At the Pitzer holiday dinner last week, my friends and I were waiting in line for the food (it's a very crowded dinner, so there were more people there than usual). I didn't hear this one directly, but my friend came back to us in line and told us that when she was standing behind someone waiting to get a drink, he was talking to his friend about the holiday decorations in all of the dining halls. He said something about all the Christmas decor, and his friend said, "You would think they would have some more Hanukkah decorations, considering how many Jewish people are at the 5C's."
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At Scripps dining hall, I was waiting in line for the taco bar (it was a Wednesday, and they had already had tacos at the Scripps dining hall earlier that week on that Monday), and heard two guys standing a couple of people behind me in line. One of the guys was complaining about the fact that they were serving tacos again, and said, "I mean, I know all the staff is Mexican, but that doesn't mean they have to make Mexican food all the time."
I'm glad I wasn't the only one in line that gave them a dirty look. I was having a conference with my writing professor about a research paper. The paper was about the methods of torture during slavery vs. the institutional methods of torture today. During the meeting, my professor gently told me that I should consider a less controversial topic that was more "easily arguable."
This semester in one of my classes we were discussing affirmative action. A white girl raised her hand and said, "I just don't get why someone who makes d's and f's can get into the same school as me because they're a person of color."
“There’s no such thing as bisexual” I hear this microagression all the time and it always surprises me when I catch it at Pitzer. I like to think that the Pitzer community has done a really good job fostering a free and open environment for expressing (or not expressing) ones gender and sexuality however they are, so it always catches me off guard to find people reinforcing such arbitrary “rules” as the gender binary.
I am so sorry for taking you into urban outfitters. I did not know they would stop you, take your purse, and empty it on the counter in front of us: you, me, and the younger cousins standing, horrified, while the girl dug for nearly 5 minutes before realizing she had made a mistake.
Race is not a probable cause. Love, Your Potii. Last week at Frary dining hall, I was scooting along in line to swipe, looking in my backpack for my ID card, when I accidentally bumped into a very tall male. When he turned around to see what was up, I was met with a very unforgiving stare and his tasteless tee shirt which read, “Don’t be sexist! Bitches hate that!” It’s true, guy in the tasteless tee, we do.
The other day I saw a post on Yik Yak that said something on the lines of: “I’m glad I’ve found hot girls at Pomona. I didn’t expect it just because it’s such a hard school to get into.” This post angered me because it brings up the stereotype that smarter women are ugly and stupid women are beautiful. It makes women at the Claremont Colleges feel that men assume they are not beautiful because they are smart and got into selective colleges.
On November 19, 2015, CMC Acting Dean of Students Jeff Huang received an email from a CMC alumnus warning him about a message he had discovered on a Google Form. On December 5th, 2015, students at the 5Cs were notified about the message. Here it is:
“You stupid fucking students are so full of shit, constantly complaining about wanton useless bullshit and trite whenever a single fucking thing bothers you. Stop being such a fucking pussy or I will personally fucking shoot each and every one of you.” This is the first time I’ve heard of a gun threat directed towards a Claremont College and members of the Consortium. When I saw this email I was in shock and disgusted. How can someone think like this? Why can’t this individual understand that CMC students were challenging their institution because they wanted to make it a safer and supportive environment for people of color? Also, why did it take CMC’s Dean of Students or Office of Student affairs two weeks to notify students across the Consortium? Students need to be notified as soon as possible, no matter how extreme the threat is or ambiguous the threat’s source is. It was our second to last meeting of one of my classes. My group and I decided to meet in a study room down the hall for part of class. As we walked out of the classroom, someone yelled, “Try not to get shot!” A nervous energy filled the classroom and my classmates and I were in shock. Did that person really just say that? That Wednesday was also the day of the San Bernardino shooting, where 14 people were killed and 22 people were injured. This person meant it as a joke. Maybe by turning gun violence into a laughing matter was the only way for this person to process the tragic event. Who would think there would be a mass shooting thirty minutes from Claremont? But, any sort of joke involving shootings isn’t a laughing matter. Many people around the world encounter violence in their communities daily. Each day for them is a matter of survival to avoid shootings, bombings and being caught in armed conflicts. Just look at Syria and Iraq. Also, many Americans, particularly people of color, have been victims to police violence. We’ve seen people of color being harassed or even killed for no reason. We need to realize that “trying not to get shot” is a reality that people are experiences constantly, whether in the United States or Internationally.
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