Claremont McKenna College Acts Like a Spoiled Brat, Won’t Share Toys, Tickets to Clinton Speech
April 30, 2007
Recently, former president Bill Clinton came to speak at Claremont McKenna College. CMC is a part of the Claremont Consortium, which is where I went to school. Specifically, I’m a Pomona alum. The two schools do have a rivalry, and obviously this may indicate a bias on my part. Nevertheless, I see a disturbing trend with regard to CMC.
For his recent speech, President Clinton was kind enough to waive his usual speaking fee, with the assumption that most of the audience would be students. That’s why the decision on the part of the CMC administration to exclude students from all the other colleges from participating in the event was — in a word — sucky.
As Pomona student Jenn Wilcox wrote:
This event seems like a slap in the face to the concept of an educational consortium. The whole point of shared resources (like a large auditorium located on Pomona’s campus…) is that they can be accessed by the entire community, not one college desperately trying to draw more applications and climb up the ranking system.
Yes, President Clinton was CMC’s speaker. And yes, it was absolutely appropriate that they allocated enough tickets to make sure that all of CMC’s students and faculty were able to see Mr. Clinton speak. But the rest of the tickets should have been made available to the other students in the consortium, rather than given away to donors.
Claremont McKenna consistently scores lower in the college rankings that Pomona. Recent crises of leadership further underscore serious issues with the college. Unsurprisingly, CMC’s students take it to heart. They walk around with a chip on their shoulders when it comes to Pomona. In one particularly egregious incident, they defaced a priceless mural belonging to Pomona College.
With this most recent act of disrespect to the entire consortium, it appears that the destructive rivalry between the two schools has finally found its way into CMC’s administration. By way of a solution, I suggest that CMC President Pam Gann be fired. Obviously, the school needs much sounder leadership.
a) they’re not called ‘cmc assholes’ for nothing
b) if they were clever they would’ve done something like what the “students for the restoration of prometheus” did
c) the inferiority complex stems from its history as a male college whose main drag is shaped like a long, skinny penis
d) all the cool cmc’ers i know are of course, exempt because they are honorary scrippsies or pomonans because of their protected minority status. naturally.
Claremont McKenna consistently scores lower in the college rankings that Pomona.
keeping it relevant…
No, no…. you clearly have no bias
What a ridiculous article. It’s interesting to Did you know that Pomona stopped being invited to some Harvey Mudd parties because of their unwillingness to provide any funds for the parties like the other four colleges did. Not to mention Pomona only throws one or two parties a year (max) that are free (80’s doesn’t count) that people from other schools actually go to, but hundreds of Pomonans crash TNC, CMC parties, and Harvey Mudd parties like alcohol is free. In fact, Pomona also has the most number of independent and (I would argue) redundant programs and facilities so that it does not use the consortium’s resources. Pomona doesn’t use joint science, Pomona very rarely pools its resources. A CMCer’s perspective is that Pomona is the snotty older brother who refuses to deign to cooperate with the younger brothers. I believe that this whole rivalry is blown up though. A few drunken idiots (not my favorite CMCers certainly) should not be able to destroy relations between two schools that have much more in common than most other schools and should be new friends. A new era of cooperation is in store.
Also, on the Bill Clinton thing, yes a few boosters were there, but the entire student body and tons of young alumni were there and got many of the best seats. It was tough, but Clinton is the kind of speaker who just needed to go outside to create a super massive venue people could just show up at.
Pomona does not sponsor those parties because its policy is not to fund any parties serving hard alcohol.
Hopefully the ticket sharing problem has been worked out, now, but the rivalry can get ridiculous (especially when students of both CMC and Pomona vandalize things).
The worst thing CMC does is cap their class sizes at 19 in the fall for the rankings count, which forces other students to into classes at other colleges, making these classes higher, and preventing students from being able to take the classes they need.
aren’t you an obama supporter anyway? It just seems fair that Pomona experience what it is like when a school decides that it can do its own thing without including the other schools… sound familiar? Pomona must hold itself to the same high standards…
Not that the dump Gann idea is so terrible, but that is up to the college itself, not its neighbors.
wow pomona go cry some more. get over jealousy and learn that you aren’t the best school in the world.
We know we’re only the second best school in the world, after Hogwarts.