Fun fact (via Rachel Paterno-Mahler ’07):
“Having a Smiley 2000s today would be the equivalent of having Smiley 80s when those of us that graduated in the 2000s were at Pomona.”
#1 Harwood Halloween
#2 Smiley 80s
#3 Ski-Beach Day
Other popular events include Death by Chocolate, Freshman Dance, Middle School Dance
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A 13-foot sailboat effortlessly floats from the rafters of Frary Dining Hall.
One of two doors into the mathematics department magically disappears overnight, leaving only a seamless stretch of blank wall in its place.
A safe containing student grades literally vanishes from Holmes Hall, discovered weeks later underneath the building’s creaking floorboards.
Pranks have played a storied role over the years at Pomona. One of the most ambitious took place 50 years ago, with the pranksters only claiming credit 37 years later. The dossier they back-channeled to Pomona College Magazine resulted in a 2012 story finally solving one of Pomona’s most enduring mysteries: Who replaced Chopin with a bust of Frank Zappa in the frieze on the face of Big Bridges?
John Irvine ’76 works on the Zappa frieze
John Irvine ’76 and Greg Johnson ’76—juniors at the time of the prank—told PCM clandestinely that they “weren’t huge Zappa fans at the time,” even though he had lived in Claremont for a while. They dreamed up the prank when they learned the Mothers of Invention rocker was coming to play Bridges in April of 1975.
“We were looking up at the front of Big Bridges and said, ‘Well, gosh, he should have his name up there,’” Irvine recalled. They envisioned Zappa right alongside other greats—Bach, Beethoven, Wagner and Schubert—over the front entrance. Chopin, they decided, was dispensable. “I’m not big on the Romantics,” Irvine explained.
Pulling off the prank took two intensive weeks of preparation. Obstacle one: how to get onto the roof of Bridges Auditorium? Johnson calculated they could lay a ladder between (long gone) Renwick Gym and Big Bridges and, perched more than 30 feet above the ground, crawl four feet across from one roof to the other. “Being young college students, we were stupid enough to do that,” Irvine told PCM.
Johnson and Irvine measured the space they would need to fill: a whopping 15 feet in length and five feet in height. Which led to obstacle two: how to make a replacement frieze light enough to hoist into position, but heavy enough to stay in place. Their answer was Styrofoam in an aluminum frame, with a papier-mâché bust of Zappa anchoring one end and a marijuana leaf the other. (Zappa was against drugs, but, the pair admitted to PCM, “Hey, we know, but it was the ’70s.”) They built it in a dorm room and were putting it together late at night in the Wash—when it began to rain. A quick move to the Mudd-Blaisdell trash room was almost a disaster. The next morning was trash day.
To overcome obstacle three—getting caught—Irvine and Johnson recruited the help of the Statpack, a group of fellow math and statistics students. They modeled the movement of Campus Security patrols in the wee hours of the morning to find the optimal time for evasion. Sometime between 2 and 3 in the morning, the 60- to 70-pound frieze was installed on the front of the building. The statistical modeling must have been sound, because until they finally took credit via PCM in 2012, the prankers’ identities went (almost) undetected. As PCM noted, “Frank Zappa was now shoulder to shoulder with Beethoven and Bach on the campus’s most imposing edifice. Chopin had been shown up, and the two math majors had succeeded in pulling off a highly visible prank.”
Just one miscalculation: Zappa’s bust joined the roster of the greats a week after his concert at Big Bridges. “We kind of got an incomplete,” Johnson told PCM. “We weren’t quite ready in time.”
This year marks the publication of the second edition of Pomona College: Reflections on a Campus, a campus history authored by professor emeritus Marjorie Harth, co-creator of Pomona’s archives program with former director of donor relations Don Pattison.
First published in 2007 in conjunction with the efforts of many colleagues, the book aims to chronicle Pomona’s campus not simply as a collection of buildings and open spaces but as a carefully designed learning and living environment for Pomona students. We spoke with Harth about the project.
How would you summarize this new second edition?
This version updates the history of Pomona’s campus, adding the many new and recently renovated buildings during the 17 years between editions. Physical changes reflect shifting pedagogies, societal priorities and a host of other cultural factors. I recommend Professor George Gorse’s essay on Myron Hunt, our founding architect; Scott Smith, long-time planning consultant, contributed a new chapter on landscape architect Ralph Cornell who worked hand in hand with Hunt. These give us insight into campus planning, how it has changed and how integrally related the two disciplines—architecture and landscape architecture—should be.
What would you like readers to take away from Reflections?
I hope they will take away an awareness of how rich the history of this College and its campus are and how much we can learn from and take pride in them. I hope readers will begin to register the way our environments—buildings, grounds, classrooms, public spaces—affect the quality of our lives.
We all know this on some level, I believe, but we don’t always focus on it when we’re creating or inhabiting spaces for various purposes, especially, in this case, a place for learning, intellectual growth and experimentation. So, this book offers what we hope is a fresh way of understanding the College and the lives lived within it.
Photo courtesy of Nava Mau ’14
This summer Nava Mau ’14 became the first-ever trans female to be nominated as best supporting actress in a limited or anthology series or movie. Mau played Teri in the hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer.
“For trans actors we just don’t get a lot of opportunities to develop our craft, grow as artists, and to be recognized for all that we are and all that we can be,” she told Deadline magazine this summer. “We can see that when trans people are given the opportunity, we will grow into it and so far beyond any expectation.”
A Historical Emmy Nod for Baby Reindeer and Nava Mau ’14
When the Studio Art Hall opened in October 2014, it brought together under one roof art making, art appreciation and art interaction at the College. Housed in the building is the 1,500-square-foot Chan Gallery, made possible by Trustee Emeritus and art major Bernard Charnwut Chan ’88. This fall the Art Department celebrated the 10-year anniversary of the Studio Art Hall with “Lush Matter,” a Chan Gallery exhibition that served as a spotlight of alumni artwork inspired by nature.
Drenk’s “Compression 13”
Jessica Drenk ’02 traces her “Compression 13” piece back to her time at Pomona. One of her first projects for Professor Michael O’Malley involved transforming books into rich, unusual tunnel-like structures by removing their covers and tearing holes through them. “Books have become part of my repertoire, so that class was the beginning of my art career,” she says.
Falby’s “Peregrine”
Dan Falby ’12 sent the show four abstract ceramic sculptures that involved dropping and tossing clay slabs, relying on gravity to do its work. He says he strives to make art that has “a similar elemental happenstance” as natural phenomena. Falby was a visiting artist at the American Museum of Ceramic Art, then served as a ceramics instructor in Los Angeles before relocating to the Northeast in 2021.
Gewirtzman’s
“Black Velvet Canyon, Red Rocks”
Aliyana Gewirtzman ’12 submitted four pieces, including “Indifferent Earth,” a 40-inch-by-30-inch oil painting, and two ink drawings of Red Rock Canyon and Joshua Tree. She worked in New York for 10 years before leaving to travel the country in a camper van. She currently works as a full-time artist in Colorado, including teaching drawing and color theory courses remotely at the New York School of Interior Design.
Becca Lofchie ’10 (left), returned to the College to give a gallery talk earlier this month. She and classmates view her collection of ceramic vases. Photo by: Daniel Klein ’26
Becca Lofchie ’10 had a collection of ceramic vases on display in the show. While working professionally as a book designer, Lofchie took up ceramics a few years ago “as a way to do something with my hands,” she says. A design teacher at California State University, Los Angeles, Lofchie returned to the College earlier this month to give a gallery talk. Lofchie’s graphic design work clearly influences her ceramics, with an affinity for ’80s Memphis design that shows up in her bright color palettes and bold patterns.
Marsh’s “Untitled Mirror“
Tristan Louis Marsh ’18, an L.A.-based visual artist and designer, contributed four pieces: a pendant, mirror, chair and pair of candleholders. Creating works from wood and resin using a CNC machine and 3D printer, Marsh focuses on sculptural furniture and lighting that derive their form from biological structures and natural occurring phenomena. This summer Dezeen Magazine named Marsh’s studio one of “10 scene-setting independent design studios in Los Angeles.”
Yonten’s “Untitled (still life)”
Ugen Yonten ’22 is a second-year graduate student at the Yale School of Architecture, and contributed a still-life painting that he created at Pomona. The piece was a way for him to reflect on the pandemic and “the stillness of being back at home.” Tricia Avant, who serves as academic coordinator and gallery manager of art at Pomona, credits Yonten for his strong sense of artistic direction. “For just about any subject that he would tackle, he has his own aesthetic sensibility about it,” she says.
Zoe Dorado ’27 traveled to the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., in April and performed as a finalist for National Youth Poet Laureate, a role once held by Amanda Gorman, who read her poem “The Hill We Climb” at the inauguration of President Joe Biden.
Dorado, representing the Western U.S., took the stage alongside three other finalists and was named the runner-up to 2024 honoree Stephanie Pacheco of New York.
Dorado began her writing journey in her hometown of Castro Valley, California. At Pomona, she plans on majoring in English and is exploring a possible double major. Asked how her poetry and social activism are related, Dorado says poetry is humanizing.
“Especially when there’s a lot of grief in the world, we go into direct action,” she says. “But we also need to take the time to grieve and sit with ourselves in order to fully show up for ourselves and for the people in and beyond our communities. Poetry gives us space to do that. I don’t think poetry will save the world. But it will help us reckon with it.”
By day, Della Anjeh ’16 works as a software engineer at Google. On evenings and weekends during football season the past two years, she has moonlighted as a cheerleader for the San Francisco 49ers.
Her experiences at Pomona College helped launch both careers.
Della Anjeh ’16 software engineer at Google.
Anjeh knew she wanted to major in computer science when she arrived at Pomona from O’Fallon, Missouri, via the QuestBridge program. She credits her advisor, Professor Tzu-Yi Chen, with nurturing and guiding her. Her junior year, she landed an internship at a startup company through Code2040—a nonprofit that connects Black and Latino technologists with companies and mentors—when its recruiters visited Pomona’s campus. The internship opened doors, and since graduating, Anjeh has worked as a software engineer at Lyft, Amazon, Microsoft and now Google.
Despite growing up dancing, Anjeh didn’t imagine a career in professional dance. Her first year at Pomona, however, she signed up for a hip-hop dance physical education class. The instructor, Kristen Egusa, was a dancer for the Los Angeles Clippers and a choreographer for multiple professional sports teams. Attending a professional cheer workshop Egusa held in the Los Angeles area exposed Anjeh to the world of professional cheer for the first time. On campus, she also danced with the 5C Dance Company.
Della Anjeh ’16 seen in the center, cheerleading for the San Francisco 49ers.
Now for the past two seasons and counting, Anjeh has donned red and gold as a 49ers cheerleader as a counterpoint to her time in front of a computer. In February, she capped her second season with a trip to the Super Bowl in Las Vegas, where the 49ers fell to the Kansas City Chiefs.
Besides the opportunity to perform on the world stage, other highlights included watching the halftime show from the field and encountering a wide swath of 49ers fans.
“Being involved in all the excitement was really fun,” she says. Did she see Taylor Swift in the stands? “We got to see just about everything you could see,” she answers.
Not bad for a side gig.
“It’s a flexible enough commitment for people to maintain pretty demanding full-time jobs,” Anjeh says. “I just love to perform.”
The long winter break provides a respite for students each year, but it can pose a few complications.
For one, how will the plants that make a residence hall room a home survive untended for weeks on end?
Diana Castellanos ’24, a student from Los Angeles, was approached in late 2022 by friends looking for someone to plant-sit before they left campus for break. A known “plant parent” who planned to take her collection home for the holidays, she considered taking her friends’ monsteras, orchids and succulents too, but thought wiser of stashing so many plants in her parents’ living room.
Instead, she asked Pomona faculty and staff for a hand. To her surprise, about a dozen people volunteered to care for students’ plants over break—the founding members of the Plant Babysitters Club.
Castellanos, a biology major on a pre-med track, asked faculty and staff for help again this winter, and a tradition took hold. Whereas the previous year the 21-year-old coordinated the drop-off, distribution and pickup of around 75 plants, about 125 were left the second time around. Fortunately, the number of plant-sitters nearly quadrupled, ensuring every pothos, herb and calathea had a caretaker.
After caring for about 20 plants last year, Title IX and Cares Office Associate Director Abby Lawlor volunteered to do it again.
“Plants really add a lot of life and character into anywhere, and there are some studies that show they have stress-reducing and healing properties,” Lawlor says.
Over two days, Castellanos and some of the EcoReps—students who promote sustainable practices on campus—collected and organized the multitude of plants being dropped off for supervision. They included an ornamental pepper, a tiny succulent in a giraffe planter, and Eric the moss ball.
Before they bid their plants adieu, students taped care instructions—watering frequency, light exposure—to each pot and added their contact information and plant inventory to a Google doc for recordkeeping.
Aimee Bahng, associate professor of gender and women’s studies, took care of five plants the first year and upped her responsibility to eight this time around.
“I like to think about the worlds these plants otherwise inhabit,” Bahng says. “Maybe they bring students some joy during stressful times, some grounding when the world around them feels so unmoored. And maybe I get to play some small role in keeping that ember of joy alive, even when the odds often feel stacked against us.”
The Pomona College catalog is ever-evolving, with new and revised courses continually introduced. Among the dozens of fresh offerings this academic year were Medical Ethics, taught by Associate Professor of Philosophy Julie Tannenbaum, and Negotiating the U.S. Policyscape, taught by Visiting Assistant Professor of Politics Sean Diament.
Associate Professor of Philosophy Julie Tannenbaum’s Medical Ethics class explores topics such as gene editing and euthanasia.
Associate Professor of Philosophy Julie Tannenbaum’s MedicalEthics class explores topics such as gene editing and euthanasia.
Tannenbaum’s course touched on topics people will likely face at some point, such as whether euthanasia is permissible and how to respond to health-care practitioners who conscientiously object to providing this and other kinds of medical services.
Many individuals have already weighed in on such debates: “Voters, for example,” Tannenbaum says, “sometimes directly determine whether certain medical procedures, such as assisted suicide or abortion, will be legally permitted.”
Some medical advances seem to raise new questions—as is the case with Clustered Regularly Interspaced Short Palindromic Repeats, or CRISPR, which can be used to eliminate impairments in living organisms and as an enhancement in both embryos and adults.
While the question of how to use such emerging medical technology is pressing, this type of issue isn’t new by any stretch.
“Long before CRISPR,” Tannenbaum says, “people were exercising control over what their children would be like, via abortion, embryo selection post-IVF and many other methods. Many of the moral issues with those choices are applicable to CRISPR.”
Diament’s policy class examines how public dissatisfaction with politics combined with politicians running against government culminate “in a particularly self-destructive expression of politics and consistently underwhelming policy provision system.”
In a political realm where perception is often black and white, Diament’s course encourages students to find and explore the gray.
“There is very little coherent logic to the American state, both in politics and especially in governance,” he says. “Our system is the product of centuries of snap decisions based on contemporary issues, that are then left on the books and continue to inform and restructure American politics.”
Visiting Assistant Professor Sean Diament, right, introduced a new politics course called Negotiating the U.S. Policyscape.
Diament’s expertise in the field includes the politics of poverty, political inequity, power and conflict, and American political development, among other emphases.
Beyond the political realm, to understand the policyscape, Diament says, is to understand the professional world.
“Coordination is difficult. Problem solving even more so,” he adds. “But another key lesson is to recognize that incremental progress is still progress, and that small modifications to a business, nonprofit, or governmental body can have profoundly positive effects on individual lives.”
Above all, the politics professor adds, Negotiating the U.S. Policyscape sets out to explain how “governing even in the best of times is extremely hard, even without considering a form of toxic politics that makes it that much harder in the contemporary era.”
Here’s one mailing list you might want to be on: Professor of Art Mark Allen turns personal cards and letters into things of beauty, embellishing the outer envelopes with all manner of designs and decorative flourishes. His exhibit From the Desk Of last fall in the Chan Gallery at Pomona’s Studio Art Hall featured prints, posters, zines, pop-ups and a wall of envelopes that once held missives to various friends, faculty, staff, students and alumni. Take a look.
Gregg Popovich speaks during the 2023 Basketball Hall of Fame Enshrinement Ceremony on August 12, 2023 at Springfield Marriott in Springfield, Massachusetts. (Photo by Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images)
We knew he would. In his induction speech at the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in August, San Antonio Spurs Coach Gregg Popovich gave the Sagehens some priceless air time.
“How could this happen? It’s hard to describe. Because I’m a Division III guy,” Popovich said in his speech. “I was gonna wear my Pomona-Pitzer shirt … .”
Popovich invited Pomona-Pitzer Coach Charles Katsiaficas—one of his assistants during his eight seasons as coach of the Sagehens—to join him for the induction ceremony in Springfield, Massachusetts, where the game was invented.
“I feel so lucky to have him as a mentor through the years, and to have been with him since the early days during his first head coaching job,” Katsiaficas says. “He is one of the most driven, motivated and innovative people I have ever known. And he never has forgotten his time here. He continues to be a great ambassador for Pomona-Pitzer basketball and a great mentor and friend.”