Claremont Independent

Last Updated: 9/13/06 Section: Humor

A Claremont High School student passed out during an undisclosed section of CMC's introduction to American politics class last week, capping a period of academic debauchery that has CMC's administration worried about possible effects on the school's reputation.

On Friday, Dean of the Faculty Gregory Hess sent a strongly-worded email to all CMC professors. "From a dean of faculty perspective," he wrote, "the week that just went by was a very, very bad one."

According to Hess's email, a series of odd, CMC-related incidents have been reported to Campus Safety so far this semester. The incidents included boisterous 3 a.m. readings of Plato's Republic at Scripps and a group of econ majors caught smoking $100 bills in the tea garden near Marks Hall, among other things.

It was the unexpected hospitalization of a Claremont High student, however, that received the most attention. Anonymous classroom sources report that the student began sweating and breathing heavily after the professor commented on a particularly insightful passage from Federalist 23.

"He was overwhelmed by the genius of the Founders," one government professor mused. "It's strong stuff for feeble minds."

Teenagers have been trying to sneak into classes at the Claremont Colleges for years, but most are discovered before any serious damage occurs. It is indicative of the prevalent lax and irresponsible attitude toward academic regulation, Hess asserted, that the student was not discovered until it was too late.

Of particular concern to the administration is the recent revelation that 10 professors have admitted more students into their classes than the usual limit of 19.

"We should take our recent demotion in the U.S. News rankings as a warning sign," CMC President Pamela Gann wrote to the student body in a separate email. "Unless we take action now and keep our class sizes arbitrarily small, the national reputation we've taken so long to cultivate may be damaged irreparably."

"The ability to take the classes you want is a privilege, not a right," she continued, warning that the school may have to cut class sizes to 18 or even 17 students to keep its ranking up. "I understand that 99 percent of students and faculty are acting responsibly, but unless we all come together, events may soon happen that we will be powerless to control."

Some students, however, are wondering whether any new measures might do more harm than good. They point out that a record-sized freshman class and the recent relaxation of faculty teaching requirements are making it harder than ever to get into quality classes. If the administration cracks down, they say, it may only drive students to take their learning underground, where it would be far more dangerous to them and to others.

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