Pomona College Magazine Fall/Winter 2020: the New (Ab
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INSIDE:THE NEW COLLEGE MAGAZINE (AB)NORMAL • The Economy • Childcare • City Life • Dating • Education • Movies • Elections Fall-Winter 2020 • Etiquette • Food • Housing •Religion • Sports • Tourism • Transportation • Work & more Nobel Laureate Jennifer Doudna ’85 HOMEPAGE Together in Cyberspace With the College closed for the fall semester and all instruction temporarily online, Pomona faculty have relied on a range of technologies to teach their classes and build community among their students. At top left, Chemistry Professor Jane Liu conducts a Zoom class in Biochemistry from her office in Seaver North. At bottom left, Theatre Professor Giovanni Molina Ortega accompanies students in his Musical Theatre class from a piano in Seaver Theatre. At far right, German Professor Hans Rindesbacher puts a group of beginning German students through their paces from his office in Mason Hall. —Photos by Jeff Hing STRAY THOUGHTS COLLEGE MAGAZINE Pomona Jennifer Doudna ’85 FALL/WINTER 2020 • VOLUME 56, NO. 3 2020 Nobel Prize in Chemistry The New Abnormal EDITOR/DESIGNER Mark Wood ([email protected]) e’re shaped by the crises of our times—especially those that happen when ASSISTANT EDITOR The Prize Wwe’re young. Looking back on my parents’ lives with the relative wisdom of Robyn Norwood ([email protected]) Jennifer Doudna ’85 shares the 2020 age, I can see the currents that carried them, turning them into the people I knew. Nobel Prize in Chemistry for her work with They were both children of the Great Depression, and the marks of that experi- BOOK EDITOR the CRISPR-Cas9 molecular scissors. Sneha Abraham ([email protected]) ence were stamped into their psyches in ways that seem obvious to me now. Both 16 were rural Southern educators—poor, but not as poor as others, and nowhere near CONTRIBUTORS the poverty they had both known in their youth. As a preteen, I helped mix the Nathanael Johnson is a journalist who lives in Berkeley, INSIDE PCM California, with his wife and two daughters. He is the sen- CRISPR on Campus cement for the foundations of the house my dad was building with his own hands. ior writer for Grist and has written two books: All Natural The gene-editing tool called CRISPR-Cas9 and Unseen City. Year after year, we mapped out summer road trips out West that never happened. that won Doudna a Nobel Prize is I spent hours playing with armies of inverted tacks, arrayed for war in static ranks Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental now being used by Pomona students. and files. I never knew plenty, but I never knew want. Maybe that’s why I never Analysis and History and the author of the forthcoming 20 Westside Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devas- really understood that we were poor. tated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice But as I grew older, I saw how my parents always saved money from their meager Movement. incomes. Even after retirement, living on a thin thread of Social Security and my Marilyn Thomsen has been editor of three university maga- zines and has published two books and many articles. Dad’s veteran’s pension, they always managed somehow to put something aside. Not DEPARTMENTS for some well-earned extravagance, but as a hedge against that second Great Depres- Zan Romanoff is a full-time freelance writer; her third novel, LOOK, was published by Dial Books for Young Readers in sion that, fortunately, never came. March. She lives and writes in L.A. They were also shaped by World War II—especially my dad, who nearly died on a Homepage 1 battlefield in eastern France. I remember the little bits of shrapnel that would well CONTRIBUTING STAFF up, infrequently but painfully, through his scars, but it wasn’t until much later that I Lupe Castaneda Jeff Hing Stray Thoughts came to understand why a man who, in his teens, played his guitar and sang in movie Patricia Vest 2 theatres as a pre-show entertainer wanted nothing more, the rest of his life, than to be left alone with his books and his thoughts. SUBMISSIONS AND CHANGES: For class notes, address changes, photos and birth or death Pomoniana 4 As a whole, my generation of Americans, and others since, have lived in compara- notices, email: [email protected]; phone: (909) 607-8129; tively fortunate times. Wars, but no world wars. Recessions, but no depressions. The or fax: 909-621-8535. For other editorial matters or submissions, phone: 909-621-8158, email [email protected] poor were still poor, and the disadvantaged were still disadvantaged, but there were or mail to Pomona College Magazine, 550 N. College Ave., Booktalk 6 Claremont, CA 91711. Magazine policies are available at: no global catastrophes to make their load even heavier. www.pomona.edu/magazine/guidelines. Until now. New Knowledge 11 For the past eight months, I’ve been one of the lucky ones. I have a job I can do POMONA COLLEGE MAGAZINE is published three times a year. Copyright 2020 by Pomona in Dating 26 in the Economy 40 from home. My family is safe and well—knock on wood. As a bit of a loner, I’ve ad- College, 550 North College Ave., Claremont, CA 91711. justed fairly well to isolation. The internet and delivery services have partially filled Teamwork 12 the void where outside activities used to be. For me, the pandemic has brought fear POMONA COLLEGE in Transportation 28 in Childcare 43 is an independent liberal arts college located in Claremont, and boredom and inconvenience and physical separation from friends and loved California. Established in 1887, it is the founding member of The How To 14 ones, but not overwhelming loneliness or inconsolable grief or the daily peril faced Claremont Colleges. in Housing 31 in Work 44 by first responders and essential workers. PRESIDENT But as my wife and I go out for our masked walks around the neighborhood, G. Gabrielle Starr Notice Board 54 in Elections 32 in Etiquette 45 crossing the street to avoid meeting other pedestrians, I can’t help but wonder what NON-DISCRIMINATION POLICY this is doing to us all on the inside. The slow remolding of our psyches, the imper- Pomona College complies with all applicable state and federal civil rights laws prohibiting discrimination in Class Notes 56 ceptible formation of walls and sinkholes inside our heads. The Great Depression education and the workplace. This policy of non- in Religion 32 at the Movies 47 turned my mom into a lifelong miser. World War II turned my dad into a recluse. discrimination covers admission, access and service in What is this seemingly endless pandemic doing to me? Pomona College programs and activities, as well as hiring, Obituaries 61 promotion, compensation, benefits and all other terms And more importantly, what is it doing to my 5-year-old grandson? and conditions of employment at Pomona College. in Sports 34 in Gardening 49 It would be nice to think that when this is over, it will really be over. But I suspect Time Out 64 that we’ll be talking about the lasting effects of 2020 for many years to come. There in Tourism 36 in Education 50 will be a new normal, and some of it will be good—maybe even wonderful—but some of it will definitely be abnormal in ways we can, for now, only guess. in Food in Mental Health —MW 38 51 in Activism in City Life 39 51 magazine.pomona.edu 2 Fall-Winter 2020 Pomona College Magazine 3 POMONIANA Fulbright Broadcasting Live Winners From My Home to Yours Eight Pomona seniors were awarded prestigious Ful- bright fellowships for world lenty of folks consider campus nity and alumni DJs dropped by travel and teaching English, Pradio station KSPC 88.7 the studio. though the Fulbright pro- A Few FM an essential part of But one student, Hannah gram also delayed the start Highlights their daily routines. Avalos ’21, started broad- of its fellowships until after When California casting her Friday show January 1, 2021. Listen in on enlightening Gov. Gavin Newsom live from her home in Here are the winners from conversations with some of issued a statewide Whittier, spanning the the Class of 2020. Pomona’s most interesting stay-at-home order in 25 miles to campus via alumni with Sagecast, March, that became a Zoom connection that Tyler Bunton, an English the podcast of Pomona official in a manner of gives her mouse-control major from Hamden, College. Here is a sampling Conn., has been selected of this season’s offerings, speaking: Broadcasting access to the KSPC studio to teach English in Brazil. now available at was deemed an essential in Thatcher Music Building. pomona.edu/sagecast: service along with other media. For Avalos, the high-wire Jordan Carethers, an The only problem was that adrenaline of being live sustains international relations and Jennifer Doudna ’85 all the student DJs were gone her in the stay-at-home era—all French double major from winner of the 2020 Nobel after the closing of campus. via technology undreamed of Bloomfield Hills, Mich., Prize for Chemistry for her But Erica Tyron SC ’92, when KSPC first signed on to was selected to teach Creative Passport work with a gene-editing Pomona’s director of stu- the airwaves in 1956. English in rural Taiwan. tool that has revolutionized dent media and KSPC sta- “It’s kind of like an outing genetic research tion manager, kept the for me,” Avalos says. “It’s Evan Chuu, a linguistics station going at first by an activity, more than an- major from Arcadia, Calif., Shelved, Not Lost Mac Barnett ’04 will teach English author of such beloved patching together pre- other task I have to do.