Freshmen Aren't Allowed Vehicles on Campus?!

Patricia Ingrassia CMC '13 informs me that this year's freshman class will not be allowed to have cars on campus.

I've written about how expansion will mean cutting or curtailing certain benefits on campus. Looks like we've found yet another example of how the school will begin to ration itself. I know I speak for a lot of students when I say that this is just too bad.

I've argued that the school should auction off parking spots in the past and it seems like this is a better solution than just banning freshmen from bringing their cars. A ban on parking would keep a lot of students from considering CMC. First semester, I had a heck of a good time exploring LA with my fellow freshmen and find it kind of unfair that CMC will continue to sell itself as being close to LA when incoming freshmen students aren't even able to go there via car.

In any event, to the freshmen who want to have a car on campus, I humbly offer you my spot -- for a price to be negotiated via email, of course.

--Charles

Claremont Conservative Videos: On The Danger of the Politicization of Sexual Harassment

Without a doubt, Sam Corcos is the best friend I could have ever hoped to have at Claremont McKenna. Although I may be blacklisting him in certain corners by extolling his work, I have to compliment him on the work he's done thus far for The Claremont Conservative. When I oftentimes find myself going nuts, he keeps me grounded. Sam and I created this video so that people might know the history of Brad Kvederis, a CMC student expelled for publishing a saucy newsletter. It might seem hard to believe in the era of post-Claremont Confessions that a student would be expelled for publishing a satirical newsletter that used crude language, but that's just what happened. Have a look at the video that Sam produced on The Claremont Conservative video channel.

I first learned of this miscarriage of justice from a book I read by Alan C. Kors and Harvey Silverglate. If those names seem familiar, they ought to. They are the authors of a book that has a profound influence on me, The Shadow University: The Betrayal of Liberty on America's Campuses, and founders of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE). To quote Harvey Silverglate, he co-wrote a book he didn't have time to write and he co-founded an organization. From the book, you'll find that Brad Kvederis mention on p. 179. Here's what they write.

In April 1997, the Claremont McKenna College [sic] suspended a student for a newsletter in response to charges from three female readers that the publication created "a hostile environment," making his return to the college dependent on successful completion of sexual harassment sensitivity. The Southern California chapter of the ACLU took the case to the Pomona Superior Court, arguing that the newsletter was obviously protected speech. Justice Wendel Mortimer, Jr., however, ruled ingeniously that the newsletter "had the potential to create a hostile environment," so the final verdict is not yet in.

Sam and I followed up on the case and I wrote about it in a version of an article I wrote for The Claremont Independent, which was put up online, but not printed in full.

In 1997, Brad Kvederis sued Claremont McKenna after he refused to attend sensitivity training for publishing an obviously satirical newsletter under the pseudonym Johnny Gestapo. The profanity-laced newsletter poked fun at the drinking culture on campus and took quotes out of context to make them more humorous. According to Kvederis, three girls – only one of which was mentioned in the newsletter – filed harassment complaints with the administration, “probably fearing a lawsuit,” kicked him out until he attended a sexual harassment seminar. Geoffrey Baum, then assistant vice president for marketing and public relations, argued that Kvederis had gone too far. “From our perspective this was a sexual harassment issue,” Baum said at the time. “We are required to provide an environment free of sexual harassment.” (Just why the college, which doesn’t have any of the due process safeguards or resources as an actual court, is required is an open question. During the proceedings, the school undoubtedly violated Kvederis’s right to fair trial when it admitted into evidence a conversation that Kvederis had had with one of the girls who he had offended. Unbeknownst to Kvederis, she was recording the entire conversation in direct violation of California law. [Editted: Strange, huh, with the similarities with the Kyle and David case.]

But Kvederis’s attorneys from the ACLU disagreed and argued that Kvederis’s speech was protected. Initially, CMC won, but Kvederis appealed and the parties settled out of court for an undisclosed sum several years after Kvederis had left campus. Kvederis strongly disputes that they had any intention of letting him back on campus. According to Kvederis, at one point, Jack Stark, Claremont McKenna’s president, rejected his letter of appeal and threatened him. “He issued me into his office, printed out a one-line statement saying that he rejected my letter of appeal. He said that he had heard that I was applying to USC and said that unless I did what he wanted, he was going to call his friends there and stop that from happening.” Meanwhile, Torrey Sun, again according to Kvederis, said that “never in his professional career had he seen something so devoid of merit” as the Wohlford Free Press. Apparently, Claremont McKenna students disagreed. Kvederis’s newsletter was voted the best newsletter on campus. Ironically, Kvederis went on to become a professional journalist and was elected to student government at his new college in northern California.

Is Traveling To Colleges the New Family Vacation? Let's Hope Not

In today's Los Angeles Times, Bruce Poch, Pomona's dean of admission was quoted as saying the following.

"Campus tours are the new family vacation." AND

"They're just trying to see if they have that gut reaction," Poch said.

Well, are they the "new family vacation"? And doesn't this strike anyone else has kind of an expensive way to find the "gut reaction"?

I hadn't even visited L.A. County before I came out to Claremont McKenna a few days before classes began. I bought a one way ticket -- $120 on American Airlines -- from Boston to LA. And even though my parents couldn't afford the trips all over the country, I'm less than convinced it's a good proxy for discovering if the college is right for you.

Bruce Poch calls it a "gut feeling," but you shouldn't base an investment in human capital on a first impression with the campus tour guide. How silly is that? And yet because they lack information, some families and prospective students do just that.

For starters, many of the people who do college tours tend to be dreadfully boring. Some of them just parrot the commonalities of the college that you can find off the website or elsewhere. But if the campus tour were really that powerful, don't you think that the colleges would pay their students more money (or any money, as the case might be) to provide a truly excellent tour experience?

Unlike the controversial and amazing Hahvahd tours, which actually teach something to those who take the tour, there isn't exactly a market for Claremont College history tours and so its incumbent upon the college to provide as much information, as truthfully as possible. In my honest estimation, people should learn about Kerri Dunn, the white party-fiasco, and David and Kyle getting banned from Pomona before they decide to invest in higher education in Claremont. I have sought to fill that market niche with this blog and oftentimes receive emails from prospective students asking for advice about the Claremont Colleges. I try to give them as unbiased a perspective as possible.

How did I make the decision to come to CMC? I did something that I recommend a whole lot more than going through the dog and pony show of school websites and school tours. I contacted the professors from the department in which I planned to study and asked if there were any books that they would recommend for me to read -- and then I read them all and asked them questions about them. I used Facebook to find the clubs I thought I might want to join and then contacted their leaders and asked questions. Only then did I make my determination that CMC was the school for me.