hands down the Brown Sugar Boba cup where vanilla soft serve is doused in brown sugar syrup with a brown sugar tapioca boba snuggled into the ice cream. As someone who normally picks the 50% sugar option in my regular boba order, I was pleasantly surprised that this dessert did not feel like a sugar overload. Rather, the vanilla ice cream mellowed out the usual sweetness of the syrup by redistributing the sugar throughout the dish. Therefore, I highly recommend the dining practices of Alyssa Wend ’24 and advise diners to purposefully mix the syrup into the soft serve for
equitable brown sugar distribution in each bite.
Additionally, this time, the layer of cornflakes at the bottom of the cup balanced the textures of the dessert, providing a crunch mixed into the soft ice cream and chewy boba. Unlike the other desserts, the cornflake flavor was not distracting. Instead, the cereal was coated in the sticky brown sugar syrup and fooled my tastebuds into thinking they were savoring the crackling, burnt sugar topping of a creme brulee.
When I return, I look forward to trying some of the more eye-catching desserts such as the gold leafwrapped D’Or ice cream, black Ninja soft-serve, and Cloud ice creams swaddled in fluffy, ombre cotton candy. Open every day until 9 p.m. and offering a 10% student discount (and a 15% student discount during finals week!), Nobibi should be your number-one place for desserts that are just as unique as you!
Our Recently Played: The Case for More Than Streaming
By Anna Grez ’27 Staff Writer
When I heard that Joni Mitchell’s discography had returned to Spotify after a two-year hiatus, I was thrilled. Mitchell’s music has been influential to many artists, from Bob Dylan to Taylor Swift. Her powerful lyrics and unique chord progressions have allowed her to constantly stand out from the vast array of other folk musicians who rose to popularity alongside her.
Her 3.7 million monthly listeners were shocked when her music left the streaming platform in 2022 alongside that of Neil Young. The reasoning came as even more of a shock. Following in the footsteps of Young, Mitchell left due to Spotify’s “spreading fake information about vaccines — potentially causing death to those who believe the disinformation being spread by them,” according to an interview from NBC.
The misinformation in question came from internet personality and conspiracy theorist Joe Rogan, whose podcast The Joe Rogan Experience was signed exclusively by Spoitify in a $100 million deal in 2020. Rogan’s most controversial episodes include climate change deniers, anti-vax and COVID-19 deniers, and the use of racial slurs.
Spotify has removed over 110 episodes of the podcast in an attempt to reign Rogan in, but allows the show to continue on the streaming platform. Joni Mitchell and Neil Young have nonetheless returned, Young claiming that the return is due to the spread of similar misinformation on Apple and Amazon music (NBC). Rather than remove music from these platforms as well, leaving fans without an outlet for listening, the two returned to Spotify.
Despite my initial excitement at Mitchell’s return, I soon found myself with more questions than I’d had before. Why return to a platform that barely pays its artists? Certainly, the motivation could be to provide fans with an outlet for their listening, but was this move even the decision of the artist herself? If so, even more questions are raised.
The ability to remove music from streaming platforms is a privilege for artists, as it cuts off a significant source of income. Without the availability and advertisement of these platforms, smaller artists would not be able to grow their musical brands to the same degree. Luminaries like Young and Mitchell do not have this worry — their cult followings built over more than 50 years protect them from needing to seek out new crowds.
Despite Spotify’s annual revenue of 14.33 billion dollars in 2023, the platform pays artists on average between $0.003 to $0.005 per stream. Approximately 70% of Spotify’s total revenue is distributed to rightsholders, leaving artists with an extremely small portion. This comes out to between $3,000 and $5,000 per million streams. Very few musical artists can sustain their careers off of streaming royalties alone; supplemental brand deals, streams from YouTube music videos, tour tickets, and merchandise are really what allows artists to make money.
Spotify ranks second for the lowest-paying streaming service to artists, only paying more per stream than Pandora. The highest-paying platforms are Apple Music, at $0.01 per stream, and Tidal at $0.013 per stream.
Alternative models for artist royalties do exist, but are far less popular. Bandcamp, an online audio distribution platform, allows artists to upload music and decide for themselves how it will be sold, and for what price. Despite these alternative forms of music distribution existing, as well as the sale of physical music products such as records and CDs, streaming services make up 84% of the U.S. music industry revenue.
Mitchell and Young are not the only major artists to have left and returned to Spotify. In 2014, Swift removed her discography from Spotify, stating in a Rolling Stones interview that she was “not willing to contribute [her] life’s work to an experiment that [she doesn’t] feel fairly compensates the writers, producers, artists, and creators of this music.” Swift returned to Spotify in June 2017 with the release of her single “Look What You Made Me Do.” While we celebrate the return of our favorite artists to the streaming platforms we pay for, we must consider the impact of the return and what statement it makes. Joni Mitchell refused to comment after her return to Spotify this March; does her return come from a place of wanting to reach her audience better and make her music accessible, or is this her selling out and compromising her principles?
At the end of the day, Spotify exists in the context of our capitalist nation; it will always be designed to make a profit off of the hard work of others. Rather than be complicit and unconscious of its corruption, we should support the artists we love beyond our monthly payments to the streaming platforms they choose, and become more ethical patrons.
Ellen Hu ’24 • The Scripps Voice
Horoscopes to Put a Spring in Your Step
By Paloma Ayala-Abellar ’25 Guest Writer
Reflection on Clair De Lune
By Ella Young ’24 Staff Writer
The space between the dark blue notes is not
Quite calm; the homeless keys drift down in threes.
One gives them shelter, but they wish to trot
Along the breathy waves and melodies.
The bonds dissolve between the moonlit tones, A watery blend is formed with blue shades.
The silver crescent’s voice performs alone
Above the waves into which the chord fades.
The sky grows moody, its blue turns to gray,
The rocking ocean shifts the moon’s white glare, The tension builds, the notes are led astray
Until the clouds recede to leave clear air.
Changed by the storm, the moon rises anew, Yet, it’s the same, with clearer shades of blue.
Melrose
and Fairfax
By Rebecca Allen ’25 Staff Writer
Melrose boulevard:
A dried-out watermelon and Women with shoulder tattoos
Perusing storefronts
Filled with fluorescent lingerie, Cars on either side.
At the edge of Fairfax High School, Kids play after-school tennis. On this Wednesday afternoon An unkempt man watches from the street. I turn the corner and he Vanishes into the sunset.
Here, Skinny boys smoke on the sidewalk, Silver earrings shining, Baggy jeans and greasy hair. They yell to each other about
Which O’Connor sister
They met the night before.
The Hasidic girls walk by Ignoring them, With their collared shirts and braided hair.
They walk briskly, With quiet, watchful eyes, Past the flashing neon of a Sign advertising a two-for-one sale
On cases of Corona.
As sunset kicks in, I see an abuelita
Sitting on a balcony
Listening to the radio, shelling peas
With a certain determination.
Heading for home, I think of you
Waiting for me,
The kitchen bathed in
The day’s final golden light.