It's 6:45 a.m. A rainy Monday at Pomona College on the cusp of the year 2000.
I stumble sleep-fogged through the serene green of the campus, marveling at how little the place has changed since I first saw it in the prehistoric year of 1971. The eucalyptus still peel along College Avenue, the camellias still bloom and there's a rumor of Mt. Baldy in the distance.
The seasons they go round and round, I think, but Marston Quad stays just the same. Then I step into Edmunds Ballroom.
"One two three two! One two three two! And bring her across and down and up!"
Actual ballroom dancing in the Coop ballroom? And at dawn no less? What is wrong with this generation? Why, back in my day, we'd still be sleeping off our 2 a.m. pizza.
But here they are, the future incarnate in jeans and sweat pants, whirling across the floor in one of the College's most popular activities. JJ Gonzales, a junior econ major, even quit the tennis team to focus on his fox trot and cha cha cha. "You're learning what?" his buddies said. "Ballroom dancing?"
Hey, JJ, what do those guys know? Here at the end of the millennium, Pomona--with its competitive dance troupe and a nationally renowned instructor--is a leader in a collegiate trend. Just goes to show that while some things haven't changed in zip code 91711, you can still teach a Sagehen new tricks.
I am mulling the nature of Pomona and change at this absurdly early hour because I've accepted an assignment: to sum up a day in the life of Pomona at the end of the millennium. Sums, unfortunately, are not my thing. I was a liberal arts major who almost flunked calculus. So just come along on an impressionistic tour of Pomona on the brink of the Y2K and decide for yourself how it adds up.
8 a.m. With Jansport packs, bleary eyes, baggy clothes and insulated Starbucks mugs, students shuffle into Frary Dining Hall for the first feed of the day. This is not your father's Frary. There's a cook-to-order pasta station. Soy milk. Nutrition labels everywhere. (I try to imagine the "nutrition" label for the mystery meat of yore.) I am relieved to hear a couple of students complain about the cornucopia. The seasons they go round and round, but college students forever will wail about the food.
9 a.m. Leo Flynn, legendary professor of Constitutional Law, projects his lecture outline on the wall the newfangled way, by tapping on a computer keyboard. He is silver-haired by now, but his voice is still that voice, which even from down the hall in the elegantly refurbished Carnegie can be heard booming thoughts like this: "The general organizing principles of American government are not entirely consistent."
9:45 a.m. In the Rembrandt ceramics studio, junior Liz Gebis is taking a breather from her biology studies by glazing pots. On a chalkboard someone has written "Art is an implied, plastic, sensuous resolution of the conflicts inherent in being." A poster on a door announces an art club show for starving artists. The title: "Babies, Boobs and Puppies (What Sells)."
10 a.m. How do you say "It's raining" in Russian?
Professor Kevin Platt, boyish in blue jeans, waves toward the dripping trees outside his Carnegie classroom and informs his dozen students of the answer: "Dozhd idyot." They repeat: "Dozed idiot." He continues. "How do you say 'yesterday'?" Proving that today's Pomona students are not only witty, they are historically aware, a male student pipes back, "How do you say 'Love was such an easy game to play?'"
10:20 a.m. A lot of Pomona life sits condensed on its bulletin boards. I inspect one: "German Identities in the New Europe." "Exploring the Nanjing Massacre." "Gay Day at Magic Mountain." "Come to the Chocolate Study Break 10 p.m. Oldenborg."
10:30 a.m. In a basement room of Pearsons Hall, Bill Whedbee, white hair flopping in his eyes, makes Biblical Heritage as energetic as MTV. "One of my teachers," he tells his students, "described wisdom as the art of living."
10:50 a.m. Whoosh. Plop. In Memorial gym, four students bat a lonely shuttlecock across a net. So much for the day when badminton was sports royalty at Pomona. "We used to have a whole lot of faculty who played," laments Pat Mulcahy, badminton instructor and track coach. "Basketball is the game of choice among the faculty now."
Noon: In the Oldenborg dining hall, I pass a blur of Spanish, Russian, Italian, Greek, French, Portuguese and Nepali in my search for the Farsi table. Finally, here on Chinese cuisine day, I spy two students and math professor Shahriar Shahriari. Born in Iran, transplanted to California, they meet once a week in search of cultural continuity. I ask for a stream-of-consciousness description of Pomona today. "I'm a bio major," jokes senior Roozbeh Houshyar. "I don't have stream-of-consciousness." "Eager, thoughtful, reverent, chirp," says Sahar Rooholamini, a junior neuroscience major minoring in women's studies. They then talk thoughtfully about Pomona. Professor Shahriari says the faculty worry about diversity, grade inflation and whether Pomona is educating students to be real leaders. Roozbeh and Sahar talk about how hard students work, about the student obsession with resumes, about how lucky many students feel to have the privilege of a Pomona education. They're talking about how well students cooperate when Roozbeh notices that Sahar has ice cream. "Ooo, chocolate," he says bolting up. "Be right back."
1:15 p.m. "This," says Song Ahn, a junior biology major sitting at a computer in Seaver, "is a mathematical model that resembles a catalyst. We're looking at the diffusion." I blink politely at his screen. I sense he senses I have no idea what he is talking about. I sense him thinking, "Pomona's admissions standards have sure improved since they let this dope in."
1:25 p.m. "I need a syringe!" Heading for the Chem 1A lab, I hear a desperate voice ring from Seaver's chemical dispensary. A young man is bent over the counter. "When we make our costumes for ballroom dance, we have to glue sequins on!" he wails. "I can't find any syringes. I don't know any drug dealers!"
3 p.m. "What do we want? Justice! When do we want it? Now!"
A cavalcade of students marches outside Alexander Hall. Many wear plastic forks taped to their chests. They're concerned that, Aramark, the colleges' food service, has demanded immigration papers from its predominantly Hispanic dining hall staff. It's just a way, the students say, to intimidate the workers out of unionizing. But good news, a young man shouts to the crowd. The colleges are poised to tell Aramark to "cease and desist!" Cheers, claps, more chanting. It's heartening to know that in the era of the SUV and the IPO, a social conscience is alive and picketing on College Avenue.
3:15 p.m. Time for sex. Officially, the course is called "Freedom, Markets and Well-Being," but today it's about sex. Economics Professor Eleanor Brown and her philosophy colleague Paul Hurley, lay out a hypothesis for their two dozen students: People substitute among types of sex in response to shifts in relative prices. Comments, anyone?
5:15 p.m. Here's my hypothesis. People substitute among types of exercise in response to the volume of the music. This thought comes to mind in the waning afternoon in the humming hive of Rains Center. Weights clang in the weight room. The women's basketball team huffs across Memorial Gym. Outside the aerobics room, football players huddle in post-season analysis, their eyes occasionally darting toward the dozens of women sweating in time to very loud rock n' roll under the gyrating instruction of aerobics guru Bill Banks, who doubles as a psychology professor. I'm worn out just watching. Why, in my day, exercise meant walking through the dining hall for a second helping of dessert.
6 p.m. Lauren Akitake and Mia Thornton have nothing in common, and everything. I've chanced upon the two freshman roommates after wending through the labyrinth of Mudd-Blaisdell dorm, past the computer screens that glow from every room, and turning into a hall designated as "substance-free." Lauren and Mia explain that this means no smoking, no drugs, no alcohol, no parties. It doesn't, however, mean no talking, laughing, eating, studying or ruminating on the meaning of life all night in the hallway. There's a "quiet" hall in the dorm, too, but this is not it. "When I wake up at 5:30, there are people just going to sleep," Lauren says cheerfully. Lauren is an Asian American from Maui. Mia is an African American from Atlanta. Lauren is sitting at her giant computer screen e-mailing friends just down the hall. Mia, who doesn't own a computer, depends on the 24-hour computer lab in Gibson. And yet they share important traits. They don't mind a mess (a tornado couldn't create a greater chaos of clothes and books). They don't mind the co-ed bathroom. They like to sleep. They also love sharing this Pomona world so different from what they came from. "I like having so many people here to entertain me and to procrastinate with," says Lauren. "I never thought I'd have to study this hard," says Mia. The seasons they go round and round, but freshmen are freshmen in any millennium.
7 p.m. Over in the modern Seaver Theatre, on the edge of the old Wash, 40 actors, 14 musicians and a crew of 20 are rehearsing the upcoming production of Guys and Dolls.
Meanwhile, back in the Coop ballroom, who's rehearsing but--yes, them again--the competitive ballroom dancers.
8 p.m. Students love to complain about the new Smith Campus Center, which recently replaced the old gray Coop. (Forget the expensive Italian fountain tiles! Give us more pool tables!) But there's no denying that as campus centers go, this is like upgrading from a '67 VW bug to a late-model Mercedes. Tonight, in the center's new Rose Hills Theatre, 40 or so students are auditioning for a game show called Win Ben Stein's Money. The producers like Pomona students, apparently because their brains are bottomless wells of useless but entertaining information. And what better way to spend a study break than parading on a stage and shouting answers to questions from such categories as "Wearing Tight Lace Panties Made William Hurt"?
9:30 p.m. From the lowbrow to the lofty. Young but ripe voices swell to the rafters of Little Bridges as Margaret Hunter '00, directs fellow students in a rehearsal for her senior project, the opera Dido and Aeneas.
10:29 p.m. Sensible adults are slipping into bed at this hour, but it's said that you can't know Pomona today unless you've witnessed a 10:30 p.m. phenomenon called "snack." Frary, however, echoes in the emptiness.
10:30 p.m. Stampede! In synchronicity from North campus to South, the stomach alarms have sounded. Students suddenly pour through the Frary doors, beelining for the hot chocolate, the Cheerios, the frozen yogurt, whatever fuel will help them make it through the night. "What are you doing tonight?" one young man asks another. Sleep apparently is not an option. "Reading a novel for pleasure," says his friend, and the two laugh as if he's planning something as wild as sex or ballroom dancing.
11: 30 p.m. Rimmed by the lights of Little Bridges, Big Bridges and Carnegie, Marston Quad is all shadows and silhouettes. Half a dozen men play touch football in the wet grass under a moonless sky. A woman bicycles by, singing. Another sits alone outside Thatcher Music Building smoking a cigarette.
More than once during the day, students had said, "Wow, it must be weird coming back here after 25 years." The weird thing is that it's not weird. I watch these silhouettes. They could be silhouettes from 25 years ago. Or 12 or 50 years ago. Any Pomona student from any time would find Pomona now uncannily familiar. Remember the essence of your own life here-- the books, the classes, the professors, the friends, the exhilaration, the exhaustion, the ideas, the possibilities, the great laughs, the loneliness, the need to eat again. It's still that way, just with more ballroom dancing.
Mary Schmich '75 is a columnist for the Chicago Tribune.
