Pomona College - Inside Scoop

School Slang

• “Yo, I like you.” - According to some, the best line to use when picking up prospective mates. For extra turn-on power, accompany with eyebrow twitches.
• Forty Water - Forty ounces of malt liquor, my friend. Know it. Drink it. Love it. And don’t forget to spill a drop for the dead homeys.
• I.E. - Short for “Inland Empire,” the large, deserty, trashy stretch of “civilization” to the east of LA.
• O.E. in the I.E. - Short for “Olde English in the Inland Empire.” Olde English is a fine malt liquor, O.E. in the I.E. is a practice wherein one picks a place in the Inland Empire (a petting zoo, for instance) and then goes there and drinks as much O.E. out of brown paper bags as possible.
• Sponcest - The irreputable act of dating someone within your sponser group.

• The Boot - The dirty, cockroach-ridden room in which the frats hold their weekly keggers.
• The Borg - Short for Oldenborg international dorm.
• The Coop - The Pomona College student store, located in the Campus Center.
• The Fountain - Pomona’s fast food restaurant, also located in the Campus Center.

• The Quad - Short for Marston Quadrangle, the big, quadrangular grass field in the middle of Pomona campus. Also home to frequent ultimate games and a popular study spot.
• The Towers - Tower housing units in Harwood dorm, not to be confused with the Lawry towers.
• Walker Beach - A moniker for the grassy sward north of Walker Dorm. It isn’t really a beach (Pomona is land locked, silly!), but it is replete with a real sand volleyball pit, and some palm trees, and lots of sunbathing students.
• Walker Wall - The wall running north of Walker Beach. It is an open canvas for anyone with some art supplies and something to say. Oh heck, if you don’t have anything to say, paint it anyway.

Things I Wish I Knew Before Coming To School

• Do as much stuff as possible! It is far too easy to be apathetic, both academically and socially at Pomona. Generally, the more you do, the better time you’ll have.
• Dreadlocks, although tres façonable, are itchy, smelly, and generally annoying to grow.

• If you want to work with dolphins, you have to take Bio classes, Neurochem classes, Psych classes, and Cog-Sci classes. Philosophy and English don’t cut it.
• Not to take any classes before noon. (Though it’s totally doable.)

• Philosophy and English are fun, and they allow you, if you engage in them with vigor and verve, to be learned and yet still “cool.” This lets you look down on all the naïve kids with nice haircuts and pressed pants taking computer science. All this I knew. However, what didn’t occur to me is that it is these kids who get $60,000 plus job offers right out of college. Then they can afford really nice pants. Who is feeling superior now?
• The King’s English: It’s useful, and you’re not going to learn it here.

Tips to Succeed

• Butter up the professors - This may seem cheap, but most people do it, and if you want your GPA to keep up with all the other GPAs, you’d be wise to play along. This mainly applies in the humanities; in the sciences, there is somewhat more objectivity. Of course, Pomona professors are a bundle of sharp cookies (pardon my metaphor mixing), and they don’t respond well to the traditional sycophant. The best way to get on their good side is to show seemingly genuine interest in their subject matter; it’s generally profound and overlooked, and they want recognition as much as any of us. Then again, if you aren’t interested in the subject, why are you taking it?

• Decide early what you want to do and go about accomplishing it in a driven manner - It’s too easy to dither away your time at Pomona, and, while this can be very pleasant, you will likely find yourself regretting that you didn’t find that internship, or do that project with such and such a professor. There’s always time to dither. There isn’t always time to lay some serious groundwork for your future. If I took this advice back in time to my past self, I think it highly likely that my past self would deck my future self.

Urban Legends

• Another myth regarding Pomona is that the Oldenborg dorm is the model for the ships (“cubes,”) of the Borg on the television show Star Trek. The Borg? They are a cybernetic race of aliens who meld machine and flesh and operate in a sort of insectile collective fashion. Star Trek? Don’t they have television on the planet you come from? Oldenborg is notoriously labyrinthine and sterile, resembling the giant cubes the Borg pilot around space.

• Another Pomona myth is the myth of “47.” This basically states that the number 47 occurs more often in nature than other integers, and that this oddity is centered around Pomona College. Of course, anyone who has taken a statistics course knows that the chances of this are slim, and it’s easy to find something you’re expressly looking for (yes, Pomona College is off exit 47 on the I10, but it isn’t on 47th street, the 47th parallel, and so on.) However, the number 47 does hold special significance for many Pomona students. A sampling of 47 lore from the Pomona Web site: Pomona College is located at Exit 47 of the San Bernardino Freeway. The Bible credits Jesus with 47 miracles. There are 47 pipes in the top row of the Lyman Hall organ. The Declaration of Independence has 47 sentences. The Disney comedy The Absent-Minded Professor features a basketball game filmed at Pomona’s old Renwick Gym. The final score: 47-46. In the film Towering Inferno, actor Richard Chamberlain ‘56 was the 47th person in line to be saved. In the freshman class that entered Pomona College in the year 2000, there were 47 valedictorians. The tropics of Cancer and Capricorn are located 47 degrees apart. And, if all this 47 trivia gives you an upset stomach, remember that Rolaids absorbs 47 times its weight in excess acid.

• One of Pomona’s longest-standing legends centers around the group Mufti—literally meaning “undressed,” the name stands for a secret society at Pomona whose sole function is to plant subversive fliers around campus. The fliers generally consist of three interrelated phrases which tend to comment on the college, its students, and society at large. Mufti-fliers are generally very convoluted and clever, and include double, triple, and even quadruple entendres making them a chore (but usually a pleasant one) to decipher. The legend part of all this is that the only way to become part of Mufti is to catch Mufti in the act of putting up their fliers. The veracity of this legend is much debated, but I’ve always thought it somewhat unlikely. After all, Mufti requires a certain turn of mind, and there would be no consistency in the quality of the fliers if any old John or Jane could join up. In the last few years, Mufti has gone even more underground, and flierings, when they occur (seldom), have been sub-par. Many think that the fliers are independently posted, and the real Mufti has disappeared, or perhaps exists in a sort of mental hibernation, just waiting for students of proper wit to come along and rouse it from its restless slumber.

Traditions

• Birthday Dunking - It is traditional at Pomona, on the day of your birthday, that you be dunked in the Frary Courtyard fountain. Considering the number of drunken students who eject their bodily waste into this fountain on a regular basis, I always found this tradition slightly stomach turning.
• Cup Drop - InFrary Dining Hall, whenever someone accidentally drops one of their plastic cups, it is customary for everyone in the dining hall to drop their cups as well (preferably empty ones, someone has to clean all that up, you know). The sound of hundreds of cups falling as one in that sonorous, cathedral-like building is deafening, and, some would claim, spiritually “moving.”

• Painting Walker Wall - Walker wall is a wall north of Walker dorm on North Campus. It stretches 150 some feet in a semi-circular arc, and it is the favored canvas at Pomona for anyone wishing to make a big, colorful statement to the student body. Students are allowed to paint anything they wish on the wall, and you’re as likely to find a piquant bit of social commentary as you are to find a vulgar phrase (not that vulgarity doesn’t have its place in piquant commentary), or just some cool pictures. The administration vows not to censor anything anybody puts on the wall, but particularly offensive messages are generally student-censored.
• Ski and Beach Day - Ski and beach day is just that: a day during which participating students go skiing or snowboarding, and then hit the beach for some sun. Pomona’s unique location makes this rather extravagant (and costly; it’s one of the ASPCs biggest expenditures year to year) day possible.

• Snow day - There isn’t any snow at Pomona, but once a year a big tanker truck dumps a pile of snow on the lawn in front of the Campus Center. Snowball fights abound, but for the less rambunctious, hot chocolate is served.