A student goes searching for the fabled Mufti--and finds Pomona history..

My personal search for Mufti began with a bizarre message painted on the windows of Frary Dining Hall, boldly declaring, "MUFTI IS DEAD."

This alarming message appeared the morning after the annual Harwood Halloween concert, a time when Mufti usually posts one of its infamous "burgers"--small stickers with cryptic three-part messages--with a highly unintelligible commentary on the five-college event. This year, however, there were no familiar stickers plastered on campus walls, doors, lampposts and trees--only a startling obituary scrawled in shoe polish.

Was it true? Was Pomona's most famous "clandestine organization" really fading out of existence?

"In the last four years," says Ann Quinley, vice president and dean of students," there have probably not been more than a maximum of two a year, and a lot of years only one Mufti that I was aware of." She reasons that Mufti is like any other student organization: "You have a time when there are a lot of people interested. It becomes a big deal on campus, but then those students graduate, and other people aren't as interested and it dies out."

Former Pomona President David Alexander agrees: "Mufti activity waxes and wanes. Sometimes they're very active. The most active time I can remember was the late '60s. That reflected an energy that was preexistent to my coming. That decade was pretty active." Personally, he has no doubt that interest in the tradition will peak again.

However, only time will tell.

Mufti--a name that literally means "out of uniform" or "undressed"--has been a long-standing tradition on the Pomona campus. In fact, the group has been active since the late 1940s. Since the only people who really know anything about Mufti can't discuss it, however, that's about all we really know--everything else is speculation and rumor.

For instance, Alexander recalls an unconfirmed story that Mufti began when a group of women decided to protest against the curfew that only applied to the female students. They would sneak out of dorms, paste their fliers around campus, and creep back, all without being caught. For her part, Quinley speculates about a possible connection between Mufti and Pomona's student newspaper, The Student Life. "About five years ago there were a bunch of students who worked for TSL who were people of enormous good senses of humor," she recalls. "While they were in TSL, there were Muftis all the time. After they graduated, activity kind of tapered off."

The actual Mufti "burger" is not difficult to produce, aesthetically speaking. It consists of a piece of paper, about a third of the size of a standard sheet. Most Muftis contain three messages: a phrase in the top left corner, a message in all caps in the middle, and a third short phrase, usually including the name "Mufti," in the bottom right. Sounds simple, but it isn't. The messages are rich with double and triple entendres, delicately balanced with literary references, pop-culture allusions, and sexual innuendoes. For example, in response to concerns about former food service provider Aramark's labor practices, Mufti commented, "Half-eaten Undelicious spit out: Will overripe fruits of labor cleanse the palate, or does one bad apple spoil the lot? ERROR-MARKS FINALLY TALLIED: THERE'S NO ACCOUNTING FOR TASTE. Mufti toast breaking of stale-mated bread."

In response to the planned demolition of Holmes Hall in the late '80s, to make room for Alexander Hall, Mufti declared: "87 grads say Centennial has no class BLAST OF A CENTURY LEAVES THOUSANDS HOLMELESS Mufti levels destructive criticism"

With replicas plastered all over campus, such cryptic messages provide a piquant commentary to daily Pomona life.

"Strangely Mufti never really did become a major activist force in terms of dealing with either the Vietnam War or with civil rights," Alexander says. "That was not the main thrust of student activism." Instead, Mufti provided commentary on the politics and policies directly related to the Pomona campus, rarely even venturing to discuss five-college events.

As Pomona's best-known secret society (How's that for an oxymoron?), Mufti has left an indelible mark--both figuratively and literally. Around campus, old sticker outlines can still be seen, some with remnants of paper still attached to the adhesive. In fact, the "glue issue" has been the one enduring conflict between the College and Mufti. The adhesive used to plaster the "burgers" over campus is not easily removed, and College administrators have tried many tactics to persuade the group to make their statements less permanent. At one point, Dean Sheldon Beatty offered to post the Mufti fliers himself, just to ensure that the glue would not damage the buildings. A few days after his offer, a stack of Mufti fliers appeared in his locked office. The message simply read, "Mufti comes unglued." True to his word, Dean Beatty made his rounds of campus, posting the fliers with a more water-soluble adhesive. However, this compromise did not last. The following week, "burgers" again appeared with the message, "Mufti stuck up again." Associate Dean of Students Neil Gerard has offered to purchase a more detachable bonding agent for the group. His offer has yet to be accepted.

Other than the frustration at having to repaint lampposts every few months, administrators have been tolerant of the always sardonic and sometimes vicious critiques of their decisions offered by the group. In fact, more often than not, administrators are flattered by "being Muftied." The double and triple entendres have even added spice to Dean Quinley's staff meetings. She recalls sitting around the table on Tuesday mornings with her staff, trying to decipher the complicated political, cultural, and literary references layered in the messages.

Among students, the Mufti tradition has been perpetuated through a word-of-mouth campaign, passed down by older students to the incoming class. Sponsors whisper to first-years that the only way to find out what Mufti really entails is to catch the members posting their fliers in the middle of the night. Stories abound of sleepless nights spent anticipating the next Mufti strike.

The desire to break through the barrier of mystery and become privy to the group's secrets is a natural one, according to William Banks, professor of psychology. "In our society," he explains, "you have in-groups and out-groups. A secret society is an in-group that has very strong walls around it." Despite the widespread desire to penetrate those walls, however, few are successful. It is rumored that even former Mufti members have expressed frustration at their inability to locate other Mufti members from previous classes, as well as Mufti successors. Likewise, the strict code of silence has ruled out any sort of Mufti reunion.

In the end, my own search for Mufti ran into that same brick wall of secrecy. Repeated public pleas for information and the pursuit of a few quiet leads brought me nothing more than a handful of cryptic half-sentences in anonymous e-mails. However, the last message I received from supposed Mufti members was clear. Despite all the rumors, they assure me, Mufti is "not dead," because "secrets don't die."

--Antoinette Morales '04