United We...Fight?

From Sportsmanship to Stolen Professors, Are the 5Cs Friends or Foes?

Erika Moen / Claremont Student

By Berit Anderson
Staff Writer

It’s a Saturday night at the 5Cs and hustling masses of sweaty, red-cup-toting coeds squeeze into auditoriums, courtyards and dorm rooms, alcohol blood levels rising.

As the students stumble from place to place, tempers are rising, too. Intoxication lessens students’ restraint and sense of responsibility, acting as an excuse for belligerence. A CMC student loses his balance, bumping into his Pomona counterpart. In the heat of the moment, the drunken slip is perceived as an act of aggression, and tempers flaring, the two are at each other’s throats within an instant, shouting insults back and forth. The quarrel quickly grows to include the participants’ friends, who circle round the dueling duo eager for a piece of the action, looking for an opportunity to demonstrate their own excesses of testosterone. It’s a scenario you might find at any college, given the presence of hormones and liquor, but here at the 5Cs, the source of conflict is often more specific, centering around individual school affiliation rather than being purely a result of blind drunken aggression. Despite sharing classrooms, professors, meals, athletic facilities, parties and each other’s beds, a rigidity exists in the academic, athletic and social boundaries that divide the five schools, perhaps threatening the hopeful vision of the 5Cs as a utopian college consortium.

Claremont McKenna, Harvey Mudd, Pitzer, Pomona and Scripps are all schools held in high academic regard, and the five-college consortium is intended to allow for a collaboration of academic resources. However, notwithstanding their sharing abilities, students are only too aware of intellectual disparities between the five schools. Lucia Davis, a Scripps freshman, is a huge fan of the consortium system, because it allows her to enroll in Pomona classes, which she claims “make me feel like I’m getting a higher education.” On the other hand, classes at more highly ranked schools can be intimidating. Kathryn Van Over, a Scripps sophomore and math major, has purposefully avoided enrolling in Harvey Mudd math classes after hearing horror stories about their difficulty and the low grades that resulted. The trepidation Harvey Mudd and Pomona inspire in the hearts of students from other schools, while probably inflated, does seem to possess a certain level of legitimacy.

According to the Princeton Review, the average SAT score of Harvey Mudd students is 1450 with a collegiate academic rating of 97%. (Factors considered in academic ratings include: how many hours students study outside of the classroom, the quality of students the school attracts, students' assessments of their professors, class size, student-teacher ratio, use of teaching assistants, amount of class discussion, registration, and academic resources.) Pomona, self-appointed “Harvard of the West coast,” edges ahead only slightly, with an average SAT score of 1460 and the same 97% rating. CMC students punch in at 86% and 1400 SAT, while Scripps women average a 1349 SAT, but have a better academic rating at 96%. Pitzer College’s academic rating is 94%, but the school declined to report their average SAT score (probably due to Pitzer’s not requiring applicant SAT scores). Judging strictly by the numbers, Harvey Mudd and Pomona students appear to be the most academically endowed of the five schools – or, at least, the most effective standardized test takers. However, though Harvey Mudd and Pomona resemble each other on paper, students of the two schools respond differently to having academically pristine reputations.

Pomona undergrads seem to take a slightly sadistic pleasure in the establishment and maintenance of their academic superiority. Though their considerable intellects aren’t news to anyone at the 5Cs, much less to themselves, Pomona students have been known to discuss their own intellectual prowess at length with each other. Often, this is done in tones just loud enough to be overheard by any passersby who may have forgotten which of the 5Cs is most selective. But, to their credit, not all Pomona students are the same. Luckily, Pomona is also home to variety of kind and well-rounded individuals who, while perhaps not overly friendly to students of other 4Cs, are nonetheless pleasant and engaging people, and surprisingly cognizant of their own arrogance. Pomona freshmen Nick Gillespie and Celeste Kallos (names have been changed) cheerfully acknowledged the stereotype in a recent CMC class discussion. “It’s definitely true,” Kallos admitted.

But while Pomona undergrads confidently express their intellectual prowess, Mudders are less forward in discussions about their own brilliance. Most adopt a more modest view of the situation. Harvey Mudd first-year Ken Loh attributes Mudd’s academic superiority to good study habits. These, he claims, are just as intense as rumored.

However, academic prejudices at the 5Cs may be shifting. In recent years, Claremont McKenna has been sneaking up the charts of the academic world, doing its best to give Pomona, currently considered the reigning academic superpower of the 5Cs, a run for its money. This year it cracked the US News Top 10 list of liberal arts colleges in the US, edging closer to Pomona’s spot at #6.

Undeniably, though the 5Cs are academically competitive, the biggest bone of contention between the colleges is athletic rivalry, which rages both on and off the court. Technically, the schools are united against each other, with Pomona and Pitzer pitted against CMC, Harvey Mudd and Scripps, but the real tension lies solely between Pomona and CMC, who disregard the other three schools as viable sources of competition. While this could be attributed to the stereotypes of Scripps, Pitzer and Harvey Mudd as more laidback than their athletic counterparts, in reality, it’s probably a consequence of the large ratios of CMC and Pomona athletes to those from the other three schools on varsity teams.

Though inclusive of all five schools, the opposing varsity teams are dominated by Pomona and CMC students. The CMS Stag basketball roster, fifteen men deep, lists only one player from Harvey Mudd. The Athenas basketball team isn’t much more diverse, with two Scripps and one Harvey Mudd player on a fourteen woman roster. Likewise, the Sagehen basketball men’s and women’s teams both have only one Pitzer player. CMC and Pomona students are playing almost exclusively against each other. In light of this, it isn’t a huge shock that athletic animosity is so strongly established between Pomona and Claremont McKenna. This also helps explain why not a single CMC student interviewed complained about Pitzer’s student body, and why, by and large, Pomona students weren’t offended by the behavior of Mudders and Scrippsies. Because they do not pose a plausible athletic threat in any major sports to either of the opposing teams, Pitzer, Mudd and Scripps aren’t subject to animosity from Pomona and CMC.     

Declaring the mutual aversion to one another, the rival teams (for the most part, CMC and Pomona) have been antagonizing one another through rival Facebook groups, which are peppered across that virtual community. Pomona junior Jenny Lee, the founder of “CMS is Bad at Sports,” uses her group to taunt CMS athletes. “Who has the pipe? Oh yeah, we do . . . 37-10. And what else? The golden boot.” Fought over each year by the opposing teams, the pipe and golden boot are trophies secured this fall by the Pomona Pitzer men’s soccer and football teams. Such blatant self-promotion, however, does little to faze CMC students.

“Fuck Pomona,” freshman Kestrel Arps declares with an impish grin. “It’s like Duke and UNC,” he explains, referring to the traditional rivalry. His sentiments may be rude, but Arps seems to be acting as the voice of the masses, from which the inverse of this phrase has become the CMC slogan. “Puck Fomona” is the biggest anti-PP group on Facebook, providing an online refuge “for those that can’t stand the elitist, egotistical, unwelcoming pricks that take ‘CMS is Bad at Sports’ as their mantra.” Started by Claremont McKenna student body president, Kevin Blair, the group’s own popular mantra has even spawned its own line of active wear, popping up on “Puck Fomona” T-shirts across CMC.

But for all the bickering back and forth, it’s difficult to tell which school actually holds the athletic upper hand. While the balance shifts from year to year, Pomona-Pitzer dominated this fall. As per the past three years, the men’s cross country team held on to their first place finish in the SCIAC championships, a spot that has, in the past, been occupied by CMS. Along with victories in men’s soccer and football, Pomona-Pitzer also beat out CMS in men’s water polo and women’s soccer.

Although PP athletes seem to have been wearing their lucky socks this season, CMS is not worried. They’ve met with their own share of athletic success, reigning victorious over PP in men’s swimming and diving, finishing first in the SCIAC for women’s cross-country and swimming, and defeating PP in both of teams’ most recent men’s and women’s basketball games. Only the close of spring semester will bring about a conclusive comparison of results.

As said before, the athletic hostility expressed by players and fans doesn’t end when the field empties. Post-game, the very presence of the opposition becomes objectionable, and verbal attacks extend beyond insults of incompetence on the playing field. The main targets are CMC males. “[They’re] douchebags,” quipped Pomona freshman and varsity athlete Mark Bentley (name has been changed). “They’re just so sleazy.”

So where did all this resentment originate? Much seems rooted in perceptions of how CMC males treat female 5C residents. When asked to explain why CMC-ers are “sleazy,” Bentley mumbled something vague about his female friends feeling uncomfortable around CMC boys. Another first-year, Brad Taylor (name changed), recounted his experience rescuing a CMC student, whom he discovered passed out face down in the foam at Harvey Mudd’s annual party. Asked about the scratches on his arms, the CMC student explained they were the work of a female acquaintance struggling to push him off of her. Admittedly, this is not quite the type of confession that endears its teller to listeners.

On the other hand, Arps complains that, for the most part, the bad rep of CMC boys is unfounded, resulting from a few isolated events. “It’s kind of frustrating,” he says. “We’re being forced to dig ourselves out of a hole that we never dug ourselves into in the first place.” His gripe may be justified. Taylor’s story stands alone among those interviewed, and the legitimacy of its significance is slightly blurred by the defendant’s insobriety.

Unfortunately, with so little interaction outside of the classroom, and a decided reluctance on the part of both sides to instigate more play time, ugly interactions like the above lead students to paint unflattering portraits of their rivals. These portraits are colored further by even more opposing Facebook groups not limited to athletic enmity. Huddled in safety behind their glowing computer screens, CMC undergrads have given intellectual birth to such gems as “Facebook is Awesome Because it Refers to Pomona as Claremont” and “I Defecate on Pomona.” Not to be upstaged, Pomona’s own retaliatory piéces de résistance include “Anyone Caught ‘Defecating on Pomona’ Will Wake Up in a Gutter in West Covina” and “It’s Called Pomona, Not Freaking Claremont!!” The lack of accountability associated with Facebook shields group creators from the reality of physical retaliation and allows them to meet others of similar and equally antagonistic mindsets, germinating underground anti-Pomona and CMC sentiments.

In the midst of all this, it is a brave and not athletically affiliated CMC student, who dares to sing the personal praises of his Pomona rival in public. The same fact is true of most Pomona undergrads. However, with a little prodding, some students admit that their dislike is primarily based on athletic rivalry. Taylor, Bentley and Arps all conceded, albeit slightly sheepishly, that they weren’t actually personally acquainted with a single member of their adversarial school. Of course, this doesn’t stop them from disliking one another on principle alone, or from ranting about past unforgivable behavior and crippling character flaws, but it does prove how ill founded social antagonism between students often is.  In fact, it may be asserted that social rivalries are often little more than a façade, constructed in order to maintain the existing intensity of athletic competition.      

Although the majority of antagonism centers around male CMC and Pomona students and their sports-related contentions, it must be mentioned that among the female 5C population a different variety of rivalry exists. Some resent the less virginal half of Scripps’ population -supposedly crisply divided along the lines of the virgin-whore dichotomy. Perhaps this resentment and interpretation of Scripps women is not entirely undeserved or inaccurate. Logistically speaking, it can only be expected that the straight contingent of Scripps women might seek out romantic interests at the other four schools, a tendency which probably isn’t as upsetting to males at the other 4Cs as it is to females. The complete lack of exposure to the opposite sex on a day-to-day basis also does little to abet the ruthlessness of single Scrippsies’ hunt for the perfect boyfriend or, more temporarily, an impressive hook up. So, there is some legitimacy in the man-hungry stereotype of the straight Scripps woman.

While half of the Scripps population is (apparently) busy man hunting into hours of the night, the other half is generally believed to be engaging in one of several activities, generally limited to: hating men, studying, writing angry poetry, holding hands with other women, conducting discussions on the pros and cons of hating men, eating, kissing other women, plotting the overthrow of men in the world at large, sleeping, sleeping with other women and brewing coffee. Though Scripps women do spend a portion of every day eating, sleeping, and, yes, sometimes kissing other women, the idea that many Scrippsies are man-haters is a grave misconception. Most Scripps women are surprisingly friendly, even to men, although, as at all schools, there are a few oddballs thrown into the mix, without whom the college would be far less interesting. Yes, there are lesbians at Scripps, but they like men just as much as the next woman. They just don’t choose to drag them into the bedroom. There are also, incidentally, lesbians at Pitzer, Harvey Mudd, Pomona and even at CMC, statistically speaking.

While Scripps women are known for intensity both in their search for and rejection of men, Pitzer undergrads have been historically regarded as the most socially “laidback” of 5C students. This is a nice way for students from the other 4Cs to describe the effects on Pitzer students of the ungodly amounts of pot they are rumored to smoke. Freshman Bridget McMillan (name has been changed) claims that while marijuana use is prevalent at her school, she is most surprised by the popularity of meth and other hard drugs. Pitzer students may very well spend more than their fair share of time in a chemically altered state, but while this is undoubtedly troubling to the administration, it certainly hasn’t hurt their popularity with the other 4Cs. Of all five schools, Pitzer is the only one whose students received unanimously positive ratings by their intercollegiate peers. In fact, they were consistently described, even by the linguistically dexterous students of Pomona, with one word: cool. It’s hard to know what to make of this, except that it certainly goes to show just how wrong your parents were all those years. Drugs are cool. Now, if only they made you more successful.

Harvey Mudd, on the other hand, is a haven for success, harboring the lion’s share in technically challenging arenas like math, science and engineering. Unfortunately, when it comes to social prowess, their reputation begins to slip. Most Harvey Mudd students are rumored to be more comfortable consorting with the likes of Rubik’s cubes, magic eye books and abacuses than dealing with the stress of other people. Perhaps in compensation for their slight deficiency in interpersonal skills, Mudders have a history of throwing parties designed to attract large crowds of scantily-clad women; paying for a lingerie-clad attendance with chocolate-covered strawberries, champagne and an abundance of hard alcohol. Although some girls steer clear of the bespectacled pocket-protector bearing stereotype, others flock to the nerdy naiveté and considerable intellect of Mudd students, in search of a sensitive and non-threatening romantic experience. Likewise, appeased by their largely non-threatening demeanor and enamored of their Sunday night steak dinners, the male half of the Claremont population seems largely respectful of Mudd students.

 Although the list of differences between the Claremont Colleges is long, for the most part, this seems only to make many students more accepting of their peers, in all their stereotypical glory. Though it can’t be said that tension doesn’t exist throughout the consortium, especially where sports are involved, 5C undergrads have become fairly adept at cohabitating. IN a consortium, inter-scholastic altercations are unavoidable. Inevitably, someone will paint “CMC Forever” on Walker Wall or perform an interpretive dance of a stag hunt on CMC’s North Quad. But most students share the sentiment perhaps best expressed by the genius of an unnamed character in the movie “Mean Girls,” who in the spirit of togetherness once lamented, “I just wish we could all get along like we used to in middle school. I wish that I could bake a cake out of rainbows and smiles, and we’d all eat it and be happy.”