Editor’s note: After President Oxtoby’s email about the apparent suicide of Pomona student Richard Normington ’13, a classmate wrote about his connection to suicide, Pomona’s culture, and the college’s suspension policy. A version on the following post originally appeared on the author’s blog. He submitted a condensed version to the Port Side.
To the Claremont Community:
The following piece of writing was composed after receiving news about the death of a classmate. What started as a blog post about being able to relate to suicidality within the college environment slowly turned into an explanation of my frustration surrounding the politics and policies surrounding academic standards. As a Pomona student, I use Pomona College as my focus because I am the most familiar with their system.
In this excerpt from my blog post, I pose the question, What is it about Pomona College that is turning students from happy, successful people into stressed out, burned out, no-longer-enthusiastic-about-
- Adrien Redford, Pomona 2013
There is a problem at Pomona. There’s a toxic culture that plagues students within their first few hours of arriving on campus, and it all starts with the presentations during First-Year Orientation. Having been involved with the event for three years, one of those years as the first-year student, I have seen the operation both from the outside and from deep within. It’s a TriggerFest… we talk about things and show students material that can very easily make any adult uncomfortable. Yet, we expect these students to shut their mouths and absorb this information so they know how to be perfect little Pomona students.
About 65% of the students can do that. The other 35%… not as easily.
We have a system of mentoring on campus, as well, where non-first-year students can mentor first-years based on a number of different factors (e.g. race, religion, gender identity, nationality). The most prominent is the Sponsor Program, a system involving two sophomores leading a hall of 10-20 first-year students to their respective successes. The training processes for these sponsors and mentors are grueling and intense, and oftentimes last upwards of two weeks. It’s another TriggerFest. We expect these students to shut their mouths and take in the material so they can become perfect little Pomona leaders.
Adrien Redford, Pomona '13
About 30% of the students can do that. The other 70% vocalise the fact that it’s difficult and that they have been made uncomfortable by something in the process.
Allow me to take a moment to stop talking out of my asshole. I’ve made these figures up. In all honesty, half of the shit I talk about comes from my own personal experiences. But that doesn’t mean that this can’t be someone else’s experience, too.
Let’s observe the classroom situation. Students register for courses. They sit in on these courses. They receive a syllabus that clearly states what is required for success in the class. Students exit, professors go about their days. Flash forward: it’s the end of the semester. The professor is tired, the students are tired. No one is feeling it. The professor does their best to support the students in their success, but ultimately must be fair. This process happens in all of the student’s courses. If all of the professors decide that the student could do better work in their class, and they all issue this student a C-, the student is placed on grounds for academic probation.
Probation is not necessarily disciplinary. It’s a system put in place to help the student understand what it is they can do differently; to assess their work habits and interests and see what else can be done to help the student do better. After notification, the student meets with a dean. Conditions are set, usually along the lines of maintaining a C+ average. If, after the probation period, the student’s performance is not up to the standards agreed upon between the college, student, and several academic offices, the student becomes a candidate for suspension.
Suspension is not necessarily disciplinary. It’s a system put in place to help the student understand what it is they can do differently… while at another institution. Students are urged to asses their work habits and revise them while taking a certain amount of semester units at another college so they can return to Pomona as a more learned individual with a brighter and more informed outlook on their future.
I want to take a look at the language, using definitions for two of the more important words:
Suspension: the official prohibition of someone from holding their usual post or carrying out their usual role for a particular length of time
When we look at it this way, it’s easier to see how Pomona thinks that these measures are able to benefit the student in the long run. So, it’s not really that bad. True, it’s pretty saddening and it feels awful to get a letter in the mail saying you’ve been “suspended.” But if it’s for your best interest, it shouldn’t be that terrible, right?
There could not be a statement that lies farther from the truth. Pomona builds students up to feel happy, to believe they are safe and in a supportive environment. The college thrives on the students being carefree and excited about what they do. But when the institution issues a message like this to a student, it’s like casting a redwood tree at 100 miles per hour towards a glass mansion, with the student standing right in the center of that house.
I will never forget the first time I got the call. The dean told me that I was on academic probation, and that I needed to schedule a time to meet with her and discuss the terms of the probation. After hanging up the phone, I found a bench to sit on. I realized it was raining and drew up my hood. After I took a deep breath, the tears began to fall. Everything became terrible within an instant. My Pomona. My Camp Pomona. My Disneyland Pomona just told me that I didn’t do well enough. And that was just the first time. It happened the next semester, too. And the semester after. Essentially, I was on probation from the second semester of my first year up through the entirety of sophomore year.
At the end of my sophomore year, however, I got the big news. The same dean called me and said The Academic Standards Committee has met and reviewed your academic record and your semester grades. After taking a look at your record, we have decided to suspend you. I shit you not, I dropped the phone. After a few hours of panic, I petitioned the suspension and they let me stay for another semester. I sold my case, only to have them call me at the beginning of January to give me the same news they gave me the semester prior.
My heart has been broken several times by this Committee, and their actions have disheartened many others, as well. I don’t mean to play the victim, because it was my academic performance that put me where I am now, after all. Of course it was my doing. But the problem lies in none of us being prepared for this to happen. We don’t expect a probation letter to come or to get suspended until it happens. In high school, if you don’t do well, you know very well what the consequences are. No one told me during my time at Pomona that I could expect to spend time away from the school in the very near future because I am apparently unable to “cut it.”
And I’ll tell you why: Taking time away from Pomona College and not finishing out within the allotted 4 years is not a part of the popular culture on campus. Something must be terribly wrong with a student if they are unable to just keep pushing through and just do what they have to to graduate. Something must be wrong with the student if they are unable to find a reason to be happy at Pomona and realize that it’s actually the greatest fucking place in the world.
All lies. I offer the claim that it is unnatural for a student to not question their position and their general existence at some point during their college career. I say it is unnatural for a student to struggle in college. I say it is unnatural for a student to not take notice of the fact that they are actually madly unhappy where they are and that anything could be better than what they are doing.
But because not very much of the campus thinks in that manner, no resources are available for those who do. So what happens to these students? They take a leave of absence. They get suspended. They drop out. They lose interest. They lose their lives.
No college should cause a student to feel like they are less than what they are. No college should make a student feel like they are worth nothing at all. No college should make a student feel like they are not cut out for the work set in front of them. No college should make a student consider no longer wanting to be alive.
And this isn’t just Pomona I’m talking about. There are several institutions of higher education around the world that make their students feel like they can’t do jack shit but introduce themselves, call attention to how unfit they are for the job, and then excuse themselves almost immediately.
It infuriates me to consider that I have friends that aren’t at Pomona right now because the college told them to try it out somewhere else, and to come back only if they want to. It infuriates me even more to understand that this is not the first time for some of them; that the college has sent this notice, this request, multiple times. No student should have to go through what we are going through. No student should ever experience the dread, fear, and anger that course through our bodies. But it’s still happening. And it will continue to happen unless something is done.
Pomona College, as a business, cannot afford to have unhappy students. Pomona College cannot withstand the social repercussions that come along with a quickly declining retention rate. Pomona College will not be able to handle student suicides, regardless of the fact that the premise upon which the action is taken may or may not be related to the school. Pomona College will do its best to play Lady Macbeth, washing the blood from its hands. But that shit will stain your skin, Pomona, and you will never be able to get that red off of your face.
Some of your students are in grave danger. To remove them from a place they used to love, from a place that they used to view as their safe haven, is like placing a live firework in a room full of dry wood. Some of us are only fortunate enough to have a comfortable life at home, but not all of us have a place to go back to. Displacing your students without very much notice at all is the last thing you want to do. But you’re doing it, and you’re doing a damn good job, too.
So, Pomona College, when you close your eyes tonight… when you place your head upon your high-digit thread-count pillow case made of the finest fabrics available, I want you to think very deeply about your students. I want you to think about what it is you are doing to them and if that is what you meant to do in the first place. Social justice issues and equality demands aside, I want you to think about the academic climate you place your scholars in. Is that what you mean by Let only the eager, thoughtful and reverent enter here?
Is this what you wanted?
The Claremont Port Side always welcomes letters to the editor, but the opinions expressed in them are those of the author alone, not necessarily of the Port Side.
I hesitate to do this, because this letter is heartfelt, and because the problem is real, because the author is intelligent and well-spoken.
But I cannot entirely agree.
I think a large part of the problem is that we, as a student body, have been conditioned to look at our continued stay at “Camp Claremont” as a right, not as a privilege.
And this is utterly wrong.
The reality is this: our presence here is not something we are entitled to. One must earn and re-earn one’s right to stay in the Claremont colleges, which are elite institutions.
What Pomona (or any of the Claremont Colleges, for that matter) should not be doing is tossing away academic standards. What it should be doing is helping students align their priorities.
Getting suspended from college is not the end of the world; it will not kill you. It is something from which one can recover. It should not be a reason to end your own life.
I agree that Pomona bears its share of the blame, here, (or, as the author put it, they have blood on their hands), but I agree for a different reason: we need to teach our students that there is more to life than college. That your life has not ended if you fail.
Because, over the course of your life, you WILL FAIL. You will fail seriously. And you may lose things that you thought were more important than anything else in the world.
What I suggest we need more than anything else in the 5C’s is a program designed to teach our goal-oriented, insanely-driven, historically-overachieving student body how to cope with failure, and how to handle the peaks and valleys of life.
Because being suspended for a semester is, I am sorry to say, (and, please, I don’t mean to sound callous) not that big a deal, in the big scheme of things. And, if we hope to be well-adjusted human beings, we need to learn to cope with that.
And the solution is not to blast Pomona for quite reasonably attempting to enforce a basic level of academic excellence.
So: respectfully, I must dissent.
“What I suggest we need more than anything else in the 5C’s is a program designed to teach our goal-oriented, insanely-driven, historically-overachieving student body how to cope with failure, and how to handle the peaks and valleys of life.”
Yes – and probably for most of the US populace as well.
Agreed.
Though I imagine the Pomona one would be easiest to implement first.
P.S. Which is not, by the way, to in any way endorse the idea that people who don’t fit in in the 5C’s are somehow inferior. They’re not.
And the fact that we internalize the concept that failing a class means that you’re failing at life (or the reverse: that acing your classes means you’re doing great) is, I think, the root of the problem.
And I think that is something the author might want to pay attention to.
I was going to write the exact response that Young.Man above wrote concerning the feeling of entitlement. It’s a disease among 5C students – and it fosters a perspective that you somehow inherited the right to be happy. After college, this simply isn’t the case; you have to work your ass off to be happy – and even then, most of your time is spent working your ass off. While Young.Man was admirably diplomatic, I was a bit more jaded by my experience at the 5Cs.
The goal is to find something productive that you enjoy working on – something that makes you happy that others benefit from. Otherwise, the world isn’t going to hold your hand and give you shoulder to cry on because you have to wake up early and jump through hoops that you don’t want to.
I realize Pitzer and Pomona are different institutions, and Pitzer is arguably a more extreme breeding ground for these obnoxious perspectives – but that also brings me to question why you’re not working your ass off at such a well known and respected institution. Coming from Pitzer, no doors were opened for me; I had to perform perfectly in interviews – and even then, I’ve been lucky to sneak into a great graduate school. When asked what the hell Pitzer is – I’d say it’s in a consortium with Pomona. People then understood where I was coming from.
What your describing is indeed common among college students – but it’s not a fault of the institutions. You’re describing depression, the seeds of which were planted long before you ever came to college. Trust me, I was there. I blamed Pitzer for every second of my misery, but the reality was that I was depressed the moment I stepped into orientation.
I was lucky to cross paths with some very unique professors that demonstrated happiness derived from a subject that interested me – and I saw a light at the end of the tunnel. But again, it was my responsibility to seek out such exposure to interesting and productive subjects – not the institution’s. Of course they should foster such exposure, and that’s likely a factor that distinguishes truly excellent institutions from mediocre – but it’s really up to you to find a way to be happy.
P.S. In anticipation of the argument that we are, in fact, born with the right to be happy in this country – and at the risk of coming off as an even harder blow-hard than I did above – we’re born with the right to pursue happiness. Hopefully the pursuit of your happiness is congruent with some socially valuable function that’ll enable you to support yourself. I think this is a distinction that’s currently consistently confused.
I agree with the other comments so far for the most part. This is definitely a sensitive issue and my heart goes out to those affected by the recent tragedy, but I feel like it is irresponsible to shove blame onto Pomona College in this case.
Does the college expect a lot of its students here? Of course they do, but we knew that when we enrolled didn’t we? Isn’t that one of the reasons we chose to go here in the first place? Having said that, I do also believe that the 5C’s in general offer plenty of opportunities for its students to excel. An abundance of office hours, nightly group tutoring, private tutoring available to those who seek it (included in tuition costs), the writing center, etc. All of these things are there for the student to succeed. However, the onus is on the student to actually make efforts to improve academically.
Could things improve in the Claremont Colleges? Sure. Student health leaves a lot to be desired for one thing off of the top of my head, but to say that Pomona College is a toxic academic environment is just wrong. Talk to your friends at other academic institutions (take the UC system for instance) and see if the students are provided with as much opportunity.
This is a very sad situation, and I think certain policies should be evaluated. However, I agree with the responses above, and do not feel it is right to vilify a college for having high standards. I believe that Pomona’s admissions staff do a good job of selecting competent individuals for entry into the college. That’s not to say that every deserving individual gets in, but everyone who is admitted is intellectually capable of succeeding in this environment. However, admissions departments can only predict potential to succeed at the institution, they cannot guarantee it. A student may be gifted, but may be dealing with other issues that prevent him or her from completing the requisite work to remain in good academic standing. Pomona, and other elite colleges, would do well to provide a more comprehensive support network to help struggling students cope with failure in the least destructive ways possible.
Even if you are suspended, you should keep in mind that you are good enough to have made it here in the first place. An offer for admission from an esteemed academic institution is confirmation of your great potential to succeed as a scholar and a member of our society. Suspension does not take away from prior accomplishments that resulted in an offer of admission at Pomona, and if dealt with appropriately should not have serious long-term consequences for a student.
Props to the author for clarity and grace, but I also disagree with putting the blame on Pomona. The previous comments do a good job of summarizing my feelings but there is one more point I would like to make. Most of us often forget that we chose to attend the college at which we study. Especially here at the 5Cs (it is rare that one’s only option for college is a college with the selectivity of a 5C). Despite the labor most of us put into picking our college, it is impossible to know where we fit the best (also consider the extent to which people grow and develop and change during our their college years). It is easy to blame the school, but it is hard to have enough self-awareness to know when we have grown out of our environment. Just food for thought.
P.S. I’ve never had the feeling that Pomona standards are too high.
It’s terrible that Richard Normington decided that suicide was the answer but I don’t think that the author has a realistic understanding of what higher education is about.
While most classes aren’t graded on a curve, an A loses its luster when everybody gets them, which means that some people have to get B’s and C’s if grades are to have any meaning at all. And while I certainly agree that “[n]o college should cause a student to feel like they are less than what they are,” a college must, at times “make a student feel like they are not cut out for the work set in front of them” if the student has demonstrated that they are not cut out for the work set in front of them. This is particularly true if the alternative is to dilute the quality of the degrees a college confers by allowing people to graduate who are unable to demonstrate a sufficient level of competence.
It’s fine to take task with a lack of mental health/counseling resources available to students or even the impersonal method of notifying students that they are being placed on probation or being suspended, but to indict an elite school for challenging its students and expecting a certain level of competence doesn’t make much sense…
I also agree with the earlier comment that if a kid feels like academic struggles are the end of the world, it’s unlikely that those issues started when he or she first arrived at the 5C’s.
I am surprised that none of these comments have as of yet addressed a different side of Claremont’s culture and ways in which it is potentially “toxic”. I’m not speaking of grades, or academic pressure, or even of entitlement. Rather I think that there is a certain expectation on campus that our students should be happy. Perhaps part of it is living in Southern California; we are expected to be happy because the weather is great, the sun is shining, and we are living in a liberal utopia. Being ranked in the list for schools with “happiest students” (I have seen Pomona, CMC, and Pitzer in several recent lists with this title) places a lot of pressure on students who are, well, not so happy. I’ve struggled with depression and anxiety since my freshman year at Pomona and I think that one of the hardest things about dealing with mental health issues on campus is the fact that no one talks about it. Between seminars about positive psychology and why it’s important to be happy to promises of the best friends of your life in the Sponsor program, it feels incredibly isolating when one’s honest answer to “what’s up” is “life feels pretty shitty right now”. Instead we are expected to smile and lead on, party, drink and have the “happiest college experience in the United States.” Perhaps a way to address student depression on campus is to make it more visible and to increase support networks. While the Monsour Center is available for students who are struggling, it is not particularly well-advertised to a group of freshmen who are more encouraged to attend Luaus and Spo-Gro BBQs than to take care of their mental health. Monsour offers specialized support groups for grieving students or LGBT students, yet there is no general space for students who are just unhappy or anxious in general to meet. If, as a freshman, I had realized that I was not the lone unhappy Pomona student, that there were others who maybe could use my support as I could use theirs, I would probably have had a much less painful year. I am blessed that I have had the time and priviledge to seek outside therapy and medications for my depression, but students at the Claremont colleges come from all backgrounds and sometimes these options are not as readily available to some students. Pomona and the consortium in general needs to do a better job of making depression and mental health issues visible and offering support groups for students who might be suffering in silence.
Let’s all get together and complain, that will make us happier. In the real world, you just need to suck it up and keep moving. During my freshman year of college, I suffered very severe depression, and the only way I eventually overcame it was to learn how to pretend that everything’s okay. Group therapy encourages you to live in the problem, and the people are pretty toxic (I’m speaking from personal experience). I think most of the Claremont colleges encourage students to be a little too vocal about their problems to the point where it hurts them, so I don’t know that encouraging a social forum to complain about deep personal issues would be advantageous to students suffering from depression.
As someone who has also dealt with anxiety and depression, I concur with Masha.
Just in case any student is struggling with similar issues, here’s some information about Monsour Counseling Center:
Phone number: 909-621-8202
Free services:
-brief individual therapy
-psychiatric evaluations and consultations
-group therapy and workshops
-crisis intervention (you can ask to speak with the doctor on call)
For more information:
http://www.cuc.claremont.edu/monsour/
And please, if you are contemplating suicide IMMEDIATELY call the national suicide hotline:
1-800-273-8255
Or the Monsour number for after hours emergencies:
909-607-2000
Also, I would like clarification on why the author considers orientation a “TriggerFest”. I feel that the 5Cs could alter their orientation activities to avoid or at least address the students’ discomfort if they had specifics on which activities were making students uncomfortable.
This is a piece of unconscionable, lazy, solipsistic intellectual argumentation. I would propose that Pomona change its alcohol and mental illness programs if we really want to help students be more successful and simultaneously more content. Those are the real bugaboos.
Then maybe we would be less stressed and self-involved.
Ditto my my frustration with TSL’s coverage. Jesus Christ at least give the guy a f***ing obit and a more than half-assed graphic.
Just read the link to comment guide lines. I apologize for my choice of words at the end of the comment, feel free to edit “jesus christ” “f-bomb” and “half-assed.” I would if I had/could find the edit option.
There’s no excuse for poor academic performance, and the college has every right to suspend you if you can’t cut it. Don’t forget that college is about academics, and not about “finding yourself” or whatever. It’s not “Camp Pomona”, no matter how much you want it to be. The college doesn’t have unreasonable standards, and if you’re unable to meet them, you shouldn’t be there, because plenty of very qualified students were rejected.
As a Pomona junior on leave of absence I can say that being away has made me miss the academic and social opportunities that I took for granted while there. And it also made me realize that I could not blame the college or my peers for my unhappiness, as the author seems to do. I agree that services at monsour and the way freshmen sponsor groups are presented could be greatly improved. However, to say that I and all the other students who decided to take a leave of absence, drop out, lose interest, etc. are “unnatural” just because the author seems to believe we are the only ones who questions their place in life, their choices, etc. is completely false. I dare you to name one person who has never had any doubt in their choices or thoughts. Perhaps, if we had more honesty among the Pomona community and as a previous post said, embrace failure, we’d be much closer to understanding what was meant by “Let only the eager, thoughtful and reverent enter here.”