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Pomona College Magazine is published three times a year by Pomona College
550 N. College Ave, Claremont, CA 91711
Online Editor: Laura Tiffany
For editorial matters:
Editor: Mark Wood
Phone: (909) 621-8158
Fax: (909) 621-8203
PCM Editorial Guidelines
Contact Alumni Records for changes of address, class notes, or notice
of births or deaths.
Phone: (909) 621-8635
Fax: (909) 621-8535
Email: alumni@pomona.edu
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Missing the Larger Story
I wonder what’s become of the college I
attended in the ’60s. The Winter 2009 issue
of what I still call Pomona Today has
an article
about Michael Hill ’64, a classmate of mine and best man at my wedding to Cheryl Overin ’65 in Kenya in 1965. I am proud that
my friend has received the recognition for his work with HIV/AIDS victims in Malawi
these last few years, and Pomona College Magazine has helpfully shared that work with
a larger group of people. However, the article is only about Michael and his achievements as
an individual. I think you missed the larger story—and better article —that would put
Mike’s Malawi experience in the context of his relationship with us, his Pomona College
age mates.
The article as published makes no mention of Mike’s connections
to his classmates or of the rich network of relations that define us all
together. His classmates had lost touch with Mike until about five
years ago, when word of his work in Malawi spread on our class listserv
and some of us began sending money to support his program.
In August 2007, 11 of us from the class of ’64 visited Mike
in Malawi and reunited with him for the first time since the ’60s. Since that visit, two classmates
have helped Mike’s program design a support system for the many preschools that
the community organizations in Malawi have established; another is helping a young
Malawian develop his movie-making skills; others have helped fund a scholarship for a
Malawian college student. The support goes both ways. One classmate in the travel group
has become terminally ill, and all of us, Mike included, are caring for her in thought and
prayer. We were all changed by going to Pomona and then, together again, by our visit
to Malawi. We grew up together, and the trip to Malawi and Kenya re-established the bonds
that a Pomona education helped create.
I accepted that the magazine’s editors were serving the College’s best interests and
that they knew better than me even after I read the article about Mike, which I of course
did before looking at the rest of the magazine. Then I saw what’s in the rest of this
issue. The article about Mike is stuck in the back in a column titled “Alumni Voices.” The
issue’s three main articles, also about Pomona graduates, are about “getting there.” The
articles are about a Pomona grad in Buenos Aires eating out by herself, about another
grad who photographs cars by himself, and about one who drives a truck by himself.
They, like Mike, are depicted and celebrated for what they have done as individuals. This
contradicts one of the most enduring, and endearing, things I learned at Pomona: I am
not by myself.
—Ward Heneveld ’64
Enosburg Falls, Vt.
Torn Pages, Teary Eyes
By the time I finished reading the Winter 2009 copy of our daughter’s Pomona College Magazine, half of it was in pieces on the table
in front of me. Bats, for my husband’s cousin? Check. Chickens on campus, for my sister who lives on a 600-bird “hobby” farm?
Check. Ten favorite drives in America, for all of the confirmed road-trippers in our family? Check. (But
Steve Wilkinson apparently hasn’t driven the Seward and Sterling Highways in Alaska, with their oceans, eagles, and
steaming volcanoes.) Malawi Peace Corps, for our friends in the Malawi Peace Corps administration?
Check. And there were those I didn’t tear out—pretty much every other article in the magazine, but read avidly for
both the substance of the tales, and the excellent writing that went into them. We get several different alumni magazines, between the
family’s undergrad and graduate schools, and Pomona’s is hands-down the best.
—Teri Carns P ’04
Anchorage, Alaska
I just want to congratulate you and thank you all for another extraordinary issue. My gratitude might be influenced a bit by Steve Gettinger’s wonderful piece about
Doug Johnston and other friends, which still sends
tears coursing down my cheeks, but each of the articles was focused, interesting, to the
point. I am so glad that I was able to share the Pomona experience with so many. As Steve confesses, I know that I learned much more from my mentors, colleagues, friends and lovers than I did from most of my classes (they were good too, except for that 8 a.m. Saturday morning government class—not that
it inconvenienced me all that often ...)
—Jim McCallum ’70
Bethesda, Md.
The Debate Goes On
Not a day goes by without my experiencing
deep gratitude for the wonderful education I
received at Pomona. I was a history major who
pursued the field in graduate school, but it was
my four years at Pomona that taught me the
importance of critical inquiry, of always seeking
to examine primary documents and source
materials, to check and double check all data
and sources, and to revise a position as new
facts are uncovered. I learned to recognize and
adjust for bias, to establish an appropriate historical
context for understanding, and to
weigh hearsay and memory against unequivocal
fact. I learned the necessity of adhering to
rigid standards, based on intellectual integrity,
which are the foundation of any investigation
or decision-making process.
The research I conducted last summer on
the origin of “Hail, Pomona, Hail” led to an
18-page report establishing the alma mater
was in no way associated with any minstrel
show. The facts in the report, based on contemporaneous
documents, have never been disputed. My report, originally characterized
as a “Skeptic’s Report” by the Committee on
College Songs, was disregarded by them and
was not distributed by the College to be read
by students, faculty, staff or trustees. The
committee simply chose to sideline my report,
thus never having to address the undisputed
facts that challenged their position. A conversation
with me would have forced them to
either present facts to prove their position or
to disprove mine. No such “conversation”
ever took place.
Instead of the kind of rigorous research
that has been the hallmark of Pomona since
its founding, the committee chose to exist in
a parallel universe where such standards did
not obtain. The committee’s final report, submitted
to President Oxtoby for his decision in
the matter, was riddled with errors of fact and
analysis. I am left with one unanswered question:
“What happened?”
—Rosemary Oelrich Choate ’63
Pasadena, Calif.
The alma mater debate has been interesting
and revealing. As everyone involved will
know, the alma mater is very important for
most older alums and hopefully many others.
The comment by Cyrus Winston ’10 in “A
Time to Sing” (Winter 2009 issue) was very
interesting. I can appreciate that “Hail,
Pomona, Hail” is "not really a very aesthetic
song for someone in my generation.” I don’t
imagine the “Star-Spangled Banner” is a very
aesthetic song for him either. But that seems
to me to be irrelevant to a decision on the
status of the alma mater. If he does speak for
his generation, they are the poorer for it.
Unfortunately I think Professor Kim
Bruce is exactly right—President Oxtoby’s
decision effectively leaves Pomona without an
alma mater. Perhaps he is craftier than I’d
given him credit.
—Jerry Bowman ’61
Brisbane, Australia
When I was a Pomona student from 1958 to
1962, I attended the Plug Ugly shows on the
Holmes Hall stage and the Spring Sings held
in the Wash. The Plug Ugly was all humor
and satire. If anyone asked me now, almost 50
years later, which songs were sung at those
shows, I wouldn’t be able to say. The only
Plug Ugly line I remember was from a spoof
about cafeteria food—“Have you ever had a
breaded pear?” I was in the Spring Sing one
year, and do remember our “typewriter” skit,
but not any of the others. No wonder some
people question whether Richard Loucks
could remember, nearly 50 years after his only
semester at Pomona, which song he had written
for which event. He may well have made a
mistake.
A hymn such as “Hail, Pomona, Hail”
would never have been written for shows like
the Plug Ugly or the Spring Sing. I agree
with Rosemary Choate that the song written
for the baseball uniform fundraiser was probably
the spunky “Blue and White,” not the
alma mater.
When we were students, it would have
been an exciting coup to tip over one of the
school’s old sacred cows, especially if a scandal
could be pinned to it. That would have really
shown those stuffy old alumni. I truly hope
that was not the intent when our alma mater’s
background was challenged. But if this was all
a mistake, it is truly a sad one.
—Bonnie Bennett Home ’62
San Jose, Calif.
The effort of Mark Kendall to explain the
complexities of the alma mater controversy in
the winter 2009 issue (“A Time To Sing”)
was no doubt well-intended. It avoids the
emotional rhetoric that often accompanies
debates of this kind. Nevertheless, I find it
inadequate to the requirement of factual clarity.
It takes the conventional version of history
as fact. Says Mr. Kendall: “According to his
own accounts, Richard Loucks … wrote the
song as the finale to a blackface minstrel show
held on campus in 1910. …”
By contrast, the patient, diligent and
scrupulous research of Rosemary Choate ’63,
using documents of the day, including The
Student Life, has proven to the satisfaction of
many of us that Mr. Loucks’ memory was
wrong.
“Blue and White” was written in 1910 and
“Hail, Pomona, Hail” was written in 1911, a
year after the minstrel show. In the report of
the Committee on College Songs, her
research is respectfully acknowledged, but
acknowledged only as an opinion that may be
counterbalanced by another opinion. The
counterbalancing opinion appears in Mr.
Kendall’s quotation from Professor Kim
Bruce, chair of the Committee on College
Songs: “The question is whether or not we
trust Loucks’ own account.” That seems to
me the wrong question. The better question
is whether we trust Loucks’ memories from
the 1950s or the historical evidence from
1910-1911.
If we may simply put aside for the
moment the lesser issue of the quality and
usefulness of “Hail, Pomona, Hail,” what
concerns me deeply is that a college which is
presumably dedicated to the pursuit of truth
should appear to be so casual in that pursuit.
—Lee C. McDonald ’48
Emeritus Professor of Government
Claremont, Calif.
College Costs
A few years ago, my wife and I (both class of
’73) found a letter to her father detailing her
sophomore year expenses. In 1970, tuition,
fees, room and board totaled $3,350 or 86
times the consumer price index. In 2008, the
same costs have risen to $47,538 or 217
times the CPI, a relative increase of 2.5 fold.
In annualized percentage terms, the CPI rose
4.6 percent a year, while Pomona costs went
up 7.2 percent—an average yearly premium of
2.6 percent over inflation for 38 years.
I don’t dispute that costs have risen comparably
at other private colleges, or that our
facilities and equipment are greatly improved,
or that Pomona’s endowment has performed
enviably, allowing exceptional levels of scholarship
support. However, the current economic
crisis seems an apt time to ask how
long any college can expect to continue raising
costs at a rate substantially above
inflation.
Several questions come to mind. Are
indefinite increases in college costs relative to
inflation possible? Necessary? Right? What
fraction of U.S. families can afford a Pomona
education today versus in 1970? Has the economic
return on a private college education
(measured as the expected increase in lifetime
income) kept pace with the 2.5 fold relative
increase in costs since 1970? In the last 38
years, were there years in which the cost of
Pomona increased less than inflation, and
what can we learn from those years?
Questions like these need to be answered.
It would make me proud if Pomona took a
leading and visible role in addressing them.
—Dave Ring ’73
Palo Alto, Calif.
Response from President Oxtoby:
Thank you for your letter concerning the rising
cost of higher education in general, and of
Pomona College in particular. This is an issue
that is very much on my mind as we explore
ways of reducing our costs in the light of the
financial downturn experienced by our endowment
and by the entire country and world.
Why has the cost risen much faster than
the Consumer Price Index? The primary
answer is that the education that a student
receives now is very different from that of 35
years ago. For example, in the past a chemistry
faculty member might have had a modest
research program of his own in a small lab
next to his office; now our students expect to
take part in active research in collaboration
with that faculty member. The space and
equipment needs have expanded considerably.
Far fewer classes now are taught as large lectures;
most are discussion classes of 15–20
students; the faculty resources to teach in
such a way are costly. So the “product” of
higher education is a very different one; one
can of course ask if it is “worth” it. There are
many larger comprehensive universities that
offer a much less expensive education, but
also, in my view, one that prepares students
less well for an uncertain future.
Another significant change has been in the
amount of financial aid that is provided. The
“sticker price” of higher education has gone
up roughly in tandem with the income of
those families who are paying full cost. The
big change is that a much larger fraction of
the population is eligible for financial aid, and
for a much larger fraction of the college costs.
This is a considerable factor in considering the
affordability of education today.
I do not mean to say that the issues you
raise do not concern me. We cannot keep raising
costs at the rate we have in the past, if
only because families at every income level are
seeing their earnings slow or decrease. That is
why we are taking a tough look at our
expenses and seeing how we can reduce them
in the future.
—David Oxtoby
Alumni and friends are invited to send us their letters
by email to pcm@pomona.edu or by mail to
Pomona College Magazine, 550 North College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711.
Letters are selected for publication
based on relevance and interest to our readers
and may be edited for length, style and clarity.
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