In the Rembrandt ceramics studio, junior Liz Gebis is taking a breather from her biology studies by glazing pots. A poster on a door announces an art club show for starving artists. A lot of Pomona life sits condensed on its bulletin boards. In Memorial gym, four students bat a lonely shuttlecock across a net. So much for the day when badminton was sports royalty at Pomona.
Basketball is the game of choice among the faculty now.
Finally, here on Chinese cuisine day, I spy two students and math professor Shahriar Shahriari. Born in Iran, transplanted to California, they meet once a week in search of cultural continuity. They then talk thoughtfully about Pomona. Professor Shahriari says the faculty worry about diversity, grade inflation and whether Pomona is educating students to be real leaders. Roozbeh and Sahar talk about how hard students work, about the student obsession with resumes, about how lucky many students feel to have the privilege of a Pomona education.