Hearts on a Wall

If you want an ongoing glimpse into Pomona's sometimes conflicted soul in the days and weeks since the tragedy of September 11, keep an eye on Walker Wall--the wall around the North Campus lawn known as Walker Beach--which has been home for some years now to a unique sort of semi-sanctioned student grafitti.

That Tuesday morning in September, when the campus awoke to the terrifying news from the East Coast, Walker Wall was its usual vibrant, argumentative self, layered with an array of painted and overpainted expressions ranging from the poetic to the cryptic to the scatological. And so it remained, forgotten during those first hours of confusion and rumor. In Rose Hills Theatre a large television was set up so that students, faculty and staff could come together to follow the numbing news as it unfolded. Classes went on as scheduled, but faculty and students were encouraged to decide for themselves how best to use their time.

"It was good to have a sense of structure that day with everything that had happened that morning," Joseph Prows '04 told Pomona's student newspaper, The Student Life, the following day. "It was difficult, though, to get through a three-hour lab. People had other things on their minds. There were other things we wanted to talk about and it was difficult to stay focused."

But there would be many other opportunities to talk. Throughout the day and into the evening, faculty, counselors, deans, chaplains and resident assistants joined groups of students in residence hall lounges to share information, to talk about what had happened and to explore the turbulence of their emotions. A series of student forums were called that evening, permitting students to discuss their concerns.

From the Alumni Office, e-mails went out to alumni living in affected areas, most asking simply, "Are you all right?" And soon the replies came rolling in. A few related harrowing escapes. Others simply expressed their confusion, fear and anger. A special Web site was hastily constructed to provide a clearinghouse for alumni seeking to find out if classmates were okay, and a list was built of alumni whose welfare had been confirmed.

On Wednesday morning, September 12, students awoke to discover a very different Walker Wall. Sometime during the night, the wall had been painted a uniform black from end to end, as if it had been shocked into respectful silence or had dressed itself for mourning. Here and there, faint traces of the old bright colors and clever messages still showed through the paint, but the effect was a remarkably apt expression of the subdued mood of the campus on that solemn day.

In the days that followed, however, the need for mourning quickly gave way to the desire to do something constructive. With help from their freshman sponsors, first-year students Ryley Share and Jeff Percak set up a table at Thursday night Snack--a late-night get-together in Frary Dining Hall--and in short order had raised a total of $1,236.47 for the American Red Cross and created over 100 cards to send to families of victims and rescue workers.

"Immediately we had a great response," Share said. "It was so amazing. People would open their wallets, pull out a dollar and a $20 bill and give us the $20."

Members of the College's cross-country team, when their regularly scheduled meet was canceled, decided to hold a car wash to raise money for the Red Cross.

That day, Walker Wall changed again. Miraculously, the New York skyline appeared--intact, inviolate. The skyline was accompanied by the simple declaration "You're in our hearts" and by a poem that began with the words: "What will we tell our children / When they ask about today..."

Now the Sagehen Shuttle began to ferry students who wished to donate blood to and from the Red Cross and other blood centers. On Friday, September 14, over 700 people from all The Claremont Colleges came together for a memorial service in Garrison Theatre.

"We sang, prayed, reflected, and sat transfixed as Pomona's Professor Zayn Kassam chanted a Muslim prayer for peace," wrote Pomona College President Peter Stanley afterward. That afternoon, hundreds of members of the College community stood in silence on the east end of Marston Quad as staff members lowered the American flag.

During that first weekend, the tempo of life at Pomona began to return to a semblance of normalcy. An art exhibit opened. Scheduled games in soccer, football and water polo were played. Music events went on as scheduled.

All over campus there continued to be discussion groups led by faculty and staff designed to enlighten the issues and facilitate an exchange of views and feelings. Faculty forums with such titles as "Dealing with Anger, Dealing with Sorrow," "A Fork in the Road: Can Pakistan Deliver Osama (and Survive)?"and "Media Portrayals of the Attack on America" drew overflow crowds.

On Walker Wall, a number of new messages now appeared--signs of the same philosophical divide that was becoming apparent across the country. "Justice is blind," one student wrote. Then another crossed out the word "Justice" and wrote above it a quote from Gandhi: "An eye for an eye soon makes the whole world blind."

American flags were now seen around campus, but there were also growing voices of dissent. In early November, a group of about 25 Pomona students joined students from the other Claremont Colleges and 15 other colleges around the nation to take part in a 56-hour, water-only fast to show their concern for suffering in Afghanistan. After a day of teach-ins and rallies, the students assembled at Walker Wall, dipped their brushes, and began to paint.

--Mark Wood

Photo taken by Chris Lim