News releases:    Current | 2006-07 | 2005-06 | 2004-05 | 2003-04 News@Pomona highlights:    Current | 2006-07 | 2005-06 | 2004-05     Pomona College News Highlights 2004-2005   6/23/05 Former Pomona-Pitzer coach Gregg Popovich leads San Antonio Spurs to Third NBA Championship. The San Antonio Spurs tonight locked up their third NBA Championship under the leadership of Coach Gregg Popovich, beating the Detroit Pistons 81-74 in the last game of the finals.     Gregg Popovich, at center, during his Sagehen days.  During the series, Popovich's experience as Pomona-Pitzer's coach was the subject of sports section columns by the Los Angeles Times'  Bill Plaschke and the Orange County Register's Mark Whicker. "To the rest of the world, Gregg Popovich is the white-haired Red, the fox in the Zenhouse, the guy who has quietly become the NBA's best coach, of its best team," Plaschke writes in a column titled "The Value of Sagehen Wisdom." "To the guys at Pomona-Pitzer, he was a coach who lived in a dorm and worked out of a converted storage closet and drove the school van and directed … intramurals?" Popovich coached Pomona-Pitzer men's basketball from 1979 to 1988, leading the team to its first outright title in 68 years. Then he jumped from Division III to the NBA, taking a job as an assistant coach at San Antonio. He took the Spur's top coaching job in 1994, but he still maintains close ties to Pomona-Pitzer hoops. In the Register column, Popovich recalls loving every minute at Pomona-Pitzer, where he lived in the residence halls for a time. "I thought I would always be there," he told the paper. Times column (registration required) Register column (registration required)   6/7/05 Pomona students research and teach around the globe with prestigious Fulbright grants. Pomona students will research healthcare in Thailand, study astronomy in Chile and work in a molecular biology lab in France as part of the prestigious Fulbright program sponsored by the U.S. Department of State. Jennifer Ah-Kee, Satusuk Joy Bhosai, Constance Harrell and Joseph Richards were awarded research grants. Noah Buhayar, Angelica DeWitt and Anne Paprocki received teaching grants. They all are members of Pomona's Class of 2005. These seven Pomona students are among more than 1,000 nationwide who will travel abroad for the 2005-2006 academic year through the Fulbright U.S. Program,  established to build mutual understanding between the people of the United States and the rest of the world. The grants are awarded each year on the basis of applicants' academic or professional achievements as well as demonstrated leadership potential in their fields. More ...   5/23/05 Kingdom of Heaven is a step forward in portrayal of both sides in Crusades, says history professor. As with many movies dealing with historical topics, the recent release Kingdom of Heaven is lacking in some accuracy, but it represents a step forward in the complexity with which popular culture handles the Crusades, according to Ken Wolf, professor of history at Pomona College. Wolf has done research on Christian-Muslim interactions during the Middle Ages, the Norman conquests and the first Crusade. His latest book is the first English translation of a history of the Norman conquest of Muslim Sicily, which occurred just prior to the first Crusade. Wolf was pleased to see evidence of real research in the making of the film. "The movie is indeed based on some historical facts," he said. " But there are significance changes to make it work." The plot of the movie concerns a former blacksmith, Balian (played by Orlando Bloom as seen in the publicity photo above), who follows his father to fight with the Crusades. After the death of the king of Jerusalem, a power struggle results in the crowning of a hawkish king who incites the Muslims to fight. More ...   5/19/05 Students travel up and down state to raise awareness of Darfur crisis. Pomona College junior Melinda Koster has set off on a summer-break road trip with a serious purpose. Koster and four other students from the Claremont Colleges are traveling up and down California on an 11-day campaign to bring attention to the crisis in Darfur,  the region of Sudan devastated by an ethnic conflict rife with killing and rape. Stopping in cities from San Diego to Stockton, Koster and the other students are visiting schools, synagogues, public places and the state capitol to inform people about the genocide in Darfur. They will raise relief funds by selling "Stop genocide in Sudan" shirts, collect petition signatures and visit the San Francisco offices of U.S. Senators Barbara Boxer and Dianne Feinstein. Koster is traveling with Betsy Marder (Pitzer College), Talia Kahn (Claremont McKenna), Daniela Urban (Scripps) and Candice Camargo (Claremont McKenna). The students believe it is important to bring spread information about the crisis beyond college campuses. "Ultimately, we hope to inspire other people to engage in activism around this issue,'' writes Koster. " We need more active and concerned citizens in order to finally raise awareness and stop this genocide. "   5/17/05 Six professors are honored by students for excellence in teaching.   Pomona students have elected six professors to receive the 2005 Wig Distinguished Professor Awards for Excellence in Teaching. Their subjects range from biochemistry to Victorian literature, from Islam to athletics, but all six faculty members received high marks for the way they work with students. The Wig Award winners are:      -- EJ Crane, an assistant professor of chemistry,  teaches Biochemistry and Advanced Biochemistry. “Professor Crane has a talent for capturing and presenting the most interesting aspects of the subject matter he teaches," wrote one student.   -- Paul Hurley is a professor of philosophy who teaches Ethics; Political Philosophy; Philosophy of Law; and Freedom, Markets, and Well-Being. This is his third Wig Award. Students find him “an absolutely fantastic lecturer, who really brings the material to life.”   -- Zayn R. Kassam, associate professor of religious studies and chair of the Religious Studies Department, teaches Islamic Thought and Engendering and Experience: Women in the Islamic Tradition. This is her second Wig Award. Students say: “Class discussions [spill] out of the classroom, into the dining and residence halls, and even onto forums in cyberspace.”   -- Michael K. Kuehlwein is an economics professor and three-time Wig Award recipient, who teaches Principles of Macroeconomics and  Macroeconomic Theory. “I have never seen a man so excited to run up to a blackboard to draw a supply and demand diagram," wrote one student. " His excitement about economics is contagious.” -- Patrick H. Mulcahy, a professor of physical education, is also the Pomona-Pitzer men’s track and cross-country coach. Since his arrival in 1969, he has coached 38 athletes to 67 NCAA All-American performances. Students find that: “Pat's influence extends beyond the athletic field, and into so many other important aspects of his athletes' lives.” -- Paul Saint-Amour, an associate professor of English, teaches Literature of the Victorian Period and Henry James and his Contemporaries. This is his second Wig Award. Writes one student: "He embodies everything we should cherish as an intellectual community: brilliance, eloquence, humility, and most importantly, compassion.” More ...   5/09/05 Women's water polo wins Collegiate Division III National Championships. Pomona-Pitzer won the Collegiate Division III Women's Water Polo Championships Sunday after Lauren Moore '05 scored against Cal State East Bay with only four seconds to go. East Bay was ahead 4-3 in the third quarter, but the Sagehens evened it up early in the fourth. East Bay scored to move ahead 5-4, then Pomona-Pitzer quickly tied the game again. With 19 seconds left, Pomona-Pitzer called a time out to make plans to capitalize on its one-player advantage over East Bay, which had a player in the ejection (penalty) area. According to Coach Scott Smith, the Sagehens set up a formation to stretch East Bay's defense, and Moore, the teams' strongest shooter, was left open and scored. Moore, who scored two goals in the game, was named MVP for the tourney, which was hosted in Haldeman Pool on Pomona's campus May 6-8. Also scoring for the Sagehens in this game were Lara Kruska (2), Toby Branz and Cherise Saito. Pomona-Pitzer (pictured in white caps above in a previous match) competes in the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference, where the team finished the season in second place. The Pomona-Pitzer women’s water polo team is consistently ranked in the top 5 nationally among Division III schools. More about the team...   5/09/05 Pomona senior takes second prize in ethics essay contest. Christine Henneberg '05 has won second place in the Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics 2005 Essay Contest. This is the second year in a row that a Pomona student has taken honors in this highly competitive contest. Her award-winning essay, "The God on My Grandfather's Table," focuses on how the elderly are perceived and treated in the Western world. Instead of viewing the elderly as fragile and irrelevant, Henneberg suggests that we take examples from other cultures, such as the Japanese, and revere the elderly for their wisdom. Henneberg will receive $2,500. Last year, Pomona senior Leslie Barnard took first place and $5,000 for her essay, “Forty-three Cents.” Inspired to enter the contest in part by the ethics classes she took at Pomona College, Barnard based her essay on the summer she spent living in a Buddhist nun’s hostel and teaching English to local schoolchildren in India. The Elie Wiesel Prize in Ethics Essay Contest is an annual competition that is designed to challenge college students to analyze the urgent ethical issues confronting them in today's complex world. The contest is run by the Elie Wiesel Foundation for Humanity, established by Elie Wiesel and his wife, Marion, soon after he was awarded the 1986 Nobel Prize for Peace. The Foundation's mission, rooted in the memory of the Holocaust, is to advance the cause of human rights by creating forums for the discussion and resolution of ethical issues.   4/28/05 Pomona named one of "America's Best Value Colleges." The Princeton Review named Pomona College as one of "America's Best Value Colleges" for 2005 in a new publication out this month. It profiles 81 schools the education services company commends for "outstanding academics, generous financial aid packages and relatively low costs." The book cites Pomona's small classes, extracurricular activities and proximity to Los Angeles. "If it weren’t for the work load, students may think they’d died and gone to heaven (especially since they can travel just one mile east or west to pick up an In-N-Out burger)," says the book. Princeton Review also reports that "few if any of Pomona’s peers in exclusivity come close to matching the small-college atmosphere that makes learning here so much fun. With only 1,500 students, Pomona can keep classes small and discussion-based, yet through its affiliation with ... the Claremont College system, it can offer a university-style smorgasbord of academic options."   4/27/05 Students work together to collect shoes for the poor in India. The Pomona College chapter of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars has successfully collected more than 1,000 pairs of shoes for impoverished people in India. Shoes Over Sickness (SOS) has been the primary focus of the chapter all year, and it finally neared completion in late April when volunteers gathered on Pomona’s campus to ship the donated footwear. Carried out in collaboration with other NSCS chapters, the project entailed collecting practice shoes (tennis, running, cross-training, etc.) to send to poor villages in India. Many Indians die every year from diseases contracted through inadequately protected feet, especially during the summer monsoon season when waterlogged streets can contain and conceal glass pieces, stone chips, slivers of wood and other sharp objects. These can seriously injure bare feet, leaving people vulnerable to infection and disease. The Pomona College NSCS chapter was founded four years ago by the College’s Career Development Office (CDO). In addition to the SOS project, the organization also sponsors two or three service activities each semester, including outreach to local schools and events with Ability First, an organization assisting developmentally disabled children and adults.   4/25/05 Students earn many prestigious scholarships as year winds down. This is the time of year when students receive word on many highly-competitive scholarships and fellowships. And, once again, Pomona students have earned many of these prestigious honors: -- Robert Beahrs '05 has been awarded a Thomas J. Watson Foundation Fellowship, providing $22,000 for one year of independent exploration and travel outside the United States. Beahrs will travel to Russia, Mongolia, India, Quebec, Sardinia, Corsica and Norway to study the role of throat-singing in different cultures. More ... -- Four Pomona students – Charles S. Hummel, Andrew G. Lytle, Paul J. Robustelli and Alan W. Tarr – are recipients of the Barry M. Goldwater Scholarship for 2005-06. The scholarship program is designed to encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in mathematics, natural sciences and engineering. More ... -- Angela Nierman '06 is one of just 18 juniors nationwide to be awarded the Beinecke Brothers Memorial Scholarship, which provides up to $30,000 for study toward a doctorate in humanities, arts and social sciences. More ... -- Kameelah Rasheed '06 has received both a Harry S. Truman Foundation Scholarship and a Rockefeller Brothers Fund Fellowship for Students of Color Entering the Teaching Profession, which combined will provide up to $46,000 for graduate school study. More ...   4/21/05 Pomona students get rare opportunity involving Mars spacecraft. Students in a Pomona College Planetary Geology class are in the midst of an opportunity that many planetary scientists only dream about. On April 19, they ordered photographs of specific geologic features on Mars to be taken by NASA’s Mars Odyssey orbiter for their own student-designed research projects. They’ll receive the beautiful photos by April 26, if all goes as planned. The photos from Mars Odyssey’s thermal emission imaging system (THEMIS) will be used by the students to investigate aeolian (wind-blown) processes, a potential ocean shoreline, outflow channels and the complex interplay between subsurface ice and impact craters. According to Professor Eric Grosfils, who teaches Planetary Geology, the Pomona students, who are primarily freshmen and sophomores, will be one of the first college classes to have this type of opportunity. To date most of the Mars Student Imaging Project (MSIP) education outreach effort has focused on K-12. “For that matter,” says Grosfils, “I’ve never gotten to target a Mars spacecraft to have it collect a particular image in my 15 years in geology. It’s incredible that my introductory students have this opportunity.” More ...   4/20/05 College will hold its 112th Commencement on Sunday, May 15. Pomona College will hold its 112th Annual Commencement Exercises on Sunday, May 15, beginning at 2:30 p.m. Approximately 375 members of the Class of 2005 will receive their undergraduate degrees during the ceremonies, which will be held at Bridges Auditorium. John Payton, considered to be one of the nation's leading civil rights attorneys, will give the keynote address and receive an honorary degree during the event. A member of the Pomona Class of 1973, Payton, pictured at right, is a partner in the firm Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale & Dorr and was the lead counsel for the University of Michigan in the two landmark college admissions affirmative action cases decided by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2004. He has served in leadership roles in the National Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Free South Africa movement. A native of Los Angeles, Payton earned his law degree from Harvard Law School. In addition to Payton, Steve Koblik and Thomas Dean Pollard, M.D., will also receive honorary degrees for their important achievements and will address the audience as well. Koblik is president of the Huntington Library, Art Collections & Botanical Gardens. Pollard, Pomona Class of 1964, is is chair of Yale University's Department of Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology. More ...   4/18/05 Best-selling mystery writer Paula L. Woods to teach class at Pomona. Award-winning mystery writer Paula L. Woods, author of the acclaimed Charlotte Justice mystery series, has been named the 2005-2006 Moseley Fellow in Creative Writing at Pomona College. Woods will teach the advanced creative writing course “Mean Streets: Writing and Reading Mystery Fiction” in fall 2005. Woods launched her Charlotte Justice mystery series with the book Inner City Blues (1999), whose lead character is a smart, tough LAPD  homicide detective. Inner City Blues was on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list for three weeks and was named by the newspaper as one of the Best Books of 1999. The second installment in the series, Stormy Weather was named one of the Best Books of 2001 by the Los Angeles Times and the Florida Sun Sentinel. Dirty Laundry, the third novel, was recognized by both of those papers and the Seattle Times.  Previous Moseley Fellows include: Verlyn Klinkenborg, an acclaimed essayist, author and a regular contributor to the New York Times; Salvador Carrasco, writer and director of the feature film The Other Conquest and poet B.H. Fairchild, author of Early Occult Memory Systems of the Lower Midwest. More ...   4/11/05 Pomona students use high-tech approach to help low-income people. Fasting during his sophomore year, Michael Gechter ’05 was feeling disillusioned about his ability to make a difference as a college student. The fast called for peace in Iraq, but Gechter felt frustrated. While the action had some symbolic importance, it was doing very little to effect change. Gechter expressed his frustration to neighbor David Henderson ’05. “So we moved the conversation inside my room, and it was right then and there that we decided, ‘let’s do something,’” says Henderson, pictured at left. From that decision, Pomona Valley Low-Income Services was born, a group that has worked to increase the incomes of more than 200 people in the greater Pomona Valley—averaging an additional $400 per month per client. With their “PVLIS: Case Manager” software, volunteers steer clients toward significant resources that are available yet unknown to many who are unemployed, homeless or struggling to make it.  More ...   4/05/05 Professor wins $400,000 grant from National Science Foundation. Assistant Professor of Computer Science Tzu-Yi Chen has been awarded a National Science Foundation Career Grant of $400,000. The grant, which will be distributed over five years, will fund a project on “Preconditioning Large, Sparse Linear Systems: Theory and Practice." The National Science Foundation's Career grant is its most prestigious award supporting the early career-development activities of those teacher-scholars who are most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century. Chen's funded project focuses on preconditioners, which are methods for solving large linear algebra problems more quickly and accurately. The goal of this project is the development of better preconditioners, as well as tools to help users choose preconditioners that are likely to be beneficial for their particular problem. Chen plans to involve up to four students per year in the research. In addition to reaching out to groups traditionally underrepresented in computer science, she also plans to develop and refine courses that emphasize the role of mathematics in computer science. More ...   4/01/05 College will host health fair to serve culturally diverse communities. Pomona College will host its first Annual Community Health and Awareness Fair on Saturday April 16, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. The health fair will feature various community-based organizations that serve low-income families and address health issues as they relate to culturally diverse communities. Some free medical services and insurance consultation for families also will be offered, and translators will be available. The health fair is free of charge and open to the public. The event will take place in the College’s Smith Campus Center, 170 E. Sixth St., Claremont. The health fair is organized and sponsored by the Pomona College Asian American Resource Center (AARC) and Pomona Valley Low Income Services (PVLIS). Founded in 2002 by two Pomona College sophomores, PVLIS is a non-profit organization offering free referral and case management services to local low-income adults and families. The fair will bring together the services of many prominent health organizations, providing free insurance consultations, blood pressure and cholesterol evaluations, body mass index tests and educational material covering a variety of health concerns. Dental technicians from San Joaquin Valley College will provide dental care demonstrations for children and Asians for Miracle Marrow Matches will be registering bone marrow donors to add to their database. More ...   3/31/05 Top experts will debate poverty causes and solutions in April 1 event. A pair of nationally recognized experts will debate solutions to the problem of poverty in an event sponsored by the Pomona Student Union. NYU's Lawrence Mead and University of Michigan’s Sheldon Danziger will debate the causes of and appropriate policies for addressing poverty at noon on April 1 in Pomona College’s Frank Dining Hall Blue Room, 260 East Bonita Avenue, Claremont. There is no charge to attend. Since 1979, Mead has been a professor of politics at New York University, where he teaches public policy and American government. He has also been a visiting professor at Harvard and  Princeton, and a visiting fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute. Professor Mead also testifies regularly to Congress on issues of poverty, welfare and social policy. His books include Beyond Entitlement and The New Politics of Poverty, presenting the theoretical background and practice for mandatory work programs. Danziger is a professor and co-director of the National Poverty Center at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.  He has conducted a great deal of research on poverty and inequality, looking specifically at the consequences of the 1996 welfare reform, and at the effects of both government social benefit programs and economic and demographic changes on disadvantaged groups. His books include Understanding Poverty  and Economic Conditions and Welfare Reform.   3/29/05 Pomona students earn maximum number of prestigious Goldwater Scholarships for math and science work. Four Pomona College students have won the prestigious 2005-2006 Goldwater Scholarships to continue their work in math and the sciences. The scholarship program honoring Senator Barry M. Goldwater was designed to foster and encourage outstanding students to pursue careers in the fields of mathematics, the natural sciences and engineering. Pomona's winners are: Charles S. Hummel (chemistry), Andrew G. Lytle (molecular biology), Paul J. Robustelli (chemistry) and Alan W. Tarr (pure mathematics/physics). They are among 320 winners chosen from a field of more than 1,000 students nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. Institutions are invited each year to nominate up to four candidates for these scholarships. Pomona was one of only 13 colleges and universities that had all four of its nominees receive the award. Last year, three Pomona students earned the scholarship.  The Goldwater Scholarship covers the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year. Congress established the program in 1986, and recent Goldwater Scholars have been awarded 58 Rhodes Scholarships and 72 Marshall Awards.   3/28/05 College cuisine competition heats up with "Cast-Iron Chef" finale. Students are  tasting culinary battle as  Pomona College hosts its Third Annual Cast-Iron Chef Competition. Four teams of Pomona students are attempting  to out-cook each other in this event based on “Iron Chef,” a Japanese television show that became a cult hit in the United States. Preliminary rounds are over, and the grand finale competition will be held on Wednesday, March 30 in Frank Dining Hall, 260 E. Bonita Ave., Claremont. The competition will run from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. Contestants will be given costumes and a basket of secret ingredients to be used in creating a three-course meal. Last year’s ingredients included both alligator and ostrich meat. In the television show “Iron Chef,” master chefs in various culinary styles are pitted against challengers who try to prove their culinary prowess and skill. A guest panel judges the menus to determine who is victorious and who is vanquished. The show ended its weekly run in Japan, but reruns still air in the United States on the Food Network. The network’s “Iron Chef America,” featuring Bobby Flay, Mario Batali, and Masaharu Morimoto, premiered in January 2005.   2/28/05 Men's basketball team takes second consecutive conference title and will go on to compete for NCAA Division III Championship. The Pomona-Pitzer men’s basketball team has won the Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference title for the second consecutive year. The team finished the regular season 17-8 overall and 12-2 in conference play. Conference champions are guaranteed a berth in the 2005 NCAA Division III Championship. This year's Sagehen squad has been given a first-round bye, and will play their first game on Saturday, March 5 at 7:30 p.m. in San Antonio, Texas against Trinity University. Meanwhile, Pomona-Pitzer men’s basketball player Alex Lloyd has been named SCIAC Player of the Year for 2004-2005. Lloyd, a senior from Vermont, averaged 12.2 points per game, and 6.4 rebounds per game. Joining Lloyd on the All-Conference First Team is junior Tom Hollo, who averaged 8.1 points per game and led the team in field goal percentage at 56 percent. Kamau Norman-Terrance was named to the All-Conference Second Team. A senior from Santa Cruz, Norman-Terrance averaged 8 points per game and led the team in free throw shooting at 83 percent.   2/28/05 Jim Taylor, Class of '84, wins the Oscar for Sideways screenplay. Pomona alumnus Jim Taylor '84 and writing partner Alexander Payne last night won the Academy Award for their adapted screenplay for Sideways. "My mother taught me to write and she died before she could see any of this," Taylor (shown at right) said as he accepted the statuette before a television audience of millions. "This is for you, mom." Sideways, a comedy about a pair of friends roaming through wine country and meeting women, had been nominated for five Oscars. Taylor mentioned that he attended Pomona during the post-award press room interview, where reporters from around the world pepper the winners with questions. Last month, the writing pair won the Golden Globe Award for their script. Taylor and writer-director Payne have collaborated on three other well-received films: Citizen Ruth, Election and About Schmidt. The screenplay for Sideways is adapted from the Rex Pickett novel of the same name and Rolling Stone's Peter Travers writes that the "nuanced script ... serves as a model of screen adaptation by shaping dialogue into classic comic contours." Taylor is only the latest Pomona alumnus to win an Oscar for screenwriting. David Ward, Class of 1967, won an original screenplay Oscar for The Sting in 1973. Robert Towne, Class of 1956, took home the award in 1974 for his Chinatown screenplay. Taylor and Towne will be featured in the next issue of Pomona College Magazine.   2/15/05 Pomona-Pitzer men's basketball team to play Claremont-Mudd-Scripps in battle for 6th Street supremacy. The first-place Pomona-Pitzer men's basketball team will take on the second-place Claremont-Mudd-Scripps team at home at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, February 16 in Voelkel Gymnasium. The defending conference champion Sagehens (14-7 overall, 9-1 in conference play) are going for their ninth straight victory, while the Stags (11-10 overall, 7-3 in conference play) had won five in a row following a loss to the Sagehens on January 22. Pomona-Pitzer men's basketball has established itself as one of the nation's premiere NCAA Division III programs. Since 1986 the Sagehens have made nine trips to the NCAA National Tournament and captured nine Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) Championships. Pomona, Pitzer, Claremont McKenna, Scripps and Harvey Mudd colleges are all part of the Claremont Colleges, a unique consortium of five undergraduate and two graduate institutions.   2/15/05 Civil rights attorney John Payton '73 to speak about Supreme Court rulings on diversity. Noted civil rights attorney John Payton, who served as lead counsel for the University of Michigan in two recent landmark U.S. Supreme Court cases concerning diversity in higher education, will speak at Pomona College on Tuesday, February 22. His lecture on “Lessons and Challenges of the University of Michigan Cases” is set for 4 p.m. in the Rose Hills Theatre of the Smith Campus Center. In two cases decided in the summer of 2003, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the university's undergraduate admissions policy, in which race was considered according to a formulaic point system, but upheld the more individualized race-conscious admissions policy of the university's law school, affirming that race can be considered as one of many factors in admissions. Payton, who graduated from Pomona College in 1973,  led the argument on behalf of the university in both cases. “The Michigan cases have provoked a hard look at our society, particularly how racially diverse we are and yet how racially divided we remain,” Payton said recently. “The University of Michigan cases focused on how important it is for institutions of higher education to confront these realities, but they also pointed out how much remains to be done with respect to race in our society.” A native of Los Angeles, Payton graduated from Pomona College in 1973 and went on to earn his law degree from Harvard Law School. He came to the University of Michigan lawsuits with a history of work on other civil rights cases, including leadership roles in the national Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law and the Free South Africa movement. The event is co-sponsored by the Hart Institute for American History and the Office of the President.   2/7/05 Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist to discuss "How Israel Lost." Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Richard Ben Cramer will visit Pomona College on February 15 to talk about his latest book, How Israel Lost: The Four Questions (Simon & Schuster, 2004). The questions are modeled after the questions asked at a Passover Seder, are: “Why do we care about Israel?”; “Why don’t the Palestinians have a state?”; “What is a Jewish state?”; and “Why is there no peace?” Cramer was dispatched to Egypt for two weeks in 1977 to cover the Middle East peace talks, but remained in the Middle East through the talks and for the invasion of Lebanon by Israel. His reporting from the front lines of the invasion won him a Pulitzer Prize for international reporting. Returning to the area after almost 25 years, Cramer noticed that things were different with regards to Israel and its place in the world, prompting his latest book. The lecture will begin at 4:15 pm in the Smith Campus Center, Room 208. More ...   2/3/05 Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman to speak on campus. On February 8, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist Art Spiegelman will give a lecture on campus entitled “Comix 101.” Spiegelman will cover the chronological evolution of comics, comic books as media and explain why their importance may be on the rise. In Maus, the iconic work that won him the 1992 Pulitzer Prize, Spiegelman tells the story of his parent’s survival of a World War II concentration camp. Depicting Jews as mice and Nazis as cats (the Katzies), Spiegelman completed the story of his parents’ experiences and their later lives in America in Maus II.  His most recent publication, In the Shadow of No Towers, a highly personal and political account of his reactions to the September 11 attacks, was named a New York Times Book Review  Notable Book of 2004. The lecture begins at 8 p.m. in Smith Campus Center's Edmunds Ballroom. Sponsored by the Associated Students of Pomona College, the event is free and open to the public. More ...   2/1/05 Asian film series focuses on contemporary Chinese cinema. Compelling Chinese film is the focus of a film series on campus hosted by the Pacific Basin Institute. The five-film series begins on Sunday, February 6 with Frozen (Jidu hanleng), which takes the audience into the world of Beijing's artistic avant-garde in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Other films in the series include Blind Shaft (Mang Jing), a tale of two miners in an illegal mining town, showing how poverty lies beneath the rapid development of Chinese society. The Sixth Annual Asian Film Series begins on February 6 and continues with screenings on Feb. 13, Feb. 20, Feb. 27 and March 6. Each screening will begin at 7:30 p.m. and will be shown in Rose Hills Theatre in Smith Campus Center. More ...   1/31/05 Singer Gavin DeGraw to perform at Bridges Auditorium February 11. Singer/songwriter Gavin DeGraw, whose single "I Don't Want To Be" recently hit the Billboard Top 10, will perform at Bridges Auditorium at 8 p.m. on February 11. DeGraw's album Chariot went platinum and "I Don't Want To Be" is the theme song for the WB series One Tree Hill.  He has appeared on such shows as Good Morning America, Last Call with Carson Daly and The View. The Village Voice writes that "his honest voice has a raspy edge that makes you take every word he sings as truth." Tickets for students are on sale in the ASPC Office from  8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. Tickets are $10 for Pomona students (two tickets per ID, one ID per person) and $15 for Pomona faculty, staff and alumni. Tickets for the public are $20 and are on sale at Bridges Auditorium Box Office and all Ticketmaster locations. Call (909) 621-8031 for more information.   1/17/05 College lectures will tackle tough issues in American sports. In the same month that Americans gather to watch the Super Bowl, the College will host two separate lectures that address important issues in American sports. On February 1, USC Sociology Professor Michael Messner, author of Taking the Field: Men, Women and Sports, will discuss how sports media provides boys and men with messages about masculinity. Messner is known for his research on Super Bowl advertisements and violence. This event is set for 11 a.m. in Hahn 101, and is the first of a five-part lecture series on “Playing the Game: Social Forces in Sports,” sponsored by the departments of sociology and physical education/athletics. On  February 15, Don Catlin, a UCLA professor of medicine and pharmacology, will discuss designer steroids. Catlin runs a drug-testing lab where the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency, the NFL and the NCAA send urine to be analyzed. Catlin "discovered" the designer steroid tetrahydrogestrinone (THG) in the summer of 2003 in a used syringe sent anonymously, resulting in the steroid scandal that has rocked the world of sport. The talk, set for 11 a.m. in Seaver North Auditorium,  is co-sponsored by the chemistry and physical education departments with support from the Hart Institute of Pomona College. More ...   1/05/05 Pomona senior earns prestigious scholarship to study in Britain. Sarah Cook, a senior at Pomona College, has been awarded a prestigious Marshall Scholarship, funded by the British government. The scholarship funds two years of study at a top British university of the recipient’s choice and is worth approximately $60,000. Cook will use the funds to earn two one-year Masters degrees, one in Middle East politics and one in conflict resolution and development. An international relations major, Cook’s career plans involve attending law school and ultimately, working for the United Nations or a leading non-governmental human rights organization, conducting research and designing strategies that advance the implementation of human rights law. Cook became interested in human rights while serving in the Israeli Army for two years. “Studying Arabic, Islam and Middle Eastern history added to my understanding of the situation in the occupied territories,” she says. More ...