The Scripps Voice

Compiled by: Elizabeth Lee and Kehau Jai ‘16
Staff Writers

Q: How long have you been around?

A: I think it started unofficially around three years ago and became a real club in 2010.

Q: How many members do you have?

A: Around 10 active members.

Q: How can people become a part of your group, and what made you join?

A: Oh good, time for a plug! If you think you want to try stand-up, or just want to watch, come to our open mic which is held every Friday at 11 p.m. on the third floor patio of Pomona Hall (right at 6th and Amherst). I joined because I wanted to start doing stand-up and this was a good way to get stage time without driving into L.A. Also, starting stand-up is pretty scary, so it was nice to be able to try it in front of nice college kids.

Photo courtesy 5C Stand-Up

Q: When/how often and where do you perform/publish?

A: As I said, we have that open mic every Friday. Otherwise we put on shows at Doms Lounge roughly once a month, and our next confirmed date is April 6.

Q: What makes your group so especially funny and unique? What comedy niche do you fill at CUC?

A: Well, we fill the stand-up comedy niche. Right now I think we’re really good because Ellie and I love comedy more than anything else and we want to pursue it as a career. To speak for myself, I’m absolutely a happier person now than I was two years ago because I started doing stand-up. I take it more seriously than anything else in my life, so beyond trying to write and perform as much and as well as I can, I also try really hard to put on good shows around campus—and, just as importantly, to maintain a welcoming vibe so that other people might try it too and find it just as fulfilling as I did. Also, Ellie and I know a lot of great comedians out in L.A. whom we’ve brought out to do shows.

Q: What is one word you could use to describe your group?

A: Table.

Q: What kind of humor do you find provokes the most successful response from college students? What does this say about us, or why do you think that is?

A: 90s references. You could just list Nickelodeon cartoons for fifteen minutes and walk away with a standing ovation. Hey, remember Doug?

Q: What is off limits?

A: To comedians, nothing is off limits (IMPORTANT CAVEAT: if it’s funny). If you’re at a show and another comic is talking about some touchy subject on stage but they’re not spinning it into anything worthwhile, or they’re just being gratuitously shocking, you either ignore it or you address it when you get on stage. But generally you won’t confront them about it afterwards or write an angry blog post or whatever. My belief is that most comedians aren’t bigoted or hateful people at heart (comedy’s a bad game to get into if you can’t tolerate different people’s viewpoints), so if they’re saying something uncouth onstage, I generally assume that they don’t really mean it. Clearly, this is different from the liberal arts mindset, in which what you say absolutely does matter. Here the defense of “but I didn’t really mean it” is understood to be fallacious and worthless. While I am partial to the former opinion, I am sympathetic to the latter. If I talk about something potentially hackle-raising onstage, and it doesn’t get a laugh, I don’t say that it’s because my audience was overly sensitive—it’s because I didn’t make it funny enough.

Q: What is the greatest struggle that comedians, in general, often face?

A: Well, once I finish college and go out to do this for real, it’ll be not making any money from it for like ten years (best case scenario). Right now, it’s people finding out I do comedy and going “Say something funny” thereby ruining any chance we previously had of having a good conversation.

Q: Is laughter truly the “best medicine”, or is there another, perhaps darker, side to humor?

A: Yes, in fact what we call “humor” and “comedy” and “laughter” is actually a nefarious pharmaceutical conspiracy. This is now the greatest piece of investigative journalism The Scripps Voice has ever published.

Q: What is the ultimate secret to making something funny?

A: Be good at doing comedy. Also the book “Git-R-Done” by Dan Whitney (AKA Larry the Cable Guy) taught me an immeasurable amount about how to write jokes and, more importantly, how to enjoy my life. If anybody wants to borrow it I have accumulated 6 or 7 copies over the years.

Q: What’s the best joke you’ve got in your back pocket?

A: This conversation is over.

By Anonymous

Sexual assault. Rape. Ugly words, words no one wants to associate with themselves. Yet they happen all the time, even within the “Claremont bubble” that gives off such a friendly, safe vibe.

About two years ago, I was sexually assaulted by another 5C student. And no, he was not a shady creep that pulled me into the bushes on my way back from a party. He was someone I loved and was in a committed, long-term relationship with. At the time, I was so shocked and confused by what had happened that the words “sexual assault” didn’t even cross my mind. All I knew was that it was the first time I was ever afraid of him.

There were so many excuses: He was just too drunk and didn’t realize what he was doing. I shouldn’t have let him come over that night. We were a couple, and couples can explore sex freely. He never forced penetration, so that’s not rape, right?

Because of this confusion, I immediately forgave him and blocked the event from my mind. He did not sexually assault me again. After dating for another six months, we eventually went through a drawn-out, messy breakup that ended in cutting off all contact. Avoiding him for the rest of the school year was difficult and painful, but I managed to get through it.

Summer break was the best thing that could have happened at that point. I immersed myself in my passions, spent time with friends, and explored life away from the 5Cs. Separated from that environment, I finally was able to accept that what had happened to me was sexual assault. I recognized that it was not my fault; it was something my attacker chose to do to me on his own, and I did everything in my power to physically and emotionally survive the experience (including the long period of denial). In this separation from school, I thought I had made peace with this fact.

But as the new school year approached, flutters of anxiety began creeping into my stomach. What would happen when I encountered him? And if he was drunk? What would he say about me? That I was his “crazy” ex-girlfriend and a liar who wanted to ruin his reputation?

My first few weeks back were a nightmare. I had thought that coming to terms with my assault would be empowering, but it instead brought up all the bottled-up anxiety I had ignored. After my first sighting of him that nearly sent me into a panic attack, I lived constantly on edge. What was worse, he began to spend time with another student in my dorm, leaving me hyper alert and anxious even in my own living spaces. A moderate level of anxiety surrounded me from day to day, spiking unexpectedly and leaving me panicked for hours when reminders of him managed to work their way into my consciousness. I couldn’t fall asleep at night, yet slept excessively during the day. My appetite fluctuated wildly and was sometimes accompanied by nausea. I was afraid to walk on his school’s campus without friends.

These feelings might seem like an overreaction, paranoid, and unnecessary. I kept telling myself that I was being silly, yet my body and mind reacted in this way. Whether I wanted them to or not, my feelings of safety on the 5Cs had been shattered.

I began the process of finding a therapist, and in the meantime went to several staff members from my school to discuss my options. This is what we are taught to do, right? If you are sexually assaulted or raped, our progressive systems will protect you…

While I was listened to and comforted, I could see the reasons to not attempt a formal investigation clicking together as these staff members spoke. A formal investigation would include hearing both sides and gathering evidence to determine whether a rape or assault actually happened. I was asked if there was a witness to the assault. When I said no, I could hear the disappointment, as witnesses would “simplify this process.” As if I could choose where, when, and around whom the attack occurred.

Details about the investigation process were also unclear, as each school has its own way of dealing with sexual assault reports, and the investigation takes place on the campus of the accused student. I was promised information when my attacker’s school got back to the staff member.

It took over a month for me to receive this information.

By this time the anxiety had begun to slowly fade and I was regularly seeing a therapist. Not wanting to relive the pain and undo a month of emotional healing for the stressful process of reporting, I declined to meet with the school.

The healing process is long, complex, and non-linear. It took me over a year to accept what had happened to me, as well as experience the full emotional effects of the attack. I am not the only one who is a survivor of sexual assault or rape at the 5Cs. As much as we like to believe it could never happen to us, it is less a matter of protecting yourself, and much more a matter of circumstance and luck. No one chooses for this to happen to them, and no one wants to accept that they were a victim of this degrading crime.

I hope that the 5C community will work towards fully realizing the sensitive and complex factors that play into sexual assault, and how the rules and regulations in place affect the safety and comfort of victims. While these measures and responses are far better than some at other schools (such as the reactions to the woman who recently wrote about reporting her rape to Amherst College), their attempts to balance the support of survivors with preventing false reports led to me personally feeling distrusted, alienated, and with fewer rights than my attacker. He violated me, yet reestablishing safety and comfort at my own school would require a long and emotionally painful process. Even simply being banned from a single dorm (a compromise that still involved the same amount of investigation) would affect him very little, while his continued allowed presence constantly affects me. Even more frightening is that even if I suffered through the report, there is no guarantee that my story would be believed. On top of the humiliation of the assault, there would be an added one of being labeled a liar.

So I ask you all to think about how we can change this. Why do we live in a community where action is immediately taken against bias related incidents without question, yet a sexual predator can move freely within living spaces of their victim simply from lack of proof? My story is one of hundreds within our community, and through telling it I hope to help break the pattern of silence. We need to get away from the idea that we can “slapgrabtwistpull” ourselves out of every sexual assault situation, and start realizing that most of them are instigated by people we wouldn’t fight back against because we know them, have been involved with them previously, or even love them at the time. As much as we can try to pretend rape and sexual assault don’t happen on campus, this view only serves to punish survivors and silence their voices. Instead, we need to accept it as reality and begin offering genuine support to those who have been through these horrific experiences.

By Dagny Lu ’15 and Stephanie Steinbrecher ’16

Staff Writers

Find out what makes each of Claremont’s eight* a cappella groups  unique just in time for their performances at the 17th annual Southern California A Cappella Music Festival (SCAMFEST) on Friday, Nov. 9th at Bridges Auditorium!

The Women’s Blue and White

Photo courtesy of Women’s Blue and White

Year Formed: early 1980s
Number of current members: 17
Signature songs/performances: “Wasted On the Way” by Crosby, Stills, and Nash

The Women’s Blue and White was founded at Pomona and were named after the school colors. “We are the only all-female a cappella group on the 5Cs. So basically, if you’ve seen Pitch Perfect, that’s us—only without the projectile puking,” said Stephanie Parks (SC ‘13).
The group gets together to practice three times each week. “WBW is like its own little family. We’re serious, but at the same time we’re a pretty goofy group of individuals, and we like to have fun,” said Parks.

Parks shared with us her most memorable experience as a member of the group. “Last year, we took an impromptu trip to Baldy for one of our rehearsals. Singing up in the mountains and being able to look up and see the stars was incredible. It’s the little things like that that makes WBW so fun.”

The group performs at events throughout the year such as Pomona’s Founder’s Day, The Shakedown Café Birthday Party, and Alumni weekend. “We usually hold at least one snack concert and one end-of-semester concert every semester,” said Parks.

The Claremont Shades

Photo courtesy of the Claremont Shades

Year Formed: 1995
Number of current members: 16
Signature songs/performances: “Fuck You” by Cee Lo Green
“God Bless the Broken Road”
“The Winter Song”

The Claremont Shades is the first co-ed a cappella group at the Claremont Colleges. Founded in 1995 as the Claremont Shades Of Harmony, the group currently includes sixteen members from all five colleges.

“We are like a big family. Everyone in the group is really close. We are all very supportive of one another and members usually stay in touch after graduation, ” said Priya Srivats, a senior at Scripps College and the event coordinator of the group this year.
Priya joined The Claremont Shades in her spring semester of freshmen year. “I love to sing, and being a member of Shades has been a great way for me to keep music in my life throughout college. It has also helped me develop my leadership skills.”

It is one of the group’s traditions that at their end-of-the-year party each year, the seniors will “re-audition” in front of the rest of the group by performing the songs they sang for their auditions back when they first became a member of the group.

The Claremont Shades practices three times each week and sometimes more before big events. “We love to make music and have fun. Music is really important to every member of the group, and we choose songs that we think the audience will enjoy,” said Srivats.
The group performs at different schools events throughout the year such as the new student orientation and snack concerts. “We also do two tours each year, one in spring and one in fall, for which we travel to sing at schools, hospitals, farmer’s markets, etc. For our last fall tour we went to Berkley and performed at the local farmer’s market,” says Srivats.

The Claremont Shades will be hosting SCAMfest on Nov. 9 in the Big Bridges Auditorium at Pomona College.

The After School Special

Year Formed:    2002

Number of current members: 13
Signature songs/performances: “The Heart Medley,” a mashup of three different sappy boyband songs. A Lady Gaga medley they started performing right after “Bad Romance” came out.

Photo by Tianna Sheih ’16

The After School Special probably has one of the sexiest acronyms on campus, and they certainly know it.

“Our green trucker hats that we all wear for every show have ASS printed on the front, and it is tradition of ours that after every performance we always bow backwards to give the audience a good look at our ASSes!” said Bryn Morgan, a senior at Scripps and the group’s event coordinator this year.

At ASS, members proudly refer to themselves as ASSlings. “New members are called ASS babies and our fans are our ASSets!” said Morgan.

Bryn Morgan joined The After School Special during her first semester at Scripps College. “I was instantly part of a hilarious, musical, and loving family. We spend a lot of time together both in and out of rehearsals. We are all close friends and provide support for one another no matter what. It’s a special connection,” said Morgan. “If there’s one thing that has made my college experience fantastic, it’s been being a part of ASS!”

The 5-C a cappella group performs at various school snacks and campus events through out the year. “We’re getting into touring more also—we were down in San Diego a few weeks ago for an a cappella invitational concert and have been talking about doing a tour of a number of schools in California,” said Morgan.

Bryn also shared with us the group’s creative process. “We like to cycle through music—singing the songs for too long is not only boring for audiences but it’s boring for us!” said Morgan. “We are really collaborative and we love to have fun while making music. Sometimes if we want to arrange a song, rather than having one or two people sit down and arrange it, we’ll just stand in a circle and improvise until it starts sounding good, each person making up a part. We like to change things as we go to improve, for example I’m writing a rap verse right now to replace one that none of us liked on one of our songs.”

The Mood Swing

Photo by Tianna Sheih ‘16

Year Formed: 2004
Number of current member: 18
Signature songs/performances: “A Change In My Life”

The Mood Swing likes to keep that sense of whimsy in their song choices. “We like to challenge ourselves with different styles of music and we are always open to learning new things. There isn’t any song, artist, or type of music that we won’t rendition. Mood Swing sings it all!” Stephanie Kim, the music director of Mood Swing this year and a sophomore at Scripps College, shares with us the essence behind the name of the group.

Stephanie Kim has been a member of the group since her first semester at Scripps College. “I had done a cappella in high school and wanted to keep doing it when I came to Scripps. I think it is a great way to meet people while doing music.”

The group practices three times each week. Members spend a lot of times together outside of practices as well. “The time we spend together outside of concerts and practices has been one of the most memorable experience for me as a member of the group. We go to parties together, hang out at Fruizen, and have movie marathons. It’s like having a new family. We always have a great time!” said Kim.

What qualities do you look for in new member? “We look for people with fun personalities and who are open to new things,” said Kim.
The Mood Swing performs at different school events through out the year.

Midnight Echo

Year Formed: late 1990s
Number of current members: 13
Signature songs/performances: “Baby” by Justin Bieber
Songs by MIKA

Photo by Tianna Sheih ‘16

“You know you’ve spotted a Midnight Echo member when they are wearing crazy pants,” said Charlotte Leasia (SC ’13) about what sets her fun-loving a cappella group apart. “Crazy pants are the signature item of our a cappella group. Their wackiness and quirky details help make the performance interesting. They nicely complement our singing and dance moves.”

Currently with 13 members (not counting the members who are studying abroad), Midnight Echo has members from all 5Cs. Midnight Echo performs frequently at the Snack Concerts on the Frary steps and enjoys singing for donuts at Mudd.

Midnight Echo have found inspiration in and have derived their identity from “Baby” by Justin Bieber and gutsy and sassy songs by MIKA. “We are in the process of considering bringing Britney back,” said Leasia, shedding some light perhaps on upcoming projects by the a cappella group.
The group practices three days a week. Leasia admits that there is not a common characteristic about the group’s musical choices, but this only serves to add to Midnight Echo’s unique personality: “our songs change all the time, like the colors of our crazy pants!”

Ninth Street Hooligans

Name: Ninth Street Hooligans

Photo courtesy of Ninth Street Hooligans

Year Formed: 2009

Number of current members: 19

Signature songs/performances: “Ridin’ Dirty” by Chamillionaire

“Whip My Hair” by Willow Smith

It all started for the black and lavender-clad Ninth Street Hooligans in the fall of 2009, making the group the youngest a cappella group at the Claremont Colleges. “We’ve had to find our own unique style and audience, and I think we’ve done just that. Our performance of Chamillionaire’s ‘Ridin’ Dirty’ and Willow Smith’s ‘Whip My Hair’ at last year’s SCAMfest helped establish us as one of the more comedic groups,” said president Mark Irwin (PZ ’14).

Currently at 19 members with 7 graduating this year, members come from six of the seven Claremont Colleges and hail from all over the world—Singapore, China, Korea, Botswana, Egypt, and India. This diversity only adds to the group’s uniqueness.

When auditioning new members, or “Nooligans,” the group looks for a mix of personality and vocal blending, skills, tonality, pitch, and range. When asked what the most important quality in a potential Nooligan is, though, Irwin cited what Hooligans call THE X FACTOR. “This is a combination of hatred and latent sexual tension buried deep within a person’s soul. When harnessed, THE X FACTOR is an almost unstoppable force.”

Comedic geniuses, incredible vocalists, and possessors of this special trait, Ninth Street Hooligans look to Dionysus, their in-house deity, as well as the pigeon, their spirit animal, to fuel their inspiration to rendition songs such as Kelis’ “Milkshake” (another crowd favorite).

If one thing is certain, it is that this group is serious about their music. The Hooligans have performed at many special events at the Claremont Colleges including SCAMfest as well as casual Snack Concerts on the Frary steps at Pomona.

The Kosher Chords pride themselves on being the Jewish a cappella group (although not all members are Jewish) at the 5Cs.
“We sing chords. These chords are kosher. I wish this were a longer story,” said member Sarah Loebner (SC ’14) about the source of her group’s name.

Kosher Chords

Photo by Tianna Sheih ’16

Year Formed: 2009
Number of current members: 13
Signature songs/performances: “Shalom Ray”
“Kiss the Girl” from “The Little Mermaid”

Practicing three times a week, the group “can’t get enough of each other,” said Loebner. “We’re pretty much up for anything. We try to include songs related, however distantly, vaguely, or tenuously, to Judaism, but even that we don’t always adhere to,” she said, citing a Hebrew song entitled “Shalom Rav” as their favorite as well as their rendition of “Kiss the Girl” from “The Little Mermaid.”

The group loves to have a good time, as demonstrated by a particularly unique tradition: “If someone says the word “everybody” during rehearsal, we spontaneously jump into a lively rendition of ‘Everybody (Backstreet’s Back).’”

Kosher Chords members are an incredibly close and humorous group of people, with representation from all but one Claremont school.
When asked about what she has gained from being a member of this a cappella group, Loebner said, “I think Kosher Chords has given me invaluable experience as being one part of a whole.  Teamwork is something we can all utilize when we take that big step into the ‘real world’ after we graduate … I know that the time we spend together is dedicated to reaching that goal of creating harmonious music together, but it’s amazing to unwind and just sing away the stress, pressure, and anxiety of college life.”

See them perform at Human Symphony, Hillel functions, Wednesday Nighters at Harvey Mudd College, and Pomona performances like Snack Concerts.

*Men’s Blue & White could not be reached for comment.

By Alexandra Vallas ‘15
Copy Editor

The first time we meet it is for C-rations, the Spartan rations that remain in Collins Dining Hall on the Claremont-McKenna Campus. A mutual—surviving—friend has arranged the meeting, which takes place in the shelter of a decrepit building on Harvey Mudd College. When he speaks—which happens rarely and

Photo by Caroline Novit ’14

briefly, I come to find—he calls himself only ‘Z,’ like the ‘z’ in ‘zombie.’ I decide this is fitting.

He owns more than five guns, he tells me: two electric and the rest spring-loaded models. “Spring-loaded is better,” he says. “It’s quieter and more personal.” This makes sense to me. After all, anyone who’s spent even one day in the middle of the zombie apocalypse knows that noise is the last thing you want when flesh-hungry ex-humans are staggering after your sorry, living carcass. I write his words down in my notebook.

“But how do you conserve ammo most effectively?” I wonder. It turns out Z knows the ropes better than I had expected, because the answer comes quickly.

“Don’t shoot,” he replies, as if it is the most obvious fact—though in a way it is. Sometimes I find myself questioning how I’ve managed to survive at all; I credit most of this to my defensive strategy of never leaving my base.

“If you use a gun that’s one-shot spring-loaded, you’re not going to go around shooting—one shot and you’re done,” he continues. There is a faraway look in his eyes, one that makes me wonder who he has lost. Maybe he lost a close roommate to the virus or necromancy or whatever it is causing this zombie hell. I take a moment to breathe a sigh of relief that my cardinal rule, the Rule of Solitude and Antisocial Behavior, has served me so well in the course of the war.

In the vein of my previous questions, I turn the conversation toward shot accuracy, the best friend of efficient resource allocation. Thank goodness for that Macroeconomics course I took before the world ended—and we all thought we would never use what we learned in our classes for real world application!

Photo by Caroline Novit ’14

But my question seems to puzzle Z, who responds straight to the point as I am starting to realize he does. “You aim at them,” he says slowly. “It doesn’t matter where you hit them.”

This response catches me off-guard. I was convinced up until that zombies were only vulnerable to headshots, but surely as grizzled a veteran as Z would know better than me. What can I say? If I were a character in a pre-apocalypse zombie movie, I would probably be the one that survived on sheer dumb luck. But I decide not to tell that to a certified badass like Z.

“So how do you survive?” I ask him. “What does it take, in this environment, to keep your extremities out of a zombie’s mouth every day?”

He thinks about that question for a long moment before answering.

“Cardio, double tap, check the back seat…” He shrugs. “Though honestly, people just live underground around here. To survive you stay in groups, so you have to be nice to people.”

‘Be nice to people’ gets added to my notes. I’m starting to get really into it, and I think Z can feel it too. We have a connection—we’re two survivors bonded by the trauma of our experiences. Maybe, just maybe, he would be on my team. All I have to do is prove that I, too, can be as strong and kickass as he is. I know my next question will take me to that level. So, mustering all my courage, I lean back as cool and nonchalantly as I can against the wall, wearing my devil-may-care attitude like a pair of really intense sunglasses in a very dark room.

“So, Z. Zed. Can I call you that? Good.” I never have been one to wait around for answers. “Say I want to perform a long-distance kill. What kind of gun do you most recommend for that range?”

He blinks, obviously surprised. Clearly I am more of a proactive killer than he thought. We should get jackets for our two-man wolf—
“A sniper rifle. They don’t make them for NERF guns, but that’s what I’d suggest.”
…NERF guns? When did we start talking about those?

The Scripps Voice wishes you all happy hunting and thick skin during the 5C HvZ game! Also thanks to ‘Z’, for providing the interview for this story.

By Eliza Silverman ’14 and Zoe Stalnecker ’14
Cody Editor and Business Manager

In case you weren’t one of the many Claremont students running around with green bandanas and nerf artillery, we are here to recount the Live Action Role Play extravaganza that was Humans versus Zombies 2010 on the Claremont Colleges.

The game was ultimately a battle of good versus evil. The objective of the humans, or the “resistance,” was to resist infection at the zombie’s hand for as long as humanly—excuse the pun—possible. The zombie “horde” could infect a human by simply touching them on the arm.

The complexities of the game are as follows: all Claremont students that signed up for the game began as humans, save for a few “administrators” that were Original Zombies, or OZs. Humans wore green bandanas around their arms to signify their status as a human, while zombies wore a green bandana around their heads. You were required to wear the bandana and carry an identification card at all times. Basically everywhere except classrooms, individual dorm rooms and dining halls was a fair fight zone on the 5C’s—except, ironically, for Scripps. The entirety of the Scripps campus was a safe zone because the faculty didn’t agree that Humans versus Zombies was appropriate for an academic environment. The humans were allowed to defend themselves by shooting relatively harmless nerf darts at the zombies to deflect infection, thus “freezing” zombies for fifteen minutes.

But enough of the nitty-gritty details. Inevitably, you’re dying to know what Humans versus Zombies was really like. Was the week characterized by ceaseless adventures? Guerilla warfare? Heart-stopping showdowns? Our stories will not disappoint.

Living on Scripps, we really had to go out of our way to put ourselves in the line of fire. We did just that: we dined at Harvey Mudd’s dining hall meal after meal. The first few days were relatively uneventful because the ratio of humans to zombies remained about 350 to 50. After day 3, however, the resistance declined rapidly. Zombies were beginning to outnumber humans. Eliza alone had three zombies in her CMC Spanish class of 15 students; she had to make a break for it as soon as class ended at 10:50, to get back to the safe home base. “She looked pretty ridiculous,” said Jade Ulrich (’14). “One day she put on these neon protective goggles to block the rain from her eyes as she fled from Bauer Center.”

On the fourth night, all hell broke loose. We went to dinner at HMC and zombies were patrolling the perimeter. The resistance was down to a paltry hundred humans, and zombies were omnipresent. We hastily scurried into the dining hall without too much trouble, but the way out was a whole different ball game. Two specific zombies were targeting us from both exits out of the dining hall. We put our heads together and came up with a different escape route: off the edge of the outdoor patio! Genius! As we carefully and quickly scaled the walls, clamshells in hand, we felt pretty invincible. Until, as Eliza dropped down from the wall, a zombie came up and tagged both of us. Fail.

Humans versus Zombies added an element of suspense and intrigue to what would otherwise have been an ordinary week in Claremont. Our suggestion? Participate in the next round of Humans versus Zombies, coming Spring 2011!

Check out the website here!

The Queer Resource Center, FAMILY, and other queer and allied groups on campus recognized and celebrated National Coming Out Day (NCOD). Although the official date is Oct. 11, NCOD was celebrated with a week of programming. As Lowell Reade (HMC ’12) said, “Coming out is one of the most powerful ways to make change… by personally being exposed to queer people, [people] have a closer connection to the queer rights movement.” The diverse events reflected the myriad ways to be out.

On Oct. 6, Sister Spit, a group of seven radical queer feminist artists, performed in Balch Auditorium. The evening began with Sara Seinberg introducing Sister Spit with her brilliant slide show of photographs from their tour. Her photos depicted things she saw—they weren’t fabricated or staged. Sister Spit’s acts were similarly raw and honestly queer.

Queer and allied students alike laughed to Beth Lisick’s failed attempt at bisexuality, Ariel Shrag’s story of a high school lesbian hoping to lose her “real” virginity to a boy and Rhiannon Argo’s story of an aspiring stripper’s encounter with a Brazilian wax job. An excited round of applause followed Ben McCoy’s lip-syncing to a recording of her powerful and poignant condemnation of typical trans and drag politics and stereotypes. Michelle Tea, the host of the evening, shared an article commenting on the Gossip’s performance at a Fendi event during fashion week in Paris, an ironic and paradoxical testament to queer mainstream acceptance.

The Sister Spit performance impacted the 5C community beyond the walls of Balch. Kyria Traber’s poem on body hair and the expectation on women to mutilate and pluck away at their bodies inspired the following week’s MESA (Middle Eastern and South Asian)/ FAMILY talk on the politics of hair.

National Coming Out Day events were designed to encourage 5C students and the public to come “out” as their true selves. Adriana di Bartolo, Coordinator of the QRC, led student and faculty/staff ally trainings that recognized the prejudice and rejection allies face when they come out. The coming out panel in Mudd’s dining hall featured the mother of a gay son, who shared her touching experience as a supportive ally to her son. Amina Simmons (PO ’12), a lesbian Christian, shared how her identities are complementary but are deemed mutually exclusive by society. She said, “It seems like I can’t win…at home they don’t accept my sexuality and here they don’t accept my belief, the two most essential characteristics of who I am.”

National Coming Out Day festivities, culminating in the bright pink painting of Walker Wall, attempted to at least recognize the boundaries we all place, and make the QRC, queer and allied groups more inclusive. Communities set limitations, whether intentionally or not.

That exclusion harms those who do not fit within the policed boundaries. Di Bartolo said that the purpose of NCOD is to work “toward a campus climate in which LGBTQ folks and our allies can come out in a safe, welcoming, and supportive environment…We are creating visibility around an invisible and often forgotten student population.” By celebrating and recognizing queers of faith, allies, gender nonconformists and all other manifestations of queer, the 5Cs and the community can learn to be not just tolerant, but accepting of non-normative ways of being.