Blog Articles

Wild Time

July 2, 2012 by Lauri Valerio ’12 Comments Off

Pomona’s new Outdoor Education Center (OEC)offered its first Wilderness Survival class during the spring semester, making for some memorable moments in the woods. After four on-campus sessions covering such topics as edible plants and fire-making, the class culminated with students putting their new skills to use in the snowy Sierra Nevada, leading Lauri Valerio ’12 to wonder, “What did I get myself into?” Here, we get the answer:

Hour 1: Snow starts falling as we drive to the trailhead. When we arrive, our group of nine huddles under a tree that periodically dumps loads of the white stuff on our heads. “Don’t worry if you’re freaking out, because I am too,” jokes our experienced leader and OEC Coordinator Martin Crawford. At least, I think he’s joking.

Hour 4: We find a dry camping spot under a rock overhang and begin scavenging for dry firewood. I can’t tell if my shirt is drenched in sweat or if the moisture has seeped through. Either way, it’s cold.

Hour 6: I discover that eggs fried on a rock are surprisingly filling, though a bit crunchy. Luckily, Martin had let us bring extra food and gear because of the weather. Life as herbivores, we’re quickly learning, would be near-impossible, though we discover some deliciously minty leaves I keep nibbling on.

Hour 10: The fire dies down and the cold sets in. Throughout the night, I wake up shivering in my sleeping bag.

Hour 24: The clearer skies brighten our mood as we split into pairs to practice making traps, snares and water collection systems. Now, we’re spending less time on surviving and more on learning survival methods.

Hour 27: The running Hunger Games jokes become a bit eerie when Martin announces a friction fire-making competition. The Claremont McKenna students are sure they can beat us and, unfortunately, they’re right. Though my group creates a few embers, we never even get a fire started.

Hour 35: Tonight, I put into practice the survival methods I’ve been taught. I put a water bottle of boiling water into my sleeping bag an hour before I hop in and cocoon myself with a trash bag and tarp.

Hour 45: Finally, the end. After an almost-warm night, I wake up early so we can clean up camp and head back. The trail is a breeze when it’s not covered in ice and snow.

Hour 48: After devouring several pizzas, our group reluctantly piles into the Suburban and heads back to campus, where we face another type of survival situation: end-of-semester madness.

Meeting the New Americans

July 2, 2012 by Sally Ann Flecker Comments Off

Some 37 people from 26 countries were sworn in at the naturalization ceremony at Pittsburgh's Allderdice High School attended by John '64 and Diane Eckstein in May.

Most American stories start in other places. Which, in a way, makes a naturalization ceremony the quintessential American experience. On this day, the high school auditorium in Pittsburgh, Pa., abounds with red, white and blue—balloons, strings of lights, tinselly decorations—and chamber singers stretch for the high notes of “The Star-Spangled Banner.” But what America means can be found in the stories of 37 people from 26 countries who have just taken the oath of allegiance and are now being called to the stage to receive their naturalization certificates.

Some are very dignified, others giddy. Polish-born Marta Lewicka, a math professor at the University of Pittsburgh, turns to beam at the audience before she shakes the hand of a dignitary. Nader Abdelmassieh, a physician, poses at the end of the stage for a picture. He is a tall man with a quiet smile, but his face is shining as he waves a small flag like a child at a Fourth of July parade. America accommodates foreigners better than any other country in the world, he says later, adding, “Many people don’t realize this country is a gift and an opportunity.”

David Adeyemi at his naturalization ceremony in Dallas, hosted with Citizenship Counts.

That lesson is front and center for John Eckstein ’64 and his wife Diane. For the past four months, they’ve been traveling cross-country attending naturalization ceremonies—this one is their eighth—to promote Citizenship Counts, a nonpartisan nonprofit founded in 2008 by Holocaust survivor and 2010 Presidential Medal of Honor recipient Gerda Weissmann Klein.

Citizenship Counts has two missions—teaching a middle- and high-school curriculum on the rights and responsibilities of being a good American citizen and emphasizing our history as a nation of immigrants. “What better way to combine those two missions but to host a naturalization ceremony in the schools,” Eckstein says. Two of the speakers today fled Somalia with their families and spent eight years in a Kenyan refugee camp. One is a student at this high school, the other a recent graduate and newly minted citizen. “Students see that people from all over the world want to come to this country,” he says. “It’s a very meaningful ceremony.”

The Ecksteins’ journey “from sea to shining sea” began at the end of January in San Diego and will end in New York City in June. By that time, Eckstein, a semi-retired physician from Phoenix, Ariz., will have racked up 3,500 miles by bike and on foot while Diane, a Citizenship Counts board member, follows in a small RV with their dog Kipp. “We wanted Gerda to see this journey,” says Eckstein, “which we view as a journey of freedom and hope.”

The stop in Pittsburgh is a larger celebration for the Ecksteins as well. John’s grandfather Herman came to Pittsburgh in 1923 from Hungary, making a living selling furnaces, and able, after three years, to send for his wife and seven children. For today’s ceremony, John’s brother Paul ’62, a Pomona trustee and lawyer from Phoenix, and his wife Flo, have joined them, along with first cousins from Pittsburgh, New York and Florida. Their generation, says Paul, includes two doctors, one lawyer and two librarians.

Their parents—Herman Eckstein’s children—all went to high school in this very building. In fact, the family home is just up the street and around the corner. A few years ago, in town for a family reunion, John, Paul and the cousins all trooped over to the old homestead. It was smaller than they remembered. They knocked on the door and asked if they could come in. “Certainly,” said the Vietnamese family who lives there now, opening the door wide and welcoming them in.

John '64 and Diane Eckstein take a picture with Adriana Antoietti at a naturalization ceremony in Dallas in March.

Goal-oriented

July 2, 2012 by Marisa Cherry '15 Comments Off

“Fanaticism” is the word that Anna Renery ’06 uses to describe Buenos Aires’ relationship with soccer. Just one example: In the capital of Argentina, all taxi horns sound at the same time whenever a star scores a goal. So when Anna—who played on the women’s varsity soccer team at Pomona—moved there for a job about three years ago, a couple of things took her by surprise.

First, she saw no organized events like the ones she had grown up playing in. Second, opportunities for girls to play soccer were few and far between, largely due to the machismo toward sports found in many South American countries. Anna recalls that she had a hard time finding other girls to play pick-up games with.

For Renery, this was a call to action. Eager to share her love for soccer, she and two partners set out to create the first and only international amateur soccer tournament in Argentina—the Buenos Aires International Soccer Tournament, or BA Cup for short. Renery notes it is the only such tournament in which girls can participate.

The inaugural BA Cup, held in summer 2011, drew more than 2,000 girls, boys and adults representing more than 10 different countries to Buenos Aires to compete and participate in seminars and clinics.

The second cup will be held in July 2012. The BA Cup is designed to help participants develop values such as teamwork and commitment and learn how to lead a healthy lifestyle. Anna says, “I think that being an athlete … teaches life lessons that are valuable in any kid’s life.” She also hopes that the cup helps “people see that women can play, should play.”

Down the road, Renery hopes to further expand the BA Cup as she envisions the tournament growing to become one of the largest in the world, with around 50,000 participants. Renery credits her Sagehen education for her innovative choice of post-undergraduate plans. “Pomona instills a little bit of an entrepreneurial spirit in its students in that you’re really encouraged to do what you want to do and to try new things,” says Renery, who was named most valuable athlete during her senior year at Pomona. “It was always OK to do something less traditional.” More information: www.ba-cup.com.

About This Issue: Where We Are Coming From …

July 2, 2012 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

Silhouettes of 17 people painted on Walker Wall.

Under the forgettable headline, “Mexico Worker Issue Debated: Claremont Conference Takes Up Immigration,” a Los Angeles Times article told of a “record-breaking crowd” of more than 700 people gathered at Pomona College for an annual conference about U.S.-Mexican relations and immigration.

At the event, an American academic addressed “the influx of Mexicans to the United States,” while a Mexican border official upheld the “right to immigrate” and seek better prospects in the U.S. The two men did agree that a committee of immigration experts from both nations should be set up to look into the issue.

That was in 1928.

Being in Southern California, the College has long been touched by immigration. From the early days, Pomona has been part of the long-running debates over who to let into the country.

But this past year was different.

The 2011-12 school year brought events that, in the words of President David Oxtoby, drove “questions about our nation’s immigration policies into the very heart of our campus life.”

Seventeen workers lost their jobs—let go by the College—after a review of Pomona’s workplace documentation procedures. The issue was set off when a college employee made a complaint that Oxtoby’s administration (and previous ones) was not checking new employees’ documentation as the law requires. The complaint went to leaders of the Board of Trustees, who decided it required them to investigate, and they brought in the Sidley Austin law firm to do so. Ultimately, the lawyers found the College had been following the rules. There also were some problems.

As part of the audit, investigators examined every employee’s paperwork and found “deficiencies” with the files of 84 of them. Most problems were cleared up—but not all of them. After a deadline passed, 17 workers still were found to be lacking the right paperwork.

On Dec. 1, those workers were fired. Administrators said they had no other choice under the law. Sadness and anger followed. So did pickets, protests and a boycott of Frary Dining Hall. Faculty spoke out against the firings. Student tents went up on the lawn outside the administration building. Donations were collected for the workers (who also received severance pay).

Critics of the College’s approach questioned whether auditing employees’ documentation was truly necessary, or even appropriate. Some suggested enforcement action was unlikely. Others called on Pomona to refuse to comply with unjust laws. President Oxtoby agreed the regulations were too harsh and reform was needed, but said the College still had to obey the laws.

All this came in the midst of a unionization drive for campus dining workers. Union supporters on campus and beyond took up the cause of the fired workers. Groups ranging from the ACLU of Southern California to the National Council of La Raza joined the chorus. The issue played out in the media, reaching The New York Times and other outlets.

The College also had defenders, who said administrators were in a difficult situation and had to take the steps they did. And beyond campus, not everyone was sympathetic to the fired workers’ cause—witness the reader comments with the Times article.

As the school year closed, the Trustees released their own subcommittee report concluding, as The Student Life headline put it, that “Oversight Mistakes Were Avoidable, but Work Authorization Investigation Was Necessary …”

Another class graduated, and summer break set in.

Still, 17 Pomona College employees—no doubt people with families, commitments and bills—had lost their livelihoods. With immigration reform stalled for now, it is inevitable that similar stories will unfold elsewhere, perhaps out of the spotlight. America’s long debate over who gets in—and who gets to stay— is sure to carry on.

That’s what drives this issue of Pomona College Magazine. We’ve delved into some Pomona-related historical tales to provide context and shed light on conditions earlier immigrants faced. We’ve asked four alumni with strong views on immigration reform to propose ways to move forward. Finally, we want to introduce you to young alumni with immigrant backgrounds and let them share their own paths, in their own voices. We don’t expect to end the divide over immigration. We do hope to offer a glimpse beyond the wall. —Mark Kendall

TIMELINE OF EVENTS:

Feb. 2011
The complaint is received by the chair of the Board.

March 2011
Vice chair of the Audit Committee retains the Sidley Austin law firm to conduct an investigation.

June 2011
Sidley Austin begins review of I-9 documents for all staff, faculty and part-time employees.

Sept. 2011
Sidley Austin reports no wrongdoing on the part of the administration but identifies deficiencies to be addressed.

Nov. 2011
84 Pomona faculty, staff and part-time employees are notified that they have deficiencies in their work authorization files and that they should schedule an appointment with Human Resources.

Dec. 2011
17 Employees who are unable to correct deficiencies in their files lose their jobs. 150-200 staff, students, alumni and members of UNITE HERE protest. Members of the Board meet with staff, faculty and students. The Board appoints a subcommittee to review the investigation.

May 2012
The subcommittee of the Board releases its report, concluding that there were “breakdowns in communication” and that the Board could have done “a better job of supervising the investigation,” but that the investigation was necessary.

MORE INFORMATION ON:

•work authorization events — www.pomona.edu/work-documentation

•subcommittee report [pdf] — www.pomona.edu/board-review2012

•new policies [pdf] —www.pomona.edu/whistleblower-policy2012

•unionization — www.pomona.edu/unionization

Excerpts from The Student Life:

Nov. 11, 2011
Pomona Reviews Employee Documents; WFJ Protests

“Pomona College began checking the work authorization documents of 84 of its employees, provoking widespread outrage from many students, professors, and staff members. Supporters of Workers for Justice (WFJ), the pro-union group of Pomona dining hall staff, began demonstrating before dawn on Tuesday in opposition to what they saw as a campaign of intimidation, while college administrators insisted that the document verification process was legally required because of an external audit that is unrelated to unionization. … ”

Nov. 18, 2011
Faculty Resolve to Support Workers; Students, Staff Protest Document Checks

“At a faculty meeting Nov. 16, Pomona College President David Oxtoby pointed to fears of potential involvement from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and reiterated that the college must re-verify the work authorization documents of 84 college employees before Dec. 1. The Pomona College administration has been under fire this week as students, faculty, and staff questioned the college’s decision to ask those employees to meet with the Office of Human Resources to provide valid federal work authorization documents. Opponents of the document reviews expressed their discontent in a vigil Nov. 11, a teach-in event Nov. 14, and a protest and press conference 16 that attracted local news media. … ”

Dec. 2, 2011
17 Employees Terminated Over Documents; Boycott, Vigil Extended
“Pomona College fired 17 staff members yesterday, after those employees were unable to meet the college’s deadline for submitting updated work authorization documents. The terminations, which most directly affected dining services employees, marked the end of a three-week verification process that has provoked outrage from many organizations and individuals, both within and beyond the Claremont Colleges. Demonstrations against the college’s actions are expected to continue into the weekend, as two of the community’s most visible groups of protesters signaled that they would keep up their efforts. … ”

May. 16, 2012
Oversight Mistakes Were Avoidable, but Work Authorization Investigation Was Necessary, Report Finds
“The Pomona College Board of Trustees made some mistakes related to communication and oversight of the investigation that led to the firing of 17 staff members last year, but the comprehensive audit of work authorization documents for all Pomona employees was necessary, according to a report by a subcommittee of trustees.

The board voted Saturday to accept the subcommittee’s report. Pomona students, professors and staff received access to an online version of the report Monday.

One day before the board accepted the report, the board’s Audit Committee adopted a new set of policies for handling complaints. Audit Committee Chair Terrance Hodel ’64 said that the new policies were necessary because there was no preexisting procedure for responding to complaintslike the one that the board received last year, which accused the Pomona administration of having illegal hiring practices. … ”

More from The Student Life: http://tsl.pomona.edu/

The Bird is the Word

July 2, 2012 by Brenda Bolinger Comments Off

Wearing her “Shake Your Tailfeathers” t-shirt, Jessica Blickley ’02 is ready to face the flock: “I’m excited to see so many Sagehens in the room!” This time, Blickley is referring to the audience eagerly awaiting her Alumni Weekend lecture on the College’s quirky mascot. More often, however, when Blickley expresses excitement over a group of sagehens—known to ornithologists as sage grouse—she is on the plains of western Wyoming, conducting research on thebizarre and beautiful birds.

A Ph.D. candidate in ecology at UC Davis, Blickley recalls hearing colorful stories about the College’s beloved bird while a Pomona student, and being unclear at the time which were true. But now she is ready to debunk a number of myths about the fascinating fowl.

Among the falsities she exposes is the notion that sage grouse don’t fly. Yes, they do, up to 50 m.p.h. And thank goodness, lest the Pomona fight song lyrics require amending: “Our foes are filled with dread/Whenever Cecil Sagehen flies overhead!”

But a misnomer still exists in the song’s title, “When Cecil Sagehen Chirps.” He doesn’t. The bird’s unique vocalization is more of a “coo-coo-pop-whistle-pop,” explains Blickley, who majored in biology at Pomona.

Here, Blickley addresses both the science and the sublime of the sage grouse, which ranges across much of the Western U.S., but also faces a variety of environmental threats.

How did you get interested in the sage grouse?

I always heard stories and rumors about the sagehen while I was a [Pomona] student, but I didn’t start off wanting to study them, probably because I didn’t know how cool they were. Then, at UC Davis, my advisor, Gail Patricelli, was studying them and I became intrigued—it was sort of a fortuitous accident. I had originally been interested in noise issues as related to birds and, with all of the noise pollution problems that sage grouse are facing, it worked out well to apply this interest to this species. It started to become clear to me that there’s a real need for work and research related to the sage grouse, and it’s really great to have an influence on what happens with conservation.

There’s talk of placing the sage grouse on the endangered species list. Is the bird in trouble?

Currently, it’s a candidate for listing under the Endangered Species Act because the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined they warrant official protection. But the species isn’t in immediate danger of going extinct—there are still as many as 200,000 birds, which sounds like a lot until you consider that there used to be as many as 16 million. There are many things causing populations to decline, including wildfires, invasive [plant] species, livestock grazing and, probably most importantly, habitat loss due to human development. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are listed in the near future, but right now, there are still enough sage grouse that other species closer to extinction take priority. But even so, there’s a lot of work already being done to help protect them.

What’s it like to hold one?

Well, they are very large birds, and they have very strong, powerful wings. The good news is that if you hold them properly, they don’t struggle. But if a wing gets away and hits you, it’s a little startling. Generally, they’re pretty docile.

Is it hard not to laugh at their elaborate mating display, or is it all about serious science?

We definitely have to laugh. Part of it is that they take it so seriously—[the males] strut around, they fight, they do their displays to impress the females, but from our perspective, they look pretty silly. And while it’s hard for us to tell the males apart based on their display, the females are very picky. There may be as many as 200 males, but most of them will never see any action in their lives. One of the things that my lab at UC Davis is trying to figure out is what makes some males’ displays so much sexier than the rest.

For research purposes, how do you tell them apart from each other?

When we’re able to capture them, we put colored bands on their legs, and then it’s really easy. But there are so many and they’re hard to catch. So, for unbanded males, we rely on their distinctive pattern of white dots on their tail plumage.

I understand there’s a layman’s term for this?

Yes, we call that the “butt print.”

I’ve read that the sage grouse is known for its loyalty to a certain area. In what way does this make it a fitting mascot for Pomona?

It’s true, male sage grouse are very loyal to their home lek [a.k.a. “strutting grounds”]. Both males and females tend to return to the same one every year. In the same way, I think a lot of Pomona alumni have loyalty to the school and are excited to come back. I certainly feel that way. Also, the sagehen is a pretty quirky bird, and I’d say the average student at Pomona is pretty quirky as well.

Applied Sci-Fi: In Class with Professor David Tanenbaum

July 2, 2012 by Mary Marvin Comments Off

In today’s first-year seminar, Nanotechnology in Science and Fiction, students visit a lab in Millikan, where Professor David Tanenbaum grows carbon nanotubes. Particles of iron and molybdenum are combined with methane, hydrogen and argon and heated to 1,000 degrees to create cylindrical molecules, with diameters of one to two nanometers.

Next, a student-led discussion focuses on I’m Working on That: A Trek from Science Fiction to Science Fact by William Shatner and Chip Walter, and covers topics ranging from wearable computers and biowarfare to cryogenics and virtual reality.

Tanenbaum asks the students to consider whether scientific developments have an effect on science fiction or whether the stories we read lead to innovative ideas for new technology, and the abridged and edited discussion follows:

Tanenbaum: There are a lot of virtual 3D video games where you wear glasses and play them, and you feel pretty much that you’re inside the virtual reality space. … Virtual reality is used in rides where people are in a room that is shaken or accelerated or pushed or pulled, so they think the shaking could be associated with a rocket blasting off or an earthquake. We’ve also read about the idea of live feedback in clothing. If you can put on the right gloves and shirts, those things can give you physical tactile responses. It can feel like someone put his hand on your shoulder, even if it’s just your shirt getting tighter.

Connor: Shatner also has a chapter about wearable computers, and I realized that Apple has done a lot of that by combining the iPhone and an mp3 player and PDA (personal digital assistant).

Tanenbaum: How many people do you see wearing their earpieces 24 hours a day, seven days a week? I think we’re already there. I want to ask a question that gets at both virtual reality and the wearable computers.

Can we say anything about the interplay between fiction and reality? Is there a connection between what we see in the science fiction we read and futuristic technologies? For example, the cell phone we have today is modeled—no doubt—on the flip communicator in the 1960’s Star Trek series. Science looked at that and marketing looked at it and said it would be cool to have a communicator. Before the new iPhones and flat tablets, all the sexy phones were flip phones. Do you think the science fiction is inspiring companies to develop the products, or is it the other way around?

Mathieu: It makes a lot of sense that when scientists are growing up they would be influenced by science fiction that they read, and it would definitely have an impact on them.

Mauricio: I think it’s more a mix. I feel that a lot of science fiction writers look at what’s being developed and then come up with applications, which in turn are taken by the science community. A science fiction writer might see a regular telephone and think it would be cool to take that everywhere and build on each other.

Andy: I know a lot of scientific pursuits are not just “Can we make a hologram?” but “Can we make the hologram from Star Wars?” It’s to set a goal for what you want to design.

Hanna: In the article they talk about the back pack, which takes GPS to the next level. It not only knows where you are but nudges you in the right direction, which is one step from the technology we already have.

Tanenbaum: How many have read the preface to The Diamond Age or the book we’re going to read, Katherine Goonan’s Queen City Jazz? In the prefaces and author’s comments, both writers include Eric Drexler [sometimes called the godfather of nanotechnology] in their lists of what inspired them to write their books. We’ve talked a lot about science fiction leading science, and people who say it’s a two-way thing with science sometimes leading science fiction. If you look at Arthur C. Clarke’s novels, the fact that we had a space program and were putting up satellites and people in orbit had a great influence on his being able to write 2001: A Space Odyssey because it was an extension of existing science. That science helped inspire the trajectory for the story. The influences work in both directions.

Immigrant Stories

July 2, 2012 by Adam Conner-Simons '08, Hugo Martin '87 and Mary Marvin Comments Off

AMY MOTLAGH ’98: REVOLUTION & REDEMPTION

Amy Motlagh’s life journey has been bookended by revolutions. Born to an Iranian father and American mother, she was 2 years old when her family left Iran for San Diego just months before the overthrow of the Iranian monarchy. Now a professor of English and comparative literature at the American University in Cairo, she has found herself caught in the middle of another series of uprisings in Egypt that have inspired her to see her own people’s struggles in a new light.

“When we left Iran, my family settled in a very white neighborhood in San Diego, but I grew up hearing Farsi and knowing a few words. At that time, there was a lot of bad feeling surrounding Iran; particularly in the wake of the hostage crisis, I tried to distance myself from my Iranian heritage. Although he had lived in the U.S. before, my father was ambivalent about living there permanently, and he would often wonder aloud about the life we would have had if we had stayed. During the Iraq War there was a lot of tension at home. I remember intensely watching news from Iran. It could be your family’s house that was being bombed.

I didn’t start thinking about studying Iran until I took a Pomona class with Zayn Kassam called Women in Islam and did a project on [Iranian novelist] Nahid Rachlin. After graduating I finally returned to Iran with my dad, which changed my perception completely—I witnessed a very different Iran from the one I had seen on TV, and was amazed to find that even under this oppressive regime, there was such a vibrant culture. I loved hearing Persian. It’s a language that values wordplay and takes poetry seriously, and I quickly understood how important it was for me to master it.

Eventually, I enrolled in a Ph.D. program in Near Eastern studies at Princeton University. Although I was studying Persian literature, I also felt called to respond to questions about the Iranian diaspora being raised by books like Azar Nafisi’s Reading Lolita in Tehran. As somebody familiar with the American and Iranian literary traditions, I thought I could offer a critical perspective on how these works fit into a longer history of immigration, assimilation and life-writing in the United States.

It was initially frightening to be in Cairo during the demonstrations in January and February. We would hear gunshots or tanks driving by and be scared for friends who were participating. But once we saw what was happening in Tahrir Square with our own eyes, we could see that the protestors were peaceful and well-organized. Their courage has been inspiring. It’s a bit ironic to be experiencing a revolution when my family tried to leave one, but in certain ways [being in Cairo is] redemptive for me: I always felt like I missed out on something that was a huge part of my generation’s experience in Iran. My cousins grew up in a culture that was being radically remade, where people led double lives at home and in public, and where they had to deal with so many issues I didn’t have to deal with. It seems important to now be part of what’s happening in Egypt, even if it’s from the sidelines.

ALDO RAMIREZ ’00: MIGRANT TO MENTOR

For Aldo Ramirez ’00, school was an escape from a hard life toiling in the orchards and fields as a young boy. So, it is no surprise that after graduating from Pomona, he pursued a career in education. He is now putting his experience to work by helping young, low-income immigrants as principal of a small elementary school in the city of San Bernardino.

I was born in L.A. and very shortly after, my family had to move back to Mexico. We lived over there for three or four years. It was a very happy time. My parents and my grandparents were hard workers. They had cattle. They had some crops. So, that is what we did out there. Then my family started moving back to the U.S. as farm workers, moving up through California, Oregon and Washington.

My earliest memories of that time were picking apples and pears and peaches, nectarines and things like that in Washington State. … We would get up really early in the morning, sometimes before the sun was out. It was not fun, I can tell you that. It was very hard, carrying a ladder in the morning. Your hands would freeze. Pulling the cherries from the trees, the stems would wear your fingers down. But during that time my parents always tried to stay positive. They always told us they wanted us to go to college and get a college degree so we wouldn’t have to work out in the fields.

It definitely helped with my endurance. I mean, in school it was pretty easy to put forward a lot of effort. When I was going to school, I didn’t have to work in the fields so I loved school. Most of the teachers that I had were fantastic. They wanted us to do well. But my 8th grade teacher, Mrs. Copeland, she was especially kind. She taught me a lot about writing and literature. And she kept track of me when I was going through high school. And in my senior year, I had a 4.0 grade point average so she came over to the high school and she pulled me out and she gave me literature on Pomona College. And she said ‘I think this is a very good school for you to go to.’ She’s the one who steered me that way and helped me put my application together. She just cared. She wanted me to be successful.

One of my first courses I took at Pomona was Raymond Buriel’s Psychology of the Chicano. And that just resonated with me. It was so interesting to start thinking about the psyche of immigrants, specifically from Mexico. Because education was such a positive experience for me, I did some work as part of a mentor program for students from one of the Pomona Unified School District’s middle schools. And so when I graduated I decided to go into teaching. And it was a perfect fit. I mean it gave me the opportunity to give back. Just like Mrs. Copeland helped me, I found myself in the position of being able to help the families of the students I was teaching. I find as soon as I share my experiences with them and I show them pictures of my family, they relate really quickly. And they do look up to me and a lot of them aspire to do what I have done. The city of San Bernardino has a high concentration of English language learners. About 40 percent of the district is English language learners. About 95 percent of the district gets free or reduced-price lunches so we are working with a very needy population.

JOE NGUYEN ’05: A FUNNY THING HAPPENED …

Joe Nguyen ’05 grew up in the Deep South as the son of immigrant parents whose roots stretch from Germany and Austria to Vietnam. So, perhaps it’s only natural that he decided to become a stand-up comedian. Nguyen holds on to his day job working for the state of California and does standup at night in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“My mom’s parents met and got married after World War II in a Jewish refugee camp in Shanghai. They wanted to move to the United States but, because of quotas, went to the Dominican Republic, where my mom and her sister were born and raised. My dad was an officer in the South Vietnamese army. He and his family narrowly escaped when Saigon fell at the end of the Vietnam War. His brother, who was in the Navy, was able to get them all on a ship to Guam.

My parents met while they were in college in Michigan. They moved to Atlanta when my dad got an engineering job there, and that’s where I grew up. When my family all gets together, it’s a very interesting mix. I think that, apart from the kind of food that I enjoy, there’s an open-mindedness that comes from growing up in a multicultural household.

I never considered myself a funny guy until sometime during college, when I realized I enjoyed cracking jokes and entertaining people. At some point, I started watching and listening to more standup comedy and thought, ‘I’d like to try that; I think I can do it.’

I didn’t have a job lined up after graduation, so I moved north with my girlfriend at the time. I took courses and performed at the San Francisco Comedy College, produced and hosted my own comedy show and, after a few years, started opening for some clubs. I moved to Los Angeles a few months ago and am learning the scene here and lining up shows.

My show used to be mostly about being different. From start to finish, it was ‘Hey, I’m a Vietnamese-Jew.’ I think that’s OK for a five-minute set, but when you do 15 minutes, people want something that is little more relatable. A lot of the newer material is less about my racial background. My style is slower paced, kind of dry and generally, pretty clean, like observational comedy. So far, my parents seem supportive. I don’t know if it’s because they’re my parents or if they really approve of me doing standup comedy. They’ve been to a few shows in San Francisco, and I also did one show in Atlanta.

My dad still encourages me to go to law school, but we’ll see about that. Whatever I end up doing, I don’t think I’ll ever quit standup.

I get a little crazy sometimes and look at reviews of my shows online. I’m happy to say that most have been pretty positive. But there was one about a routine I did for the Kung Pao Kosher Comedy show, which is held every Christmas in a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco. It said, ‘Joe was OK, but his material was too much about being Vietnamese and Jewish; he needs to focus more on being a philosophy major at Pomona.’ And I said, ‘Damn, I thought I was giving the people what they want.’ You can’t please everybody.”

PETER WERMUTH ’01: AMBASSADOR OF BASEBALL

Peter Wermuth ’00 is trying to get cricket nation excited about that other bat-and-ball sport. Sent by Major League Baseball to oversee the six-team Australian Baseball League as CEO, Wermuth was first exposed to hardball as a kid growing up in Germany. He played on the Pomona-Pitzer squad and coached on the German national team before heading to the big-league boardroom.

I started playing baseball at age 10—my older brother went to college in America and brought some equipment back to Germany. We had no clue what we were doing: our first time out, we went to a schoolyard and set up a field with two bases and home plate.

The catalyst for me was attending my first German-American Baseball League game in Mainz, my hometown. It was a great atmosphere: a big barbecue going, old men playing dominos on the side of the field, people playing music and even some Latin dancing.

There wasn’t any German youth baseball in the country at the time, but the U.S. Armed Forces ran its own Little League, which I joined. I’d travel from one military base to another, competing against American teams and gradually losing some of my German accent. When I was 12, I applied to be the club’s treasurer; they wouldn’t let me, which I didn’t think was reasonable at all, so I went off and started my own club.

I wanted to attend college in the U.S. All the other top liberal arts schools were in the Northeast, and with baseball being a big part of the decision, [Pomona] was an easy choice. At Columbia Business School, I ran the Sports Business Association and brought an M.L.B. executive to campus. After the talk he asked me what I was planning to do that summer and I told him, “I’m going to work for you.” I did—and have been since.

I always knew I wanted to set up a professional league. Baseball in most countries outside the U.S. is not the national sport. It’s difficult for an American to understand that ‘if you build it’ they will not necessarily come! In Australia there’s cricket, rugby union, rugby league, Australian-rules football. You have to treat baseball as a niche sport. That’s something I bring to the table because I lived in that sort of environment in Germany.

We’re hoping to reach that second tier [in Australia]. My U.S. experiences inspired me to use what I think of as the minor league model, where it’s framed as a fun family night out. Exciting promotions, mascots, upbeat music, a safe environment—baseball is almost secondary.

I’d love to grow the league as fast as possible, but we don’t want the resources that we put in to exceed demand. It’d be a disaster to play in venues that we can’t fill. Though we’ll never be cricket or the Australian Football League, I think we can establish a really attractive product. This is likely the last chance baseball has to establish itself as a relevant sport in Australia, and I feel great responsibility for the future of the sport in this country.

ANBINH PHAN ’01: CREATIVE EMPATHY

Anbinh Phan ’01 was born in a refugee camp in Malaysia after her parents fled Vietnam by boat during the exodus of the late ’70s. The family eventually settled in Torrance, Calif. After graduating from Pomona, Phan earned an M.P.A. from Princeton and a law degree from Georgetown, and now she is starting a social-justice venture revolving around stateless persons and human trafficking victims in Southeast Asia. Her work has spurred her to reflect on her family’s risky journey to America. In the photo, Phan holds a shapshot of herself with her mother at the refugee camp in Malaysia.

My parents worked really hard in Torrance. We lived modestly so that they could send money home to Vietnam. At Pomona, my whole experience made me think much more deeply about self-identity, Christian faith and civil rights. Having that multidisciplinary education helped me start to see things through numerous lenses.

I focused on international trade after graduating: I did a fellowship in Vietnam for eight months and worked at the U.S. Treasury for several years. I got interested in human rights, since a huge part of international trade revolves around labor, the supply chain and how products are manufactured.

In the summer after my second year of law school in 2009, I worked for [the human rights organizations] Global Centurion and Boat People S.O.S. in Southeast Asia, and met human trafficking survivors in shelters and asylums in Thailand, Vietnam and Malaysia. I only got glimpses of their lives, but they made a big impression on me, and I realized these people have aspirations like my family. They just want to create better futures for themselves.

During the trip I returned to Pulau Tengah, the Malaysian refugee camp I was born in, which was an amazing experience. To me it was this mythical place where my family had put so many hopes after surviving war and poverty. They were so brave to leave their country and have a child in the middle of the ocean. It wasn’t a coincidence that my name means “peace” in Vietnamese—that’s what my parents hoped for me on these shores.

When I came back to law school, I couldn’t get the experience out of my mind, and I started devoting my research to that region. Even though I’m American, I can relate as a member of the Vietnamese diaspora—I speak the language and understand the pressures and fears they face. It’s a natural empathy.

I feel privileged to be in America. I always wanted to pursue public service, because I didn’t want my family to work for all these things just so I could benefit individually. My ultimate dream is for these people I’m trying to help to gain some sense of optimism about their future. I’ve not seen the things I’m doing accomplish that yet, but I deeply hope that’s where we’ll be soon enough.

Recently, I presented at the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Cambodia. It was an opportunity to emphasize the challenges stateless people face—no access to education or social services, and a high vulnerability to labor and sex trafficking—as well as to advocate for a solution. As much as it was about legal rights, it was also a human story. It was fulfilling to share information to empathetic ears; the stories we chose to tell reflect who we are and what we hope for in the world.

New Book Looks into the Birth of Mirth

June 26, 2012 by Glenn Whipp Comments Off

If you’re reading James Thurber and Robert Benchley and composing comedic poetry at the tender age of 7, then writing a book that examines humor from every conceivable angle doesn’t feel like that much of a stretch. Indeed, when David Misch ’72 began putting together Funny: The Book three years ago, it felt like the next logical step in a four-decade career that has included stints as a comedic folk singer, stand-up comedian and writer for such shows as Mork and Mindy and Saturday Night Live.

Misch credits his days at Pomona for both the beginning of his life’s work and its latest chapter. During his senior year, Misch was goofing around, making up songs on guitar with some friends in his Clark dorm room.Their laughter prompted a concert booking at the Smudge Pot coffee house and a postgraduate career as a “professional funny folk singer,” an occupation that, Misch notes, “went out around the same time as ‘buggy whip maker.’”

Misch adapted, though, writing for sitcoms, selling a handful of screenplays and serving as a special consultant on The Muppets Take Manhattan. When it came to time reinvent himself once again, Misch thought about teaching and remembered a multidisciplinary course he took during his senior year at Pomona titled Freud, Marx and Contemporary Literature. “I remember my mind being blown by the way the class brought all these things together,” Misch says. “So I got the idea to study comedy from every conceivable angle—science, biology, history, philosophy and psychology—and not just its manifestations in movies and television, as it’s usually studied.”

As Misch dove into the research, a literary agent friend told him he should fashion a book out of the material. Funny: The Book stands as the greatly abridged version of two years of study, as well as something of a companion to the course, Funny: A Survey of American Comedy, he taught last fall at the University of Southern California. In it, the witty Misch surveys the history of humor, considers the scientific nature of laughter and, amid a fart joke or two, makes a convincing case for comedy to be taken seriously.

“You’re up against it when you have people like Woody Allen saying that comedy is frivolous and inferior to drama,” Misch says. “But in my study, I was unable to discern any difference in the properties of comedy and drama, nor any difference in their complexity. The only difference: one produces laughter, the other tears.”

Misch blames the Greeks—Aristotle and Plato—for the persistent idea that laughter is cruel and immoral and thus somehow shameful. He trots out his own heavy hitters, citing Carl Jung’s belief that frivolity makes life worth living and functions as a crucial aspect of what makes us human. Misch also loves the notion propagated by author Philip Pullman that laughter ranks as one of life’s greatest pleasures, a simple delight that people can summon at will. And, of course, there’s Norman Cousins, who believed a daily dose of the Marx Brothers, along with a lot of Vitamin C, helped him live another 36 years after doctors diagnosed him with heart disease. Scientific studies of the correlation between humor and health aren’t conclusive, Misch says, but there does appear to be evidence that laughter does help a little. “And a little is better than nothing,” Misch says.

But what’s humorously healing to Misch might be a source of irritation to someone else. And vice versa. Misch didn’t need to endure the quizzical stares of some of his USC students or the occasional wave of head-scratching he noticed while teaching a course in musical satire last spring at UCLA to know that comedy is totally subjective. For him, that’s just another aspect of humor that elevates it above drama as an art form. “That subjectivity gives comedy a mystery that drama lacks,” Misch says. “What makes something funny? After all the scientific dissection I do, it’s still a little mysterious why one sentence is funny and why another sentence, that’s almost identical save for one word or sometimes one piece of punctuation, isn’t. To me, there’s magic in that mystery.”

Everything Must Go!

June 13, 2012 by emae2021@pomona.edu Comments Off

Before moving on, Pomona’s Class of 2012 first had to move merchandise and shed accessories. So, for weeks before this year’s Commencement, the daily Student Digester turned into a swap meet laden with “SENIOR SALES!” We looked past the expected futons and floor lamps for the finer things, listed here with the original asking price:

• Tempur-Pedic pillow: $40
• Half-used 3.4-oz DKNY perfume: $10
• Top hat: $10
• Chin-up bar: $15
• Cocktail shaker: $5
• “The cutest toaster you’ll ever see”: $10
• Pioneer PL-530 Turntable: $120
• NFL Fever 2004 for Xbox: $9
• Ski goggles: $15
• Pair of sake cups: $8
• Mosquito net “that you can hang over your bed to make you feel like a princess”: $10

Professor’s Praise Launched Prolific Children’s Author

June 7, 2012 by Sneha Abraham Comments Off

Children’s author Barbara Brooks Wallace ’45 has racked up more than her share of awards and rave reviews in a career spanning five decades. And, at 89, she’s still at it, with the Cinderella-themed Diary of a Little Devil released in December and another book in her Miss Switch series coming in the fall.

But she hasn’t forgotten her shaky start. Wallace, who today lives in a retirement home in McLean, Va., credits her success to an initially-nerve-wracking encounter with her freshman-year English professor at Pomona College.

Wallace had always pleased her high school teachers. But at Pomona she came to realize she was prone to “flossy” overwriting and for the first time in her life, she was making C’s on papers. Then English Professor Charles C. Holmes called her into a meeting.

“He pushed my two essays across his desk and said, ‘There really isn’t much I can say to you.’ My heart nearly stopped because my immediate thought was that my writing was so bad, there was no hope for me,” Wallace says.

His next words stunned her: “If these were done by a professional writer,” Holmes said. “They’d be good enough for The New Yorker.”

Holmes went on to tell Wallace to continue taking English and writing classes—advice she heeded some years later. But first she transferred to UCLA, majored in international relations, got married and had a son. It was her sister Constance Brooks Schindehette ’43 who reminded Wallace of Professor Holmes’ advice.

Wallace enrolled in a creative writing course at Santa Monica City College, and eventually tried using her childhood in China as a setting for a fantasy children’s story—resulting in a book that Wallace says was terrible. “But that story hooked me on writing for children, so that’s what I’ve done ever since.”

Claudia, the tale of an 11-year-old girl overcoming the ups and downs of that age, was Wallace’s first published book.

She has earned acclaim ever since. Praised by the American Library Association, The New York Times and Kirkus Reviews, Wallace has been honored with two Edgar Allen Poe Awards from the Mystery Writers of America for The Twin in the Tavern and Sparrows in the Scullery. She also earned the NLAPW Children’s Book Award and International Youth Library “Best of the Best” for Claudia.

Her many works include Victorian-era mysteries, fantasy novels, a biography of her mother, her autobiography, picture books, teleplays and musicals. The Trouble with Miss Switch and Miss Switch to the Rescue were made into Saturday morning animated specials for ABC, both of which were the highest-rated films in the TV series.

Wallace’s latest book is Diary of a Little Devil, a Cinderella-themed story (“No handsome prince, but a happy ending nonetheless!”) of a young girl, Andy, whose widowed father remarries someone with twin daughters who—once they all return to their home in China—make life miserable for Andy.

Between shooting a YouTube video of her reading a chapter from Diary and preparing for the fall release of Miss Switch and the Vile Villains, this octogenarian is keeping at her keyboard. “What’s next for me is to go on writing one way or another,” she says. —Sneha Abraham

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