CMC to "Celebrate" Obama Inauguration

From our website: "The Washington D.C. Chapter of the Claremont McKenna College Alumni Association invites locals and CMCers from around the world to attend an open house reception from 12:30 to 6 p.m. (EST) on Tuesday, Jan. 20 at CMC’s Washington Program offices, in celebration of the Presidential Inauguration."

Also from the website: "The Office of the Chaplains also is hosting a dinner and celebration from 5 to 6:30 p.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 20 at McAllister." [Note: A staff member claims that this dinner was held for both Bush inaugurations.] I believe we also got an email informing us of the campus-wide "celebrations" of the inauguration (but I tend to delete them very quickly, so I can't find it). The Diversity Committee is hosting one at the Athenaeum, too.

Now, I'm the first to want to celebrate American democracy and the electoral process: it's what makes our country great, after all. And there's no doubt that the election of our first black president is truly historic, and demonstrates how far we have come from a past tinted with bigotry and a failure to meet our founding ideals. In that sense, the inauguration is truly exciting.

But I wonder if there would have been "celebrations" if John McCain had won. Looking at the archives of CMC's news releases, we certainly didn't announce any events in either 2001 or 2005 for President Bush's inaugurations, and CMC alums have informed us that they cannot recall any sort of "celebrations" when Bush was inaugurated in 2005 despite an overwhelming show of support from the people of this country. If any readers recall the contrary, please let us know.

It strikes me as somewhat biased, then, that CMC would host all these events. It seems that CMC is using its resources to celebrate the victory of one particular political party over another. Politics and inaugurations excite me just as much as the next man, but I think this shows once more the striking lack of political balance in academic life today, which of course translates to far more insidious practices than merely celebrating the upcoming inauguration.

But, because we are celebrating the election of the first black president, perhaps the Diversity Committee would also do well to celebrate President Lincoln and President Lyndon Johnson -- the two presidents who did more for blacks in this country than any other.

[Clarification: An astute reader pointed out that it's for good PR. I agree -- and I wanted to clarify that I don't oppose the celebrations. I simply think we should celebrate at all inaugurations, no matter who wins; perhaps we can also celebrate Republican and Democratic conventions. But as it stands, I'm pretty confident CMC would NOT have celebrated a John McCain victory, though of course I can't be certain.]

Mind the Campus Links to Us

on the rather silly cancelation of the Pomona alma mater, "Hail, Pomona, Hail!" Here's the link. (Carl Olson PO '66 is the one who has written the letter.)

Pomona College Study on Enjoying Time

A government professor and I once had a good conversation about what it would be like to live forever, with me romantically claiming that I would go forth and journey throughout the cosmos, "to boldly go where no man has gone before" and all that sort of jazz.

The professor disagreed. He said that what gives our life meaning is the passage of time, which young people almost always fritter away. Time gives our lives definition. Otherwise we would always be procrastinating, he said. (I nearly protested, but then remembered all the papers I had yet to finish!)

New research from a Pomona psychologist, Jaime L. Kurtz, suggests that we tend to value things more when we recognize that time is fleeting. Here are the findings. 

Psychologist Jaime L. Kurtz from Pomona College investigated how our behavior and attitude towards an activity change when there is a limited amount of time remaining to engage in it. A group of college seniors participated in this study, which occurred 6 weeks prior to graduation. Every day for two weeks, the students were to write about their college experiences, including the activities they participated in. The experiment was designed so that some of the students were to think about graduation as a far-off event and some students were told to think about graduation as occurring very soon.

The results, reported in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, reveal that the students' behavior was influenced by how the graduation deadline was framed (that is, whether graduation was occurring shortly or in the future). It turns out, the students who thought of graduation as occurring very soon reported participating in more college-related activities compared to the students who thought of graduation as a far-off event. Kurtz surmises that when faced with the imminent end of college, students were more motivated to take advantage of the time they had left in school and participate in as many events as possible—the students realized it would be their last chance to engage in college-related activities. Kurtz notes that although it may seem counterintuitive, these findings support the idea that "thinking about an experience's future ending can enhance one's present experience of it". In addition, Kurtz suggests that "focusing on the fact the experiences like these are fleeting enhances enjoyment by creating a 'now or never' type of motivation".

Allow me to suggest one alternative explanation. Enjoying the final months of college may also have to do with GPA. After all, students looking to graduate with top honors or hoping to graduate with honors might be more inclined to be more studious and hard working in the remaining weeks.