The Student Life

Students picket and boycott Frary Dining Hall to protest termination of cook Rolando Araiza

April 11, 2026 12:32 am Bianca Mirica 0

Around 30 students picketed the entrances to Pomona College’s Frary dining hall at 11 a.m. on Friday, April 10 — chanting, holding cardboard signs and drumming on buckets. The demonstration, organized by the Claremont Student Workers Alliance (CSWA), encouraged 5C students to boycott the dining hall and advocate for the reinstatement of recently fired cook Rolando “Rolo” Araiza.
Picketers said the boycott directly pressured Pomona to rehire Rolo, asking students to spend meal-plan money at the other colleges. They added that making noise in the picket line drew attention to their cause, something other forms of demonstrations may not accomplish.
“I think you can do a lot of talking, but I think when you really start singing and yelling is when you can really get your message across in different ways,” Una Marie Lake SC ’29 said.

Members of the Claremont Community hard at work inside the Motley Coffeehouse at Scripps College

Scripps appoints administrative supervisor to Motley; staff say student-run structure is threatened

April 10, 2026 2:51 am Joelle Rudolf 0

5Cs admit class of 2030; CMC to reinstate testing in Fall 2028

April 10, 2026 1:31 am Bianca Mirica 0

Community members and students at the Claremont City Hall listen and speak at the Police Commission Meeting.

Claremont Police Commission holds first meeting since homicide of Diego Rios; community demands reform

April 10, 2026 1:08 am Quinn Bolster 0

Angela Davis and Rishi Sunak among commencement speakers this May

April 10, 2026 3:30 am Kahani Malhotra 0

Last Thursday, Claremont McKenna College announced that former U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and businesswoman Akshata Murty CM ’02, his wife, will be the joint speakers at its commencement ceremony this May. On Monday, Pitzer College announced that it would be welcoming Angela Davis — author, professor and political activist — as its commencement speaker.

These historically controversial speakers have sparked excitement on campus for their arrivals and the values they represent.

Chickens return to Pitzer Garden after theft last semester

April 10, 2026 12:52 am Chloe Kiparsky 0

Pitzer Student Garden introduced 10 new chicks to their coop in late February after the suspected theft of two chickens last semester. This week, the birds were introduced to the outdoor run area of their coop, providing students with an opportunity to meet them.
The recent coop expansion gives the chicks more space and allows people to peek at them through the windows. This interaction helps their socialization process, according to Garden Manager Miriam Hafkin PZ ’28.

Pomona and Pitzer move from ‘F’ to ‘C’ grades in Anti-Defamation League Rankings; Scripps maintains failing grade

April 3, 2026 3:00 am Chloe Kiparsky 0

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) upgraded Pomona and Pitzer Colleges’ rankings from ‘F’ to ‘C’ grades in their 2026 Campus Antisemitism Report Card released last month, while Scripps College received an ‘F’ grade again and Claremont McKenna and Harvey Mudd Colleges remained unranked.

ADL reached out to both Pomona and Pitzer prior to releasing this year’s rankings and Pomona “shared some general information about Jewish life on campus,” a Pomona College spokesperson wrote in an email to TSL.

While the spokesperson said the college is “encouraged” by the updated ranking, the numerical value is not their only measure of progress.

CMCMUN wins seventh global championship, credits team culture for success

April 3, 2026 2:44 am Charlotte Hahm 0

Claremont McKenna College’s Model United Nations (CMCMUN) team is now a seven-time Harvard World Model United Nations (WorldMUN) champion after winning Best Small Group Delegation at this year’s conference in Peru over Spring Break.

WorldMUN, widely considered the “Olympics of collegiate Model UN,” hosts more than 2,000 students from over 110 countries in a different country each year. Last month, student delegates traveled to Lima, Peru, to participate in 15 hours of committee meetings over the five-day conference from Thursday, March 15, to Sunday, March 19.

Seven delegates from the team received awards — four of whom received “Best Delegate” in their respective committees. Samuel Johnson-Saeger CM ’26, one of the trip’s organizers, attributed the team’s continuous success to its unconventional structure as an entirely student-led organization. He said this attracts enthusiastic, qualified and dedicated students.

Laura K. Field sheds light on belief systems within MAGA

April 10, 2026 3:10 am Irikaa Mehrotra 0

On April 8, Laura K. Field — author of “Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right” — took to the podium to share her experiences with intellectual conservatism and the emergence of extremism.

Poem of ecstasy: Sakaguchi Ango and ‘Discourse on Decadence’

April 10, 2026 3:09 am Qinyi Tong 0

How does the individual interact with their culture’s moral decrees, and what happens when they decide to tear themselves loose from it? Leslie Tong PO ‘29 discusses Sakaguchi Ango’s Discourse on Decadence and how it relates to the historical context in which it was written.

The Daily Palette: The lasting effects of ‘Atomic Dragons’

April 10, 2026 12:45 am Meiya Rollins 0

Exploring the Cold War and its effects now, Meiya Rollins PO ’29 reflects on the exhibition “Atomic Dragons” at the Pitzer Art Galleries. From her previous readings in her curation class, she was instantly tethered to Judtih Dancoff’s work. Judith Dancoff narrates her own experiences of her father working on the Manhattan Project with Oppenheimer. Rollins describes the letters between Dancoff’s father and Oppenheimer in the piece, “The Dancoff Factor,” where they are a “window into their relationship with each other and their work. It was work that slowly killed them, but quickly destroyed the lives of so many.”

PACIFIC’s 2026 conference explores the future of U.S.-China relations

April 10, 2026 12:40 am Kate Yoo 0

The Pomona America China Initiative for International Cooperation (PACIFIC) held its 2026 conference on April 4, inviting professors from colleges in both the United States and China to discuss the current state and future of U.S.-China relations.

OPINION: In an era of disorder, our cities are still too perfect

April 10, 2026 2:37 am Nicholas Steinman 0

“Lovable neighborhoods don’t get built anymore, only appearing when our social fabric breaks down. But it’s not because we don’t know how to build them anymore,” Nicholas Steinman CMC ’28 writes. “If we reform our byzantine municipal regulations to make it cost-effective for more people to build more varied buildings again, and if we move past our misguided aspiration to create ‘efficient’ urban areas, we can once again build the progress we need in our cities without closing them off to humanity.”

OPINION: What Fred Hampton can teach us about coalition-building

April 9, 2026 11:53 pm Rafael Hernandez Guerrero 0

“If we are to challenge the elites, organization starts at the smallest scale,” Rafael Hernandez Guerrero PZ ’29 writes. “In reaction to a mistrust of the democratic process at the federal level, we must involve ourselves in a politics in which we can have immediate impact — i.e. the politics at the local level.”

OPINION: It’s your civic responsibility to find empowerment in political grief

April 9, 2026 9:16 pm Celeste Cariker 0

“We have no reason to trust anything above our individuality, no reason to hear any organization out or trust that any institution has good faith,” writes Celeste Cariker PZ ‘28. “But still, we have a responsibility to ourselves and the progress we want to see in this nation to be resilient in the face of disappointment, to compose ourselves for the sake of organization and lead lives of joy as a mode of resistance.”

OPINION: Media illiteracy kills trans people

April 3, 2026 2:30 am Aria Wang 0

“When people struggle to spot hateful tropes, especially in seemingly good-faith contexts or popular media sources, they also fail to connect these narratives to broader implications such as the risk of genocide or state-sponsored violence,” writes Aria Wang PO ’27. “This inability or unwillingness to recognize far-right dogwhistles leaves people primed to accept repackaged rhetoric as fact.”

CMS men’s tennis sweeps Cal Lutheran, remains nation’s best

April 10, 2026 2:58 am Josephine Milioto 0

CMS Men’s Tennis is continuing their dominant run in SCIAC and Division III tennis as a whole by sweeping Cal Lutheran University 7-0, dropping only one set en route to the shutout victory. Advik Mareedu, HM ’26 explained that their success stems from a strong sense of mutual commitment towards accountability within the team.
“We’re pretty comfortable with letting each other know when someone’s out of place, or someone’s not sticking to that standard,” Mareedu said. “We’ve been trying to make a better effort of holding others accountable if they’re slacking off.”

Get your head in the game: Tennis and anti-perfectionism

April 10, 2026 2:58 am Katharine Fullerton 0

For many sports fans around the world, the spectator experience is an added perk to enjoy the players and teams they love. It may even be why one turns on Tennis Channel and re-watches the highlights like Federer vs Nadal in the 2008 Wimbledon final, or the angry meltdown of Serena Williams in her 2018 U.S. Open Final against Naomi Osaka. However, Katie Fullerton SC ’28 argues that for many tennis fans, watching the sport is more stressful than playing it.

No one flies down the slopes like the 5Cs, ski team takes on Nationals

April 10, 2026 2:51 am Anne Reardon 0

Over spring break, the 5C Ski and Snowboard Team brought home two trophies from the U.S. Collegiate Ski and Snowboard National Championships that took place at Lake Placid, New York. On March 19, the women’s team placed first in slopestyle, and on March 21, they earned third overall for freeski.

Cram the stands for our DIII athletes!

April 10, 2026 1:46 am Ansley Kang 0

As a prospective college golfer entering the college application process, Ansley Kang SC ’29 was initially excited to discover Division III schools as an ideal balance between academic focus and athletic performance. Much to her shock, however, DIII athletes are often held to the same standards as Division I athletes, despite much lower student attendance. Kang argues that the reason DIII athletics is often undermined is not a gaping lack of entertainment compared to DI, but because many students don’t care enough to attend a game and see for themselves.

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