Articles Written By: Staff

Bleeding Pomona Blue

April 10, 2017 by Mark Wood Comments Off

AS HE RETIRES from the Board of Trustees this spring after a tenure of almost 30 years, including nine years as chair, Stewart Smith ’68 has found himself doing a few calculations. Between his father, the late H. Russell Smith ’36, and himself, he estimates that the Smiths have been active members of the College family—as students, engaged alumni and trustees—for roughly two-thirds of the College’s 130-year existence, including more than half a century with at least one Smith on the Board of Trustees and a grand total of 27 years as chair. And that family history remains open-ended since he’s also the father of two Pomona graduates—Graham ’00 and MacKenzie ’09.

“So it runs really deep in the family,” he notes with a wry smile. “We bleed Pomona blue—there’s no question—and for many, many, many, many decades.”

It’s a connection, however, that almost didn’t happen. “My dad had applied to Pomona, and was admitted, but realized that he could not afford $300 tuition, plus $400 room and board, so he set out to drive to the University of Redlands to accept its offer, which included financial aid,” Smith says. “On the way he stopped at Pomona. Trustee Clarence Stover happened to be in the Admissions Office at the time, and overheard Dad explaining that he needed to withdraw his application because he couldn’t afford Pomona. On the spot, Mr. Stover offered Dad a job as a carpenter’s assistant and, based on that generosity, Dad entered Pomona. A lot of things might have been different had this chance encounter not occurred. For example, it was in Claremont several years later that Dad met R. Stanton Avery ’32, and one consequence of that partnership is the Smith Campus Center.”

It’s perhaps ironic that Smith will be the first trustee to leave the board because of the mandatory term limits that he proposed and succeeded in passing some years ago—but he also believes it is fitting. When asked how he feels about leaving the board after so many years of service, he quotes Pomona’s seventh president, David Alexander: “The essence of Pomona College is constant renewal.”

It’s a perspective, he believes, that comes with the long view of Pomona’s history that he’s been privileged to gain over the years. “We come here. We do the best we can for the College. We try to provide it with additional resources and improve it in whatever ways we can. And then the wheel turns, and we move on. And others now, other very competent trustees are in place. And it’s a process that is far bigger than any one trustee, even with 30 years of service.”

While he was growing up, Smith was aware of his dad’s deep affection for his alma mater, but he says he never felt any pressure to attend Pomona himself. In 1964, however, after a visit to campus, he decided to apply for early admission. “I can’t remember any thought process I had at the time,” he says. “It just sort of happened.”

But he has much clearer memories of what happened after he arrived. “I’m an example of someone who was an insecure high school student when I came here, and I was able to find outlets,” he says. “I was class president and chair of the student court and some things that I wouldn’t have thought were in my wheelhouse coming into college. And I graduated with considerably more self-confidence and self-assurance, as well as a very good education.”

In particular, he remembers how Professor of Politics Hans Palmer, now emeritus, took him aside and pushed him to do his best. “He wasn’t letting me off the hook—a B-plus wasn’t good enough if I could do better—and that was one of the best things that could have happened to me,” he recalls. “I ended up realizing that I had an obligation to myself—if I’m going to spend the money to come to Pomona, I should maximize what I get out of it.”

It was after graduation, when he went on to Harvard Law School, that Smith would realize just how much he had gotten out of his Pomona education. “It boosted me on to a really great law school where I found the work to be less intensive than it was here at the College,” he explains. “So I certainly did well there, and it’s also served me throughout my life.”

In fact, looking back, he attributes his extensive volunteer service in a number of wide-ranging fields to the breadth of his Pomona education. Pomona, he says, left him conversant and interested in a variety of areas beyond his economics major or his law degree. “I’ve served as chair of an art museum, a college, a university library, chair of the Huntington Library,” he says. “I’m on the board of a dance company and a theatre company. I was president of a children’s museum and of the Little League. I’m missing a couple, but the point is that they’re varied. It’s a perfect example of the liberal arts making everything more interesting throughout your life.”

He doesn’t recall who asked him to join Pomona’s Board of Trustees in 1988, but he assumes it must have been President Alexander. What he does remember clearly is that he was “flabbergasted that they would ask me to do such a thing. I’d been involved in Torchbearers and so forth, but I didn’t think of myself as a trustee. But I instantly accepted. And I’ve certainly never regretted it.”

During the ensuing three decades, he’s seen lots of changes, not only at the College but on the board itself. “The board used to meet downtown,” he recalls. “We met 10 times a year—eight of them not on campus. Now we always meet here on campus. Somehow, just that change seems symbolic—that this is really all about the College and how we’re doing, rather than having trustees off in their own world.”

Asked what he’s proudest of from those years, he pauses to think. “The things that jump out at me are the truly transformational activities that the board was able to support,” he says finally. “Policies on diversity and sustainability, for example. Or on accessibility to the College and the financial resources to ensure that, like the no-loan policy. Or the decision that faculty salaries should be competitive with the best in the country. Or decisions around the endowment—our role was just supportive, but the growth of the endowment has been impressive. I think it was $230-something million when I joined the board, and today it’s over two billion and obviously has helped bring the College to the very forefront.”

Most recently, Smith helped add to that total as chair of the highly successful Daring Minds Campaign, which concluded at the end of 2015 with a total of more than $316 million raised.

During those 30 years, he’s worked with only three presidents—two of whom he helped to hire. “That was a particular privilege,” he says, to have the opportunity to participate in those two searches. And we came up with two really great presidents, I believe, so it was all quite worthwhile.”

On a more personal note, he remembers the pride and pleasure he took in presenting two of his children with their Pomona College diplomas, though he also recalls some nervous moments leading up to those events. “One of the roles of the board chair here, unlike many other institutions, is to personally sign every diploma,” he says with a laugh. “And in the early days, we used a fountain pen, or kind of a quill pen. And when you’re not used to using that kind of pen, it can be very difficult. You would get halfway through somebody’s name, and it would run out of ink. Or you had too much ink, and it would get really bloody. And you’ve got 300 of these to sign. So when I got to sign my son’s diploma, I was a nervous wreck. I’m sitting and I’m looking—‘Graham Russell Smith’—and I somehow have to sign with this pen with just the right amount of ink and without my hand quivering and so forth. So when my daughter came through, I resolved that I would just sign them and I wouldn’t look at the names so that when I signed hers, I wouldn’t be aware that I was about to sign my daughter’s diploma.”

The story also prompts a confession from an earlier phase in his life. “When I graduated from Pomona,” he says, “the board chair was—who? I’ve forgotten. But it wasn’t my dad. But several years later, he became board chair, and so—I’m ’fessing up here—I informed the College that I had lost my diploma. I hadn’t, actually, but I said I had and asked if I could have another one. They said, ‘Of course—we have a procedure for that.’ And so, I ended up with a diploma signed by my father, and it’s hanging on the wall of my office. If you were to open the frame of the picture, you would find behind it my actual, original diploma, but the one that you can see is the one signed by H. Russell Smith.”

New Knowledge

April 10, 2017 by Carla Guerrero '06 Comments Off

Thinking in Black and White PSYCHOLOGY: Assistant Professor Ajay Satpute

Thinking in Black and White

When people are asked to describe their emotions in black and white terms, it actually changes the way they feel, according to a new study published in the journal Psychological SCIENCE by lead author Ajay Satpute, assistant professor of psychology at Pomona College, and principal investigator Kevin Ochsner, professor of psychology at Columbia University. Given only two extreme answers to choose from with no gray area to ponder, participants’ feelings in turn shifted to whichever extreme they were hovering closest to. The research has implications for everything from the legal system to daily social interactions.

To function in society, it is important for people to be able to perceive and understand emotional experiences—both internally (for example perceiving if you are feeling good or bad) and externally (perceiving if someone else is feeling calm or angry). This emotion perception helps inform our decisions and actions. And according to Satpute, that emotion perception is actually changed when we’re nudged to think categorically.

“If you think about your emotions in black and white terms, you’re more prone to feeling emotions that are consistent with the category you select,” says Satpute. “Extreme thinking about emotions leads to emotions that are more likely to be extreme.”

In one experiment, participants were asked to judge photographs of facial expressions that were morphed from calm to fearful in two ways. In one set of trials, participants had to choose either ‘calm’ or ‘fearful’ to describe each facial expression. In the second set of trials, participants had a continuous range, with ‘calm’ and ‘fearful’ as anchors on a graded scale. Results indicated that categorical thinking (either calm or fearful) shifted the threshold for perceiving fear or calm. In essence, when a person has to think about something categorically it changes how they feel about it—pushing them over the edge, in a manner of speaking—if they didn’t have strong feelings about it beforehand. These shifts correlated with neural activity in the amygdala and the insula, parts of the brain that are considered important for orienting attention to emotionally salient information and responding accordingly.

“While these findings were observed when judging another person’s emotions, they were reproduced in a second study in which participants judged their own feelings in response to aversive graphic photographs,” Satpute explains. “So black and white thinking not only affects how you perceive others’ emotions, but also how you perceive your own.

“You could think of it from an optimism perspective but with a twist,” he adds. “Our results suggest that if you say that the glass is half empty, the water may actually lower, so to speak.”

He explains further in his paper, “Our findings suggest that categorical judgments—especially when made about people, behaviors, or options that fall in the gray zone—may change our perception and mental representation of these targets to be consistent with the category selected.”

Consider a juror who must decide whether a police officer on trial acted out of fear or anger when shooting a suspect. Such a judgment involves thinking about emotions in “black and white” terms rather than in shades of gray. Evidence presented in a trial will lead the juror to make a determination: Did the officer act out of anger or objectively reasonable fear? (Fear of imminent threat to their life or others’ lives or serious bodily harm?) The categorical nature of the decision helps determine how justice is meted out.

Or think of faces. They move in gradations, says Satpute, but people typically talk about these expressions in categorical terms, calling them expressions of “fear” or “calm,” for instance. Similarly, when people perceive their own emotions, their bodily signals may vary continuously, but they often talk about feeling “good” or “bad.”

For a lighter example, consider the 2015 computer-animated movie Inside Out. In the film, each emotion is personified into a character: Joy, Sadness, Anger, Fear and Disgust. There is little room for gray areas—hardly any mixing of emotions—the protagonist is either sad, angry, fearful or happy. The film effectively makes young viewers think about emotions categorically, and thus, may change how they experience emotions.

Satpute is a psychologist and neuroscientist studying the neural basis of emotion and social perception. His research is focused on revealing how people categorize subjective experiences, particularly evaluative categories like good and bad or hedonic categories like pleasant and unpleasant or emotions such as fear, anger or happiness. A long-term goal of his work is to use neuroscience to enable predictions for the kinds of categories people use to describe experience.

HISTORY AND CHICANA/0 LATINA/0 STUDIES: Associate Professor Tomás Summers Sandoval

Vietnam Veteranos

Pomona College Associate Professor of History and Chicana/o Latina/o Studies Tomás Summers Sandoval is working to bring the stories of Latino veterans of the Vietnam War to the stage. The project is a continuation of his multi-year research, collecting and documenting oral histories of the veterans and their families. Summers Sandoval is one of eight humanities scholars from across the country awarded a 2017 Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship. The $50,000 grant will fund “Vietnam Veteranos,” his storytelling theatre project to premiere in spring 2018.

The Whiting Public Engagement Fellowship is a new humanities program for faculty members pursuing projects to engage directly with the public beyond the academy.

“Vietnam Veteranos: Latino Testimonies of the War” takes root from Summers Sandoval’s previous research documenting the oral histories of local Latino veterans who served in the Vietnam War.

This new project centers on the oral histories of these veterans that have been curated by Summers Sandoval. The oral histories will be presented as a staged performance read by some of the veterans themselves as individual historical monologues, also known as “testimonios” in Spanish.

“I feel honored to receive the support of the Whiting Foundation. It’s a humbling thing for me to be part of a cohort of such amazing and engaged scholars,” he says.

Summers Sandoval has worked on the topic of Latinos and the Vietnam War since 2011 and is currently working on a book that delves into the social history of the “brown baby boom” and how the war in Vietnam serves as a prism into the experiences of Latino veterans in the 20th-century U.S. “This project is based on that work, an opportunity for me to connect people to this history in an accessible way as well as a deeply personal one,” he says.

The project “Vietnam Veteranos” will also draw from the expertise and support of Rose Portillo ’75, lecturer in theatre and dance at Pomona (see story on page 42). As a collaborator on the project, Portillo will draw from her experience translating oral histories into theatrical monologues. She will also direct the production and oversee a team of professional actors to serve as coaches for the veterans.

The performance will be staged at Pomona College’s Seaver Theatre and an East Los Angeles-based venue in spring 2018. In addition, Summers Sandoval plans to produce a video and accompanying print and digital publication to be shared with a wider audience.

The topic of the Vietnam War is more than academic for Summers Sandoval, who also serves as chair of Pomona’s History Department.

“My father is a Vietnam veteran,” he says. “His brother, my uncle, are Vietnam veterans. Most of the males I knew growing up were also Vietnam veterans. This work is deeply personal for me. In many ways, it’s a way for me to bring my skills as a historian to better understand not only why Latinos made up such a significant share of the combat troops in Southeast Asia but, as important, how the war framed a long-term impact on their lives and the lives of their communities.

“At a moment when political leaders portray Latinos in the United States as criminals, and as economic and cultural threats, I hope work like mine can serve a purpose,” he adds. On one level, histories like these humanize Latinas and Latinos. It’s both troubling and sad that this is even a need in the 21st century, but it is. The humanities help us understand people within the context of their own complex lives, filled with hopes and desires as well as struggles and contradictions.

“I hope my work presents this generation in this way, as human beings seeking lives of dignity. Perhaps more importantly, Latinas and Latinos represent the future military personnel of the United States. Because of that, I think it’s vital for us all to recognize and better understand the enduring impacts of both military service and war.”

In the past five years, Summers Sandoval has collected more than 50 oral histories of Latino veterans of the Vietnam War and their families. Two years ago, he received a $10,000 grant from the Cal Humanities California Documentary Project for a youth-centered, community history project in partnership with The dA Center for the Arts in downtown Pomona, Calif. The project trained local youth and Pomona College students to conduct oral histories of local Latino veterans and their families.

A free exhibition of that earlier project, “Voices Veteranos: Mexican America and the Legacy of Vietnam 2017,” was to run from March 11 through April 15 at The dA Center for the Arts in downtown Pomona.

Letter Box

April 10, 2017 by Staff Comments Off

Memories of Virginia Crosby

When our daughter Beatrice [Schraa ’06] was applying to college, she received a brochure saying Pomona professors often formed lifelong friendships with students. That was certainly true of Virginia. I took French 51 from her in the fall of 1968 and several classes after that, including a wonderful seminar on the French Revolution, co-taught with Burdette Poland. My wife, Louise [Schraa ’72], remembers her as one of the friendly and accessible professors whom everyone knew. We kept in touch after graduation, and I was working in Paris when she moved there and acquired the first in a series of tiny but exquisite and wonderfully located apartments. We saw her regularly after that, especially in Paris and then when we lived in Brussels.

For Beatrice, Virginia was literally a lifelong friend. Virginia was at her christening in Paris and, although she couldn’t attend Beatrice’s wedding earlier last year, we had lots of interested emails and calls with good wishes and requests for details and pictures. When she was only 95, Virginia was able to attend the wedding of our daughter Eugenia and spent the evening charming new people and dancing.

You might have thought she would be an honorary grandmother to our girls. Although they certainly knew her better than my mother, that was never the case. Rather, she was always, in the best professorial fashion, an adult friend, even when they were little tykes. Our whole family always looked forward to seeing Virginia, with her interest in all kinds of things, insightful conversation, good humor and fresh outlook, even in very old age. She avoided the old person’s tendency to reminisce, but very occasionally something would prompt a perfect anecdote, about the time she saw Hitler, about her one and only deer hunt, about her radio program with her husband, etc. Very occasionally, in the most discreet and subtle way, there came a nugget of advice or guidance as well. We traded articles, political comments and book recommendations with her until shortly before her death. I owed her a book report every year on the annual winner of the Prix Goncourt.

Everybody who knew Virginia remarks on what an extraordinary person she was and what a rich and varied path she had found through life. Louise, Eugenia, Beatrice and I all felt knowing her enriched our lives. We will miss her a great deal.

—David Schraa ’72

New York, N.Y.

***

Virginia and I article I received my Pomona College Magazine yesterday, opened it this morning to the last page and came unglued to see Virginia Crosby’s beautiful smiling face.

All the memories of a long, wonderful friendship came flooding back. Virginia and I met when we were both completing our B.A. in French in the early ’60s. I was a single mom with two young sons and little money for a babysitter, so I would take them with me to Virginia’s house, and the two of us would study for exams—particularly those of our favorite professor, Leonard Pronko. I went on to earn a teaching credential in French at CGU, while Virginia got her Ph.D. and—as we all know—became a professor at Pomona.

We kept in contact over the many years, either in Claremont or Paris. In April of this year, I flew down to Ontario to visit friends and learned that Virginia had been diagnosed with brain cancer. I was able to visit her a few days before she died. As I was leaving after the second visit, I whispered good-bye in French. She whispered back in French, “I love you and am so proud of what you have done.” I will forever hold those last words in my memory, along with the many others of our 50-year friendship.

My thanks to Mary Schmich for her article.

—Réanne Hemingway-Douglass ’63

Anacortes, Wash.

***

Thank you to Mary Schmich ’75 for her article about Virginia Crosby, which I enjoyed and which inspired these memories.

In the fall of 1967, I tested into Mme. Crosby’s fourth-semester French class (French 62), which I survived with a generous B. However, I then had the audacity to sign up for her “Renaissance French Literature” class the next semester (spring ’68). Here I was: (1) the only boy (as a callow 18-year-old, I wouldn’t say “man”); (2) the only non-language major (I did economics-math); (3) the least prepared student. However, it was obvious that I was there for the love of the subject, so again, she was generous with my grade.

Toward the end of the semester, an older student (I was still only 18) helped me buy a bottle of red wine, “La Bourgogne de Cucamonga.” I had a silver chalice; so to celebrate Rabelais, we brought this to class, quite against the rules. Mme. Crosby took us off campus across Harvard Ave. and we celebrated: one bottle for about 8 people didn’t get us too drunk. I know she got a chuckle out of the silver chalice.

A couple of years later, she invited my girlfriend and me to her home in Padua Hills to play our “Glory of Gabrieli” (E. Power Biggs) record on her husband’s state-of-the-art stereo system, and for a very pleasant afternoon on her deck overlooking the valley.

Around 1970, Zeta Chi Sigma voted Mme. Crosby as a member. Not a faculty advisor. Member. (At this same time, we also voted several women students as members.) All of this was against the rules, but in the spirit of the times, we didn’t ask.

Did she share with you her story of how she got into writing radio soap-operas while living in a Chicago apartment with “a prostitute in the apartment above and an abortionist in the apartment below”?

I tried looking her up when I was in Claremont a few years ago, but was told that she wasn’t doing well.

Let me end with some verses from a poem we studied in her class (Ronsard: “A Cassandre”):

Las! voyez comme en peu d’espace,

Mignonne, elle a dessus la place

Las! las ses beautez laissé cheoir!

Ô vrayment marastre Nature,

Puis qu’une telle fleur ne dure

Que du matin jusques au soir!

Thank you for the article, and thanks for letting me share.

—Howard Hogan ’71

Owings, Md.

Anguished Father

I am an anguished father, white and privileged, who may lose his adopted, undocumented sons to deportation. My heart is shattered.

—David Lyman ’66

South Pasadena, Calif.

Shining Example

Thank you for the inspiring story in the summer 2016 PCM about Judge Halim Dhanidina, who has steadfastly exhibited the courage to promote the values and enforce the laws of our country in the face of the prejudice and fear engendered by the 9/11 attack on WTC. I’m sure I would not have his courage to do the same. He is a shining example of the values and vision we believe Pomona instills in all graduates. His life is (or should be) an inspiration to all Americans.

—Mike Hogan ‘69

Black Forest, Colo.

Another Cane

Another Cane “The Cane Mystery” article in the PCM summer 2016 issue was interesting and reminded me of the cane which I now have. The cane belonged to my father, Robert Boynton Dozier (1902–2001), Class of ’23.

The cane has the same dimensions as those mentioned in the article: 35 inches long, with a five-inch curved handle. Attached about 29 inches above the base is a 3/4–inch sterling band which is engraved: “R.B.D. ’23” (see photo at right).

As I recall the story my father told me many years ago, the freshmen class men beat the sophomore men in the Pole Rush competition. The challenge: Which team could have a man reach the top of the pole the quickest? He felt that the freshmen had done so well because they had a plan as to where the men would be positioned and who would climb where and when. The award was a cane. I do not know how many other men received and kept a cane.

My father really enjoyed having that cane as a special memento of Pomona College and kept it on the umbrella stand in his home. He also found it to be a useful walking aid when he was in his late 90s. I am pleased to have the cane in my living room, though I have not yet needed to use it.

—Bobbie Dozier Spurgin ’49

Carlsbad, Calif.

Memories of a Friend

I’m writing to share a few thoughts about the passing of my friend, Richard E. Persoff ‘49 (see Obits). These are perhaps of more interest to Pomona undergraduates than to alumni, partly because there are few of us left from the 1940s, and partly because the present students are now grappling with the same questions that Persoff faced in the aftermath of WWII: “Is liberal education, including the humanities, relevant to those who look forward to careers in technological fields?”

Persoff used his undergraduate work to learn how to think. And because of that, he was able to continue applying his mind in several areas. That luxury is as pertinent today as it was in the 1940s.

At Pomona, he studied hard and then played hard. Once, emerging from his books after midnight, he roared at me from across the room: “Andrews! Let’s go to the snow!” We then exited the world of academia temporarily for some improvised adventure, and then returned with renewed energy to our studies.

He could be critical, but outside his field, he was a champion of tolerance. He liked to strike up conversations with the immigrant workers of the local gravel pits and try to absorb their views on lives so different from ours. He befriended the college gardener, a family man who cared for the plants on campus with as much responsibility as an ancient shepherd might tend to his flock. Richard once visited the hobos who cooked their haphazard dinners on open fires in their “jungle” down by the railroad tracks. In our college days, the Great Depression and World War II were recent history. We knew songs from nations victimized by the war, as well as some older songs collected by the poet Carl Sandburg—songs that reflected man at odds with society, but whose protagonist could still recognize life’s gifts, for castaways often seek community in strange places.

One night, we decided to see what it was like to ride a freight train. We crouched by the tracks as locomotives came by. We felt the earth shake, heard the deafening mechanical sounds and felt the blast of the glowing firebox passing only a foot or so from us. We ran along next to the slow-moving train, hoping to grab hold somewhere and swing aloft into an empty box car. We quickly realized that if we leapt and missed, we might fall under the wheels, and we wisely postponed our plan indefinitely, but we never stopped searching for the answers of that odd life and the freedom that it symbolized

I was taken by surprise when good old Dick phoned me to say, “This is the last word you will have from me.” We had given each other the unqualified friendship that holds much of the world together. Thinking of him as I tried to adjust to the loss of his steadfast support, it occurred to me that Dick had finally gotten a grip on his freight train and was just riding off to another great adventure.

With appreciation of Pomona’s contributions, past and present…

—Chris Andrews ’50

Sequim, Wash.

Andrus Remembered

I was saddened to learn that my senior thesis advisor, Professor William Dewitt Andrus, had passed away (PCM fall 2016). Under his able direction, my thesis topic was a study of a unicellular algae, Dunaliella salina. This prepared me for my Ph.D. dissertation on photosynthesis at the University of Bern, Switzerland, in 1966. Prof. Andrus was a brilliant experimentalist and had a sense of humor.

—Katherine J. Jones ’61

Alpine, Calif.

Thank You

Last year a note in PCM suggested that we in the community that appreciate the quality and effort that this amazing publication delivers can say “thank you” by sending in a “voluntary subscription.” The latest example, featuring the Oxtoby years, is such a stunning keeper that I am finally moved to action. So, I wish to add my voice to the cheering throng—PCM is an enormous credit to Pomona. We are flattered and fortunate to be on the mailing list. Thank you!

—Joe Mygatt P’13

Stanford, Conn.

CORRECTION

Our apologies to Eric Myers ’80, whose name was misspelled in a class note in the fall 2016 issue of PCM. —Editor

Alumni, parents and friends are invited to email letters to pcm@pomona.edu or “snail-mail” them to Pomona College Magazine, 550 North College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. Letters may be edited for length, style and clarity.

Zoot Suit Reboot

April 10, 2017 by Carla Guerrero ’06 Comments Off

Rose Portillo ’75 and co-star Daniel Valdez in a 1978 rehearsal of Zoot Suit and reunited in 2016 for the famous play’s revival.

Rose Portillo ’75 and co-star Daniel Valdez in a 1978 rehearsal of Zoot Suit (below) and reunited in 2016 for the famous play’s revival (above).

IN 1978, A YOUNG ACTOR fresh out of college got the role of her dreams. Rose Portillo ’75 was cast as Della Barrios in the then-new Chicano play Zoot Suit, written by one of her heroes, the father of Chicano theatre and founder of El Teatro Campesino, Luis Valdez.

Nearly four decades after her first audition for Zoot Suit, Portillo, now a lecturer in Pomona’s Theatre Department, found herself auditioning before Valdez one more time last year for the revival of this now-classic Chicano play, which ran from January to mid-March at the Mark Taper Forum.

“I auditioned in the same room I auditioned in 40 years ago with the same person I auditioned for 40 years ago and with the same person across the table from me from 40 years ago,” says Portillo. “So, you know, when I walked in the room, we just looked at each other and I said, ‘OK, I need to take a moment’—it’s very surreal.”

The play, written by Valdez, is based on the Sleepy Lagoon murder trial and the Zoot Suit Riots that occurred in early 1940s Los Angeles. The play tells the story of Henry Reyna and the 38th Street gang, who were tried and found guilty of murder, and their subsequent journey to freedom.

Zoot Suit premiered at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles in April 1978, and sold out in two days. The play debuted on Broadway the following year, and was turned into a feature film in 1981. Portillo, who played Della Barrios, Reyna’s girlfriend, was in every production. In this current run of Zoot Suit, Portillo will play the role of Dolores, Reyna’s mother.

Portillo was first introduced to Chicano theatre as a theatre major here in the early 1970s. “While I was at Pomona, I saw ‘La Gran Carpa de los Rasquachis’ that had a weekend performance at the Mark Taper Forum. It was a Teatro Campesino play and it resonated so deeply with me—it was one of those moments that you don’t know what you’re missing until you see it. So, I got on a committee to bring Luis Valdez—to bring El Teatro Campesino—to campus.” Luckily for Portillo, the committee’s efforts were successful and Valdez paid a visit to Pomona soon after.

Portillo, who is also the director of Theatre for Young Audiences, a program of Pomona College’s Draper Center for Community Partnerships, started writing and performing plays while still in elementary school. She was cast in everything that was produced on campus—from Tennessee Williams to the Shakespeare canon. And Portillo’s parents, who lived in L.A.’s Silver Lake neighborhood, came to see all of her performances.

It was at Pomona that Portillo first came to identify as a Chicana—a term her parents balked at in an era when the word had negative connotations for older generations like her parents, who rarely talked in-depth about their heritage. “On Parents Day, the Chicano Studies Department had a program and they read the poem ‘Yo Soy Joaquin’ and other Chicano poetry. I turned to my father, and he was weeping, and it was never an issue after that.”

Reclaiming her identity and finding her love for Chicano theatre helped Portillo as she built her career—giving her a voice when the roles for Latinas were nothing more than one-dimensional stereotypes.

When Portillo was cast for the role of Della in Zoot Suit, her agent let her know she wouldn’t be able to take the role because she had already committed to another project, a film.

Portillo’s response to her agent: “I told her, ‘That movie is a movie, and this is a dream. You’re not stepping on my dream. This is my dream. Make it happen.’ And she did.”

And her parents were right there beside her. Once the play moved to Broadway, her parents went to New York to accompany her, with her mother staying longer to soak in the city.

Fast forward to 2017, and Portillo’s mother will be there on opening night of the revival of Zoot Suit, nearly four decades after it first premiered in the same theatre in Los Angeles. “She’s 84. A lot of our parents are gone, but she’s still around. I think she would’ve killed Luis [Valdez] if I didn’t get the role.”

For Portillo, the opportunity to be part of Zoot Suit in 2017 is just as special as it was in 1978. “It’s very rare that you get to live a full circle within a play, but with such a piece of history—to be able to be part of that history again, there are just no words for it,” she says.

“It was timely when it happened. To see Mexicans on stage in original theatre doing a play about a Mexican-American story was earth-shattering and groundbreaking. We sold out before we opened, and to come back in this particular moment of our national history makes it all the more important again.”

“And personally, it’s so historic for me, to be able to be this age and, at this point in my career, to be able to physically and viscerally revisit this—wearing different shoes and being older and wiser, it’s just… It was a dream the first time; it’s a dream the second time.”

Fact or Myth: Answers

April 10, 2017 by Staff Comments Off

Back to Fact or Myth.

1. This is at least partially a myth. The nickname “Sage Hen” appeared in The Student Life as early as 1913, when sports editor E.H. Spoor 1915 wrote, “Once again the Oxy Tiger wanders from his lair and comes to peaceful, peaceful Claremont with intent to murder. The Sage Hen will fight—on the field. On the campus she is entirely amicable.” “Hen” and “Hun” were used interchangeably until around 1918, when the latter disappeared, possibly because of its wartime connotations.

2. This is a great story, but it’s also a complete fabrication. Students have passed the story down to other students for many years, but there has never been a Shakespeare Garden on Pomona’s campus. No one knows how the myth got started.

3. Myth? Probably. But there are those who say they’ve experienced strange things in these buildings and become reluctant believers, so let’s brand it unknown. Some of the facts behind the stories, at least, might be true. We have been told that a record exists in Big Bridges’ archives mentioning an unnamed worker who was killed during construction, and that the L.A. Times reported a death at the old hotel that became Sumner. However, we’ve been unable to confirm either claim.

4. This story is factual and describes one of the most inventive and challenging pranks ever performed on the Pomona campus. Michael Brazil ’79, who was interviewed by PCM in 2002, was one of a group of friends who conceived the daring plan and carried it out.

5. All of this is true, including the Madonna, for which there is also photographic evidence.

6. Only one person really knows if this is true, and he isn’t talking, so let’s call it unknown. Joe Menosky ’79 reportedly lived in Oldenborg during his college years and played a role in creating the Borg as a writer for Star Trek: The Next Generation. To our knowledge, however, he has never confirmed or denied this claim.

7. This is all true, though the “reigning champion” part is a humorous take on an odd situation, not a serious claim.

8. The story about the shovel, so far as we can tell, is completely factual. The shovel has an inscription on the front of the handle noting that it was a gift from the Class of 1898, and another on the back noting that it was used by President Roosevelt on May 3, 1903. However, the tree part is false. The original Roosevelt tree died shortly after planting and was quietly replaced.

9. Professor Bentley was, indeed, known on campus for this tongue-in-cheek, fallacious proof that all numbers equal 47 (or any other number), and Mets and Elgin did start the 47 hunt that has continued to this day.

Excerpt From Episode 4: Catch Us If You Can

April 10, 2017 by Saahil Desai and Kevin Tidmarsh Comments Off

A Mufti burger from 1974–75

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Tidmarsh: “… Joshua Tremblay, the editor of TSL in fall 2003 actually did a ride-along with two Mufti members for a night, and they told him that most of the 20-odd members at the time had either been approached by an active member or caught them in the act. But good luck trying to catch them. A TSL columnist in 1981 wrote that, quote, ‘Mufti is to Pomona College what Bigfoot is to Northern California. Nobody’s really sure who or what it is, but the telltale evidence for its existence is everywhere.’ Conor O’Rourke, who graduated in 2003 … is one of the few people who can give some insight into how Mufti recruits students. He went through the majority of the induction process, but he couldn’t attend the final challenge.”

O’Rourke: “My senior year, things had relatively calmed down, I guess, with Mufti, and they seemed to be somewhat inactive. But that spring semester of senior year … we had been looking closely, I guess, for whatever reason, and came across an unusual message in the Digester that on first glance seemed a little incoherent. It was complete sentences and actual words but didn’t mean anything either. If you were really reading into it, you might have been able to interpret that it was somehow in reference to a return of some kind. There was something that was trying to make a return to campus. So it was cryptic enough that our ‘spidey senses’ told us it might be Mufti-related. And the idea of a return certainly fit with where Mufti was at the time, which was that they were relatively dormant that particular year. So we tangled with this message for a while.

“Eventually, you know—one of us was a computer science major and started kind of taking a more technical approach to deciphering this and used some type of number-to-letter language—I’ve forgot what it was called. But what happened was that we found that these numbers corresponded to, essentially, a Dewey Decimal code, and the book that came up with those numbers was called The History of Secret Societies, or something thereabouts. And that was a light bulb going on. Wow! This has gotta be—this has gotta be it. And so we went to the library—we went to Honnold-Mudd—and we looked up that book. It was there, somewhere deep in the stacks—didn’t seem like it had been checked out for a very long time. It was an old book, from maybe the 1920s or 1930s. So we checked out the book, and we played with it a little bit. … One of us actually read the entire thing. Again, we were looking for answers. It was kind of hard. And one of us had the idea of kind of cracking open the book—literally cracking open the book. Took a pen knife and made a very small incision on the back cover, and lo and behold, hidden beneath that was a small note that basically said, ‘Congratulations. You’ve come this far. If you want to go further, you know, contact us.’ And there was an email address, some AOL address or something like that.

“And it took a day or two to hear back from them, but eventually we did. And their message back was written in a cryptic way, but it was another challenge—once we interpreted what the message meant, it was another challenge to us. The challenge was: they essentially wanted us to bring back the Mufti T-shirt to the Coop Store. You know, it was a very large challenge. So we thought long and hard as to how we were going to do that. I don’t know how it came about, but eventually we decided to take the scarecrow from the farm up at Pitzer, and we put a suit on this scarecrow, which fit, actually, quite well, and took him down to the Campus Center and propped him up against the door to the Coop Store, and then pinned to him a document that we called ‘Peter Stanley’s Last Will and Testament.’ And Peter Stanley was, of course, David Oxtoby’s predecessor, and this was his final year as president of Pomona College. So this last will and testament was written as a will in which he was requesting the Coop Store to bring back the Mufti T-shirt. I happened to be writing for TSL at the time and in charge of something called the Security Briefs—I don’t think this is a section they have any more, but it’s essentially a police blotter from CampSec [Campus Security], and I worked that into the police blotter for the week. … [Mufti] contacted us and said, ‘Congratulations—you’ve gotten this far. And if you want to keep going, you know, you need to meet us out on the Quad at midnight’ or something, of this particular night that was down the road. Now unfortunately for me, when we got this response from Mufti inviting us to learn more and meet them on the Quad with a blindfold on—they wanted us to blindfold ourselves—I was already down in San Diego for Senior Week, and I actually got the call about the email from one of my friends, who was a junior and obviously not in San Diego for Senior Week. It was at that time that I thought, ‘Darn!’ This was happening too late for me. …”

This entire episode is available for download at soundcloud.com, iTunes or Google Play.

Fact or Myth

April 10, 2017 by Mark Wood Comments Off

Some of these old tales about Pomona are actually true. Others are sheer fabrications or exaggerations. Still others remain mysteries. Can you tell which ones are fact, which are fiction, and which are unknown?

1. Huns to Hens

Legend has it that Pomona got its unique mascot, the Sagehen, because of a bit of century-old political correctness and some creative cost-avoidance. The original Pomona mascot was far more warlike than the current flightless bird—the Huns. However, that name lost its luster when the U.S. entered World War I in 1917 and the popular epithet for the enemy became you-know-what. The teams had already invested in uniforms bearing the word “HUNS,” so to save money, the “U” was changed to an “E” and they became the “HENS.”

2. The Shakespeare Garden

Almost every student has heard the story that the border of Marston Quad is home to a garden containing plants mentioned in Shakespeare’s plays—pansies, fennel, willows and rosemary from Hamlet, violets and thyme from A Midsummer Night’s Dream, daffodils from A Winter’s Tale, daisies from Love’s Labour’s Lost, and so on. According to the tale, every plant mentioned in the Bard’s body of work is to be found somewhere in the garden.

3. Things That Go Bump

There are several persistent tales of ghosts on the Pomona campus. There’s Walter, the worker who fell off the roof of Bridges Auditorium during its construction and has haunted the place ever since, playing pranks with the lights and appearing in shadowy passageways. There’s Gwendolyn, who died in the old Claremont Hotel before it became Sumner Hall and occasionally can be seen or heard in its lower level or bell tower. And there’s Nila, the ghost of a young woman who reportedly wanders the attic and hallways of Seaver House.

4. The Flying Sailboat

A classic prank that has become Pomona legend happened in 1978. The place was Frary Hall, or rather, the rafters of Frary Hall. In a scene worthy of a Magritte painting, students arriving for breakfast one morning found a 13-foot sailboat suspended in space high above the tables, with sails set and framed in Pomona blue.

5. The Duke and the Madonna

Is that Little Bridges behind John Wayne and Charles Coburn in the movie Trouble Along the Way? That, at least, is the story, which includes Wayne coming to campus in 1952 as Pomona played the role of a small Catholic college in the film. That visit is also remembered for a double-take moment when the sculpture of the flutist in the fountain in Lebus Court was covered by a fake statue of the Madonna.

6. The Borg and the Borg

The story goes that the Borg of TV fame—the swarming, half-cybernetic zombies from Star Trek: The Next Generation who lived in a cube with warrens of maze-like hallways—got its name from Pomona’s Borg—otherwise known as the Oldenborg Center for Modern Languages and International Relations, also known for its warrens of maze-like hallways.

7. Winner and Still Champion…

The Men’s Glee Club of 1932 took first place in the Pacific Southwest Glee Club Championship in San Diego, then traveled to St. Louis to compete in the first-ever National Championship, which they won. And since the first National Glee Club Championship also turned out to be the last National Glee Club Championship, Pomona can still lay claim to being the reigning champ.

8. The Roosevelt Shovel and Oak

According to legend, the shovel that Pomona presidents bring out to break ground for new buildings was used by President Theodore Roosevelt to plant a California live oak on campus during his visit in 1903. Arriving at the Claremont train station, Roosevelt was transported by carriage to campus where he spoke to a throng of 7,000 to 8,000 people from a rostrum in front of Pearsons, later planting the tree, which survives to this day.

9. All Numbers Equal 47

The 47 craze at Pomona started in 1964 when Donald Bentley, then Professor of Statistics, presented a paradoxical proof with the title, ”Why all numbers are equal to 47.” Two students in a summer program, Laurens “Laurie” Mets ’68 and Bruce Elgin ’68, then embarked upon their own tongue-in-cheek experiment to determine whether the number 47 occurred more often in nature than other numbers, and the rest is history.

Fact or Myth Answers.

Ocelot Country

April 10, 2017 by Margaret Shakespeare Comments Off

Hilary Swarts ’94 on the Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge

Photos By Crystal Kelly

SURVIVAL CAN BE A REAL CAT FIGHT when you get squeezed out of your rightful home. When your food supply dwindles. When you are small and cute and easy to run down. Even though you are standoffish and try to keep to yourself.

In 22 countries, from Uruguay to south Texas, the ocelot (Leopardus pardalis), one of smallest and most secretive of all wild cat species, is facing this sad plight. Its habitat—thorn scrub, coastal marshes, tropical and pine-oak forests—has shrunk alarmingly, swaths destroyed by building and farming and other human activity. With diminished space in which to establish territories, find secure denning sites and forage for rodents, birds, snakes, lizards and other prey—plus the increased threat of becoming road kill as highway construction boomed in the 20th century—the ocelot has been in the fight of its life.

Back in the 1960s and early ’70s, ocelots were nearly loved to death. Laws then did not prohibit taking them for exotic pets or hunting them for their beautiful, dramatically marked fur. Babou, Salvador Dali’s frequent sidekick, may have been the most famous of captive ocelots.

In the U.S., as the wild population of these little cats became depleted under development pressures, the fashion industry turned to import, reaching a peak of 140,000 pelts from Central and South American countries in 1970. Toward the end of the century, all these human endeavors had chipped away at the historic U.S. ocelot range—which once stretched from Louisiana to Arizona—cornering the few known remaining individuals in the Lower Rio Grande Valley, where Texas meets the Mexican border and the Gulf of Mexico. Wildlife biologists, scientists, researchers, conservationists and other experts started running the numbers and saw that time was running out. Now, even after several decades of legal protection and some active conservation projects, only 55 or so known individual ocelots remain in the U.S.

Swarts with one of several “Ocelot Crossing” signs on the refuge

There are few rays of sunshine in this grim picture, but one of the brightest landed at Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge a little over three years ago in the form of wildlife biologist Hilary Swarts ’94.

Radio-collars are attached with breakable string. This one was dropped by a male bobcat.

CHARMED BY THE PROMISE of year-round Southern California sunshine, Swarts arrived at Pomona in 1990 from the four seasons of Greenwich, Conn., expecting college to be “a safe way to have an adventure.” She had no idea what that adventure would be or where it might lead, but she knew one thing for sure: “I always liked animals like crazy,” she says. “But it was two professors at Pomona who gave me the idea that you could have this kind of career—that jobs [with animals] other than veterinarian or zookeeper were possible.”

Swarts listens to the signal from a radio-collar.

It was in Anthropology Professor James McKenna’s courses on biological anthropology and primate behavior that she first encountered the area of study that would become her path into the world. “Animal behavior!” she says, “I was hooked.”

Another mentor, Biology Professor Rachel Levin, introduced her to the kind of research that would become her life’s work. Assisting Levin in her study of songbirds—including an eventual trip to Panama to study the communication behaviors of bay wrens in their natural habitat—fed Swarts’ enthusiasm and left her convinced that she was on the right track. And at a time when men still dominated the sciences, Levin also gave her confidence that she could succeed. “She showed me how women scientists work,” Swarts recalls. “I got amazing support from her.”

In her senior year, Swarts threw herself straight into fieldwork, flying to Tanzania to spend her study-abroad semester in a wildlife conservation program there. However, midway through the semester, her plan to be immersed in chimpanzee communities took a bad turn: “I broke my ankle, had surgery in Nairobi [Kenya] and spent four weeks at Lake Manyara National Park designing exhibits for the Arusha Natural History Museum.” Instead of taking a planned hike up Mt. Kilimanjaro, she hobbled around on crutches for the rest of her stay.

Despite these disappointments, she returned to Pomona and forged ahead. Since the College had no major in animal behavior, Swarts designed her own, combining the fields of her mentors to create a major in “biological anthropology.”

After graduation, she spent seven years project-hopping—from black howler monkeys in Belize to the famous mountain gorillas in Rwanda’s Parc National des Volcans. “Each work experience was confirmation that I’m doing the right thing,” she says. “I’d see something shiny and think, ‘That’s worth checking out.’ I’ve stumbled into some pretty amazing situations.”

If she had to pick a favorite, she says, it would be the time she spent in Suriname, monitoring a troop of capuchin and squirrel monkeys. “I lived in a hut with no electricity. The wildlife was mind-blowing. You’d stand still for five minutes, and all around you would come alive. Life was work and reading books and planning what to have for dinner and socializing with the locals.” She built up her explorer skill set by wielding a machete to cut trails and map sections of unexplored rain forest.

But eventually, despite all the “cool stuff” she was doing, Swarts began to wonder if she was missing the bigger picture. As an undergraduate, she had felt certain about two things: “I would not go to graduate school, and I would never work for the government.” Now, however, those vows were beginning to feel limiting. “I missed education and being surrounded by people who are curious and informed. I was ready to get into more academics.”

Entering the ecology program at the University of California, Davis, she earned a Ph.D. in ecology with an emphasis on conservation. Then, shrugging off that “never working for the government” notion, she took a job with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, working on regulatory projects involving endangered species. “Regulatory work is so important,” she emphasizes. But after a while, the day-to-day responsibilities of what she terms “desk biology” began to wear. “It’s soul-crushing work,” she explains. “You know exactly what each day, a month ahead, will be.”

So, when a job opening in the wilds of south Texas popped up in her email for a wildlife biologist charged with leading the hands-on effort to save the ocelot in the U.S., she leapt at the challenge.

THE LAGUNA ATASCOSA National Wildlife Refuge is a flat, sunbaked remnant of coastal prairie mixed with thorn bush, bordering on a vast hypersaline lagoon across from South Padre Island. Its dense thicket of low scrub is home to—at last count—15 of the remaining ocelots still living in the U.S., and for Swarts, it’s where the fight to save them from extinction is being waged.

Meeting with her here can feel like a bracing seminar in All Things Ocelot. For starters, she’ll whip her refuge pickup into her driveway (on Ocelot Road, of course) and say, pointing at the license plate  on her 2000 Buick LeSabre, “Look!” The plate says “OCELOT” (of course), and the vanity fee collected by the State of Texas goes to Friends of Laguna Atascosa for outreach programs.

More important, it quickly becomes clear that she’s a walking compendium of information about the species she’s working to rescue. “We think that these Texas ocelots may have developed great fidelity to thick underbrush because of pursuit by hunters back in the 1960s,” she explains. More facts come tumbling out: Two-thirds of births are single, after a gestation of 79 to 82 days. Kittens stay with their mothers, to learn survival and hunting skills, for up to two years. “Although,” she adds, “I’m beginning to think it may be closer to a year and a half, if the teaching goes well and there is a reliable prey base. And the past two winters have been super wet, so there’s been prey out the wazoo.”

Swarts visits a wildlife underpass under construction. Though currently flooded, it will be dry when complete.

The first confirmed ocelot kitten at the refuge in 20 years.
(U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service photo)

Swarts holds a sedated ocelot, who was then given a radio collar and released. (U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service photo)

Working with ocelots, because they stay so well hidden, is different from her previous fieldwork, when she could watch the animals she was studying in their own environment (such as following gorillas around as they nosed about on their daily routines, which she describes as “total soap opera”). In fact, the only time Swarts and her small staff of interns actually see ocelots in the flesh is during trapping season, from October to May, when the little cats are lured by caged pigeons posing as an easy meal, then sedated long enough for blood and genetic samples to be taken. After a quick exam and insertion of a microchip, they are photographed, fitted with a GPS collar, given reversal drugs and released.

“With the ocelots, I’m essentially doing detective work,” she explains. Across the refuge, there are more than 50 cameras tucked into the thorn scrub, monitoring animal activity night and day. Using cameras and GPS collars may not be as immediately satisfying as shadowing gorillas, but it’s the only way she can keep tabs on the elusive little creatures she’s trying to save.

For instance, last year, on March 25, 2016, a heavily pregnant female was captured for routine data collection and then released. On the following two days, GPS signals from her collar indicated that she was staying put, likely in a den. After a few weeks, GPS showed more activity—she was almost certainly leaving the den for water, repeat behavior that is usual for a lactating female. “On April 15, when we knew she was away and couldn’t detect us, we found the little kitten, tucked under some Spartina. A male, healthy, weighing less than a pound, with his eyes just opened.” Swarts, who took hair samples, DNA swabs and his baby picture (below), was ecstatic to document and report this first confirmed ocelot den at the refuge in 20 years.

“From my perspective they are doing their job—reproducing,” she says. “And ecologically we are in great shape.” However, she has grave concerns that the confirmed refuge population of 15, including kittens, may be approaching capacity. Home range for a female varies from one to nine square miles, depending on the availability of water and prey. For a male, figure four to 25 square miles.

That brings us to exhibit one for the three top threats to survival of the species—habitat loss. Hemmed in by agriculture, highways and industry, the refuge itself can’t be greatly expanded. The other Texas ocelots, about 40 individuals, live on limited private lands in neighboring Willacy County, with no safe passage connecting the populations.

And that leads directly to the second threat—vehicular mortality, which stands at an astounding 40 percent. Swarts cites the ugly statistics that piled up between June 2015 and April 2016, when seven ocelots, including six males, were killed by vehicles on roads adjacent to fragile ocelot territory.

Which brings us to the third item on Swarts’ list of top threats to the ocelot’s long-term survival: in-breeding, which occurs when populations are so isolated that no new genes can get into the mix. Even before her arrival in Texas, efforts to freshen the gene pool by bringing in a female ocelot from Tamaulipas, Mexico, had started and stopped several times, partly due to cartel violence. Still, she remains optimistic that, with research and negotiation, a female from Mexico will eventually be allowed to cross the border.

Progress is agonizingly slow—as Swarts stoically puts it, “Conservation is often two steps forward and one step back.” However, she has begun to see encouraging signs. The refuge has cranked up an aggressive habitat restoration project—planting ocelot corridors, extensions of the habitat that ocelots are known to use, with the low-growing, bushy native species they prefer. As a precaution against vehicular mortality, the refuge has closed some of its roads and plans to relocate its entrance. Most heartening, the Texas Department of Transportation is installing 12 new underpasses specifically designed for ocelots at known hot spots on two highways where there have been multiple incidents of road kill. “And now it seems likely they will put wildlife crossings into new road design from the start,” she adds. “This is a sea change—and for this state agency to come around bodes so well for the state and its environmental future.”

The work is hard, sometimes tricky and frequently thankless. However, it also has its rewards. “I love the element of variety in my job,” she says. “The nuts and bolts. Speaking the legalese. Ocelot outreach. Hearing people’s questions. I get fired up; they get fired up.”
Best of all, there are the little discoveries, the aha moments that move her work forward. That den discovered in April? “It was a surprise to find it in an open area, not in super dense brush,” she explains. It’s new ocelot information, the kind that can drive new policy and practice. In this case, it may lead to a new prescribed burn protocol designed to leave a protective margin outside the brush.

For Swarts, as always, it’s about rethinking the ongoing help this little cat needs, using clues from her ongoing research, then doing whatever it takes. “I want to do everything I can to give these cats the best chance to survive.”

Excerpt From Episode 5: Farewell to Pomona

April 10, 2017 by Saahil Desai and Kevin Tidmarsh Comments Off

Internment-Camp-and-Order Desai: “… By now, we can accept as historical fact that the Japanese internment happened in the United States, and most people agree that it’s one of the darkest periods in American history. But the root causes of why the government so explicitly targeted Japanese Americans can be hard to parse out, so we talked to Pomona History Professor Samuel Yamashita. He said that the causes of the internment can be traced back to four distinct historical contexts, starting with the advance of European and American imperialism in the 19th century.”

Yamashita: “But in most of the colonial world, life was highly racialized, and a kind of caste system based on race was created. I’m a native of Hawaii, and I was born in 1946, when Hawaii was still a colony, and the public school system in Hawaii was segregated until 1947. And you may know that President Obama went to a certain private school in Honolulu—Punohou, what was known as Punohou College. Well, there were private schools for each of the major ethnic groups.”

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Tidmarsh: “The next context was the nation of Japan’s aggression, starting in 1931 with the invasion of Manchuria. This led to international outcry and sentiments against Japaese people across the world.”

Desai: “The third context was the rise of anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S., with bans on immigration and property ownership for Japanese-born individuals. …”

Yamashita: “Now the last and smallest context is what one might call the Japanese-American context, which found that young Japanese Americans who had college degrees could not get jobs along the West Coast or in Hawaii, and so a large number of them began to move to Japan. …”

Tidmarsh: “While all of this was happening, Pomona College had started admitting students of Japanese descent from Hawaii. Professor Yamashita’s mother was actually among the students who were encouraged to apply to Pomona, although she didn’t end up attending.”

Yamashita: “Pomona College began to get students from Hawaii in the 1920s, and they were mainly from McKinley High School, the same high school that my mother went to. And I think some of the educators at McKinley High School were from the West Coast, and they were progressive, and they knew about this place called Pomona College.”

Desai: “Almost all of the Japanese American students at Pomona during the 1940s came from one of two places. Either they were from Hawaii, and they were recruited to come out to school here, or they were natives of the Inland Empire, from places like Riverside or Upland. But in spite of these policies of recruiting Japanese students, especially from Hawaii prep schools, there were very few students of Japanese descent at Pomona—probably less than a dozen at any given time.”

Tidmarsh: “The Hisanaga siblings were among the few Japanese American students during the 1940s. There were three in all who ended up attending Pomona—brothers Kazuma and Kazuo, and their sister, Itsue. They each ended up graduating with a Pomona degree, a year apart from each other but under vastly different circumstances. …”

This entire episode is available for download at soundcloud.com, iTunes or Google Play.

Excerpt From Episode 2: When Carnegie Was Bombed

April 10, 2017 by Saahil Desai and Kevin Tidmarsh Comments Off

Special hand-drawn TSL after the Carnegie bombing in 1969

Special hand-headlined TSL after the Carnegie bombing in 1969

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Tidmarsh: “… The bomb was placed in Government Professor Lee [’48] McDonald’s mailbox, which led some to question whether the bomber was targeting him directly. Claire McDonald, Lee’s wife and a Pomona alum from 1947, remembers how scary of a time it was for them.”

Claire McDonald: “Lee called me and said there was bombing going on at his office, and I was to be careful and stay in the house. And the kids were to stay in the house. So we were immediately scared. And I called up my daughter, and she and her husband joined us, and we had a very bad night. Every car that went by, we wondered if they were going to throw a bomb at us.”

Tidmarsh: “Professor McDonald was known on campus for being an opponent of the Vietnam War and an ally for the student protesters. However, Professor McDonald was told by law enforcement, and believes to this day, that it was completely random that the bomb was placed in his mailbox. He told us that the bomb wasn’t addressed to him in particular.”

Lee McDonald: “The mail, all the faculty mailboxes were adjacent to the staircase that goes from the lobby of Carnegie down to the first floor. And the mail is usually delivered in the morning. Our secretary for what was then the Government Department just happened to be coming up the stairs in the—guess it was around four o’clock. I’m not exactly sure of the hour. And she saw this shoebox, wrapped in brown paper, in my mailbox. It was a good question, why it was in my mailbox, but I think the ultimate conclusion of everybody was that if a person was running up the stairs, or in a hurry up the stairs, this was the box on the bottom level of all of the boxes and right in the middle. And that would have been the easiest place to quickly place the bomb.”

Desai: “About 40 seconds before the bombing in Carnegie, an identical bomb exploded in a women’s bathroom in the basement of Scripps College’s Balch Auditorium. While no one was injured, the windows were blown out, and the building needed a lot of repairs.”

Lee McDonald: “I also remember that it was Tom Brokaw, who was a pretty well-known NBC reporter for the rest of his life—[he] was a local reporter for the local NBC station in Los Angeles, and he came out and interviewed me. We stood in the Quad.”

Desai: “It’s worth noting that Pomona and Scripps weren’t the only colleges that this happened to. In the late ’60s and early ’70s, college campuses across the nation were bombed. Just in California, San Francisco State University and Southwest College were bombed within a couple of weeks of the Claremont bombing. In 1970, a bomb at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, killed a physics professor and injured three others. The Department of Commerce and the Portland, Ore., City Hall were also bombed. While some remain unsolved, most of the bombings that were prosecuted were tied to statements against the war in Vietnam.”

Tidmarsh: “At Pomona College and across the nation, protests erupted over the Vietnam War and racial justice. It was a tense and tumultuous time that disrupted the status quo in idyllic Claremont. …”

This entire episode is available for download at soundcloud.com, iTunes or Google Play.

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