The Claremont Independent learned yesterday that Pomona's Board of Trustees will keep the songs, "Hail! Pomona, Hail!" and "Torchbearers" in what can only be described as a victory of reason and tradition over passion.
Campus leftists put "Hail! Pomona, Hail" on the path to song heaven after fliers emerged during alumni weekend suggesting that the song had been written for a minstrel show near the turn of the century by musical great, Richard N. Loucks. (So great, in fact, that he failed to graduate Pomona, driven by his own melody, no doubt.) The words of the song were innocuous enough, but that didn't assuage those who felt the school ought to apologize for its supposed racialist past. President Oxtoby recommended an interim ban until all requisite song and soul searching took place. He gave two students stipends to study the history of college songs and in typical Pomona tradition, appointed a committee, named appropriately enough, the Committee on College Songs. The students dutifully reported back exactly what they were meant to: that the song was bad, bad, bad. (Somewhere along another song, "Torchbearers," was said to offend Indians and despite its beauty, it too was slated for banning.)
Just what exactly these students did - were they researching minstrelsy or Pomona's college songs? - and why multi-thousand dollar grants were needed for the research when so many alumni offered their services and expertise for free, remains a matter for further inquiry. Why those students were unable to find any of the research that others unearthed is troubling, to say the least.
Things got murky when those alumni did the research anyways, without official say so or permission. Alumna Rosemary Choate PO '63 deserves much of the credit here. Among her many findings, Ms. Choate demonstrated, in our eyes conclusively, that the song, "Hail! Pomona, Hail!" wasn't sung at the minstrel show that took place sometime around January 1910 as a fundraiser for the baseball team. (Oddly, no one seems to want to ban the SCIAC-champion winning baseball team. Perhaps next time, eh, fellow Stags?)
Ms. Choate's research should have ended the debate then and there, but the song committee, byzantine from conception, was slow to input either alumni or student thoughts. Hindsight may be twenty-twenty, but it seems more than clear that computer science professor, Kim Bruce, the co-chairman of the 11 member college song committee, was a poor choice for leading what ought to have been a deliberative body. Mr. Bruce, insofar as we can tell, marginalized alumni like Rosemary Choate and Carl Olson who persisted in search of the truth in spite of Bruce's reproaches. Though he said that the committee was "trying to get as much information" as they could, his conduct reveals otherwise. The song committee deliberated in secrecy, which as Bruce told the Claremont Independent's Aanchal Kapoor PO '11 in an email, "[was] decided to have confidential discussions on the committee to allow more open discussions among members."
Secrecy notwithstanding, Bruce's decision to title Ms. Choate's report on the history of the song, "the Skeptic's Report," shows an error in judgment. Ms. Choate, of all people, has shown herself to be worthy of respect, not skepticism. Unsurprisingly, Ms. Choate earned a degree in history from Pomona, served as president of the alumna association, and was honored with the Trustees' Medal of Merit in May 2007. None of which you get by producing works worthy of skepticism.
Skepticism ought to have greeted the song ban in the first place as skepticism is the hallmark of every serious student and teacher. Regrettably, students of local history know that Pomona has meandered down similar paths before, often carried there by people who ought to know better. In his notes on the history of Claremont McKenna, Professor Ward Elliott recounts how Pomona's faculty led an effort to get Gilbert and Sullivan's masterpiece,The Mikado banned for its "racist, sexist, and imperialist" overturns. The show went on, but Gilbert and Sullivan hasn't come back to Pomona since. In the more recent past, however, it was President Oxtoby of Pomona that called for all five colleges to cancel classes after the alleged attack on Kerri Dunn, a CMC a visiting psychology professor five years prior. (Days later it was found to be a hoax.)
By waiting several months before jumping to a conclusion, President Oxtoby and the Song Committee deserve credit for learning the lessons of Dunn, but they would be wise to learn from the outcry - more than 800 letters to Pomona! - that the interim ban prompted. Kudos goes to the Pomona alumni and students who, to paraphrase a Pomona gate, remained more thoughtful than eager when prompted to consider banning the songs.
Now if Mr. Oxtoby and others would like to agitate against an artist whose lyrics are racist (and sexist and homophobic, too!), might we suggest he condemn and his supporters boycott a certain rapper sure to arrive to much fanfare and sold out seats next semester? To be fair, perhaps such suggestions are Ludacris, but we have to ask all the same.
Charles Johnson is a sophomore at CMC and an assistant editor of the CI.
