I can sum up the essence of my senior year routine in three words: “thesis, beer, thesis.” (Rinse, lather, repeat.) Maybe “beer, thesis, beer” would be more accurate, but these two activities make the time pass a lot differently, so it’s hard to tell which was more prevalent. This routine
Author: John Thomason
My College Experience As .gif
I love first-years. (I think freshmen is not the, uh, preferred nomenclature.) I say this for two reasons. First, they’re so bubbly and enthusiastic about every institutional quirk. And second, I secretly hate first-years, mostly because of that first reason. If you, like me, spend a lot of your time occupying
Browsing the Course Catalog as a Second-Semester Senior
I feel only the slightest perverse pleasure, only the slightest longing, as I follow through on this purely ceremonious act. I’ve taken classes with all these professors before, and I can already imagine what they will say on the first day of class, what their syllabi will look like, what
Gates Cautions Against US Military Intervention in Ath Talk
“Usually the Washington book is ‘If Only They’d Listened to Me,’” said former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates at Claremont McKenna College’s Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum Wednesday evening. “Frankly, I can’t write that book, because they mostly did listen to me.” Gates, also the former president of Texas A&M
Senior Column: The Liberal Arts College Won’t Die Unless We Let It
Most people I know respond to the Claremont “bubble” in one of two ways: They either devour their free New York Times every morning over a Frary smoothie, or they use coursework as an excuse to stop following current events. (These people wonder why nobody studies abroad in Syria anymore.)
Senior Column: Rehearsing for Real Life
Being David W. Oxtoby has got to be exhausting. On your left you’re deflecting charges that you are a stooge for 1 percent power broker types, and on your right you’re entertaining those power brokers to convince them to donate money for the people on the left. Even when you’re
Cracks in the Meritocracy
Let’s be clear about one thing: the recent uproar about Claremont McKenna College’s fabricated SAT scores is no reflection on the quality of its students or its academic experience. CMC provides a phenomenal education that should continue to be sought after by the best students in the country. I’ve taken
Senior Column: The Not-Quite-47 Things List
My final fall semester at Pomona has been plagued with hysterical bouts of regret: Why didn’t I take an art class? Why didn’t I learn a new language? Why didn’t I plant something at the farm? But at some point I realized that all this time spent regretting was time
Former U.S. Secretary of State Addresses Bush, Obama Policies at CMC Speech
Despite the protests that greeted Condoleeza Rice and the students that attended her talk on Nov. 30 in Claremont McKenna College’s (CMC) Ducey Gymnasium, the former U.S. Secretary of State largely avoided controversy in both her prepared remarks and in the Q&A session that followed. Still, Rice did not shy
On Disrupting the Peace
We talk a lot about community at Pomona. As a residential liberal arts college, we’re in a unique position to build a democratic political system that can be accountable to our community. The extent of student and faculty involvement in Pomona’s governance is evidence of our investment in this ideal.