More Housecleaning and Welcoming New Friends

As Aditya's mentioned, our traffic is positively stratospheric. *Dances wildly*

• We just had a brief mention and another link on the Liberal Fascism blog. Here's what the post says.
  

College Donnybrook

Mussolini! Chavez! Mussolini! Chavez!

04/04 06:42 AM

That means The Claremont Conservative has been mentioned on Phi Beta Cons and my review of Liberal Fascism was up at The Corner. We even got a plug on City Journal's website. [An aside question: I wonder how Matt Kelsey feels to have his arguments seen by the whole conservative intelligentsia...]

• The Claremont Conservative has many new friends. Check out our blogroll!
• This weekend will be rough, given that we find out if we win the $10,000 bucks this Monday. Start the countdown!
  

Claremont Conservative Gets 1050 Hits!

The Claremont Conservative had a record high of 1050 unique hits today and 3140 this past week! This takes the total views to an incredible 23,747!


We were also mentioned on Yale freshman, Sam Jackson's blog: The Sam Jackson College Experience. Thanks for the mention, Sam.

Another shout out to the Claremont Insider for covering our renovation this week.

Jaffa on Buckley and Roth

Claremont's Soul on Buckley's Soul

CMC's great professor emeritus Harry Jaffa has a nice piece up today on National Review Online commemorating William F. Buckley.

In it, we are reminded of all the difficulties modern conservatism has had in finding a theoretical core. Jaffa has spent his professional life trying to ground conservatism in a philosophical understanding of human nature--which he sees clearly expressed in the principles of the American Founding and the statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. My own sense is that CMCers today have no real idea how profound Jaffa's thinking is or how important he has been for the school. Most who have heard of him simply choose to buy into second-hand prejudices passed down from liberal faculty and alumni. They prefer to balk at Jaffa's bold willingness to express his mind rather than take his arguments seriously. Cowardice is more common at the academy than you might think.

Anyways, I encourage you to read what he says about Buckley. The end especially sums up Buckley's life with a sweet anecdote. Buckley's soul, says Jaffa, was "magnanimous." I think he's right. Regardless of how skeptical we may be, men like Buckley show us how excellent and complete human life can and should be. I am reminded of a similar moment at the passing of a great man, when Leo Strauss reflected on Winston Churchill the day after his death:

The tyrant stood at the pinnacle of his power. The contrast between the indomitable and magnanimous statesman and the insane tyrant—this spectacle in its clear simplicity was one of the greatest lessons which men can learn, at any time....

The death of Churchill reminds us of the limitations of our craft, and therewith of our duty. We have no higher duty, and no more pressing duty, than to remind ourselves and our students, of political greatness, human greatness, of the peaks of human excellence. For we are supposed to train ourselves and others in seeing things as they are, and this means above all in seeing their greatness and their misery, their excellence and their vileness, their nobility and their triumphs, and therefore never to mistake mediocrity, however brilliant, for true greatness.

Speaking of mediocrity, if you read the Jaffa piece, you will find an interesting aside. Jaffa blasts that pin-head John Roth who has tried to corrupt many a PPE student by moping about the Holocaust. Roth, who was loved by the CMC administration, famously compared Israel to the Nazis. And you might remember that Roth's "ethical" expertise helped Professor Petropoulous decide it was okay to try to swindle a Holocaust survivor to make a grand fee on her family's stolen artwork.

Here's what Jaffa says:

On another occasion, Bill was the speaker at a Claremont McKenna College banquet. Although I have through the years generally had good relations with the college administrations, this was an exceptional interval. One of my colleagues made his career in Holocaust studies as a kind of professional mourner. Unfortunately he had, like others, used his synthetic lamentations as authority for his leftist politics. But he had also written articles, comparing Israeli treatment of Arabs to Nazi treatment of the Jews, and otherwise depreciating Jews and Judaism. Yet over my protests he had become the poster boy for the college’s public relations. In the arrangements of the banquet, my wife and I had been seated in a far corner of the room, as far as possible from the VIPs. When Bill entered the room, to general applause, he strode rapidly across the dining hall to where we were seated, threw his arms around my wife, and hugged and kissed her. Only then did he turn to greet the others. That turned the official pecking order upside down.

TSL Covers New Pomona VP Sisson

I've made something of a career on this blog mocking Elspeth Hilton's belief that the school should subsidize birth control. As many of you probably know, changes in federal policy have increased the cost from $15 to $25 a month. Hilton would like to see this subsidized so that it would cost just $10 and she wants you to pay for it!

Ms. Hilton, who believes that she speaks for all of Pomona, seems to be at it again. The Student Life quotes Hilton as saying that the new Pomona VP and Treasurer Karen Sisson might be willing to "listen."

Here's her statement:

"Just from her one day on campus, she expressed that she was picking up on currents of concern among workers and students that they didn't feel they were being listen to," said ASPC president Elspeth Hilton.

Let me give VP Sisson a bit of unsolicited advice. Whatever Hilton offers, DO NOT DO IT!

In fact, Hilton's a great indicator for whether or not you are on the right side of an issue. Whenever she takes the opposite, take the opposite.

There's no limit to the authority Hilton thinks she has.

• Hilton's favored using County money to expand the costly and unnecessary Gold Line.
• She's jawboned other students and encouraged them to change their study abroad plans.
• She also speaks for the environment and knows the best energy policy for Pomona: her own.
• She's threatened to walk away from a perfectly good contract with Sodexho because they conflict with her politics.
• She sets what hours the library may or may be open during finals month.
• She even uses centralized planning via committee to decide where to put the trash cans.
  

Then again, maybe Sisson and Hilton could have something to talk about: spending other people's money.

After all, Sisson didn't seem to have problems spending the County's money on frivolous projects. What makes us think she'll treat Pomona any differently?

Memo to Sisson: Avoid this woman!

A Stroll Through Pomona's Student Life Biased, Lazy Writing Habits

Pomona's Student Life published today. (I apologize for not linking to this week's issue, but alas, it isn't up online. Apparently Pomona's having a bit of trouble staying in the 21st century. After all, it is Southern California's oldest newspaper.)

(For what it's worth, I liked the parody issue more. It was more truthful.)

Let's examine the newspaper and have a bit of fun with its front page story. By examining this front page story on Petropoulos, we can see how deeply TSL violates journalistic ethics.

It should look familiar. After all, The Claremont Independent broke the story.

Travis Kaya, the so-called "News" editor, has piece of what I affectionately call, "piggy back" journalism discussing the Petropoulos affair.

Aside from several errors in TSL's article -- Petropoulos is not "at the center of a transatlantic legal battle"-- the article was a simple rehash of everything The Claremont Independent has already written. There isn't an iota of new journalism in the piece.

Travis and his editors probably read The Claremont Independent's story and thought they would nail our left overs. The only problem is that he (and his co-writer, Cindy Hernandez) essentially plagiarize the CI. There's no mention of how The Claremont Independent at all in the article, even though it quotes facts directly from the article.

Of course, we know that The Student Life is extremely biased. Although a full chronology of all their misstatements or downright factual inaccuracies is beyond the scope of this post, I point to their most recent errors in judgment: the situation with former news writer, Aanchal Kapoor.

In the last post, we discovered their blatant hypocrisy. Take this paragraph for instance.

This would have been OK if you had contacted Wood to see what her opinion was, but you made no effort – whether diligent or dilatory – to contact Ms. Wood for her opinion, much less to give her the opportunity to respond to these claims. This is a violation of the SPJ code. Our news editor was forced, as a result, to interview Ms. Wood.

First , that paragraph just isn't true. The Claremont Independent sent a reporter to go and talk to Dean Wood. She refused to give us an interview. Instead, she picked and chose which newspapers would give her a sympathetic view. Even if Aanchal could get access, she was in Boston at the time that Dean Wood gave a speech at the Motley on the right to not be offended.

Second, The Student Life's news editor, Travis Kaya violates the very standards they espouse in the email to Aanchal with this Petropoulos story. Unlike Elise Viebeck, Travis did not talk to Petropoulos about the ethical implications of his conduct. But wait, I thought TSL required that of its writers. Surely, it is also requires it of its editors? For the record, Travis is the News editor -- whatever that means.

Instead, Travis did something far worse than just not talk to Petropoulos. He suggested that Petropoulos's actions are criminal and that he is at the "center of a transatlantic legal battle." I'm no lawyer, but I'm pretty sure that's libelous.

Third, Travis Kaya has a history of slanting news coverage to his own point of view. He heavily edited Aanchal's article to be sympathetic with Dean Wood and has even called illegal immigrants "undocumented citizens" in another article.

And that's only a casual reading of his "work." He's written several other biased articles, my favorite of which is this one where he apologizes for a jailed protester who trespassed on federal property.

In my opinion, The Student Life should issue a full retraction, but given their general bias and level of incompetence, they probably will not.

Of course, it should be noted that we don't speak for Aanchal. She'll produce her own independent response, which, of course, we'll link to.

Time for Pomona's Student Life to apologize.

RE: What a Surprise! The Truth about Pomona's Latest Bias-Incident

Reading the coverage of the Pomona incident, I am reminded of Elise Viebeck's commentary on "hate crimes" and "bias-related incidents" in the February/March issue of the CI. A few lines in particular stand out:

"One side generates emotional platitudes about 'bias' as the other shakes its head and laughs. Is there any room for movement?

"Were we a past generation, this controversy would have moved forward with a discussion of propriety. [...] In a culture that denies taste its proper place, however, we are left with the sterile and empty vocabulary of 'bias-related incidents.'"

Got that, kiddies? Dirty words (pardon the pun) scrawled on automobiles about Jews and lesbians might make you chuckle, but this sort of April Fool's joke is crude and inappropriate. Furthermore, its unjustified conflation with "hate" averts our gaze from the underlying problem of a culture that can't take the feelings, let alone the persons, of fellow human beings seriously.