ACADEMICS
Liberal Arts Clinics
Funded by a series of grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Pomona joined with the other four undergraduate institutions of The Claremont Colleges in a planning a unique series of projects called New Liberal Arts (NLA) Clinics, in which students formed small teams to work as consultants to help a client corporation, agency or community find a solution to a particular problem, working across traditional disciplinary boundaries. The program was based upon the engineering clinics developed in the early 1960s by Harvey Mudd College. The first NLA clinic was conducted during the following academic year and focused on the effect of government regulation on the implementation of angioplasty, then a relatively new alternative medical technology for the treatment of coronary artery disease.
STUDENT LIFE
Women's Union Formed
The Pomona College Women's Union was formed in order to "secure positive changes for women in their personal and political lives and to work toward deconstructing gender based constraints."
EVENTS
Coretta Scott King
Coretta Scott King, the widow of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and president of the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change, delivered the commencement address at the graduation exercises for the Class of 1984.
ATHLETICS
Swimming Records
The women’s swimming team finished third nationally as Lyn Cunliffe '87 set a national record in the 400-yard individual medley and the 800-yard freestyle relay team set another national record.
Track Champion
The men’s track and field team earned fourth place at the National Championships, the program's highest-ever finish.
ALUMNI
Vikram Chandra
Named “one of India’s leading novelists” by The New Yorker, Vikram Chandra ’84 won the Commonwealth Writer’s prize for best first book with Red Earth and Pouring Rain. His work includes a collection of short stories, Love and Longing in Bombay; a second novel, Sacred Games; and an Indian feature film, Mission Kashmir.
Jim Taylor
Jim Taylor ’84 began a long and successful collaboration with writer-director Alexander Payne in 1996 with the original screenplay for Citizen Ruth. The writing team won an Academy Award for best screenplay for Sideways, a Golden Globe for About Schmidt and a WGA award for Election.
ELSEWHERE
- The Apple Macintosh was introduced.
- Famine struck Ethiopia, killing a million people by the end of the year.
- Crack cocaine was first introduced into the Los Angeles area and quickly spread across the nation in what became known as the Crack Epidemic.