Dividing the Light

The Associated Students of Pomona College, commonly abbreviated as ASPC, is the student government of Pomona College, an elite liberal arts college in Claremont, California, United States. It was founded in 1904, and is composed of elected representatives. Its primary functions are distributing extracurricular funds, conducting advocacy, running student programming, and providing various student services.

The Claremont Colleges (known colloquially as the 7Cs) are a consortium of seven private institutions of higher education located in Claremont, California, United States. They comprise five undergraduate colleges (the 5Cs)—Pomona College, Scripps College, Claremont McKenna College (CMC), Harvey Mudd College, and Pitzer College—and two graduate schools—Claremont Graduate University (CGU) and Keck Graduate Institute (KGI). All the members except KGI have adjoining campuses, together covering roughly 1 sq mi (2.6 km2). The consortium was founded in 1925 by Pomona College president James A. Blaisdell, who proposed a collegiate university design inspired by Oxford University. He sought to provide the specialization, flexibility, and personal attention commonly found in small colleges, but with the resources of a large university. The consortium has since grown to roughly 8,500 students and 3,600 faculty and staff, and offers more than 2,000 courses every semester. The colleges share a central library, campus safety services, health services, and other resources, managed by The Claremont Colleges Services (TCCS). Among the undergraduate schools, there is significant social interaction and academic cross-registration, but each college maintains a distinct identity.Admission to the Claremont Colleges is considered highly selective. For the Class of 2020 admissions cycle, four of the five most selective liberal arts colleges in the U.S. by acceptance rate were among the 5Cs (the five undergraduate colleges), and the remaining college, Scripps, had the second-lowest acceptance rate among women's colleges. The Fiske Guide to Colleges describes the consortium as "a collection of intellectual resources unmatched in America."

Pomona College ( pə-MOH-nə) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It was established in 1887 by a group of Congregationalists who wanted to recreate a "college of the New England type" in Southern California. In 1925, it became the founding member of the Claremont Colleges consortium of adjacent, affiliated institutions. Pomona is a four-year undergraduate institution that enrolls approximately 1,700 students. It offers 48 majors in liberal arts disciplines and roughly 650 courses, as well as access to more than 2,000 additional courses at the other Claremont Colleges. Its 140-acre (57 ha) campus is in a residential community 35 miles (56 km) east of downtown Los Angeles, near the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. Pomona has the lowest acceptance rate of any U.S. liberal arts college as of 2021 and is considered the most prestigious liberal arts college in the American West and one of the most prestigious in the country. It has a $2.76 billion endowment as of June 2022, making it one of the 10 wealthiest schools in the U.S. on a per student basis. Nearly all students live on campus, and the student body is noted for its racial, geographic, and socioeconomic diversity. The college's athletics teams, the Sagehens, compete jointly with Pitzer College in the SCIAC, a Division III conference. Prominent alumni of Pomona include Oscar, Emmy, Grammy, and Tony award winners; U.S. Senators, ambassadors, and other federal officials; Pulitzer Prize recipients; billionaire executives; a Nobel Prize laureate; National Academies members; and Olympic athletes. The college is a top producer of Fulbright scholars and recipients of other fellowships.

The Mabel Shaw Bridges Music Auditorium, more commonly known as Bridges Auditorium or Big Bridges (to distinguish it from nearby Bridges Hall of Music, known as Little Bridges), is a 2500-seat auditorium at Pomona College in Claremont, California, United States. It was designed by William Templeton Johnson and opened in 1932. It hosts a variety of performances for the college and outside groups.

On the Loose (abbreviated OTL) is an outing club for the undergraduate Claremont Colleges (5Cs), a consortium of five highly selective liberal arts colleges based in Claremont, California. It organizes trips to outdoor destinations around Southern California and the Western United States.The club was cited as a contributing factor to Pomona College's designation as a top college for hikers by Backpacker magazine.

The Mabel Shaw Bridges Hall of Music, more commonly known as Little Bridges (to distinguish it from nearby Bridges Auditorium, known as Big Bridges), is a concert hall at Pomona College in Claremont, California, designed by Myron Hunt and opened in 1915. It was sponsored by a $100,000 gift (equivalent to $2.89 million in 2022) from the parents of Mabel Shaw Bridges, a student in Pomona's class of 1908 who died of illness her junior year. It is used for a variety of musical and non-musical purposes, and is considered the "architectural gem" of Pomona's campus and one of Hunt's finest works.

The Spirit of Spanish Music is a sculpture by Burt William Johnson (25 April 1890—27 March 1927). It was commissioned by the Pomona College class of 1915 and placed in the Lebus Court of the Mabel Shaw Bridges Hall of Music at Pomona College, one of a group of buildings conceived for the expansion of Pomona College and built in the mid-1910s by architect Myron Hunt using details of the "ornamental Spanish style". This style, and the fact that the building where it stands was intended for the study and performance of music, give the sculpture its name. (Other names for the sculpture sometimes are seen in various sources, including Pastoral Flutist and Youth). The figure itself, a boy in "classic contrapposto stance" playing an elongated flute, was influenced by the 15th century Florentine sculptor Desiderio da Settignano It reflects the overall "Arcadian" theme Hunt intended for Pomona's south campus.The sculpture's harmony with the building surrounding its courtyard setting was described in 1921 as "happily eloquent of the spirit of the place". "The pose is exquisite," reports another journal of the period, "and the design peculiarly appropriate to the Spanish architecture of the beautiful temple of music it is to adorn." In a lecture on the occasion of the Centennial in 2015 of the statue and the building, art historian George Gorse labels the setting "A Pastoral Theatre", and characterizes the sculpture as "Vergilian 'Arcadia' . . . absolutely Vergilian."The sculpture was cast in bronze by the Gorham Company in Providence, R.I. It is life-size, approximately 137 cm (54 in.) in height. Before being delivered to Claremont and installed in Lebus Court, it was exhibited by the Gorham Company at their gallery on Fifth Avenue in New York, and at the Winter Exhibition at the National Academy.After part of the fountain collapsed, the statue was removed in early 2015 while repairs were made. Before its return on 14 August 2015, The Spirit of Spanish Music was restored by conservator Donna Williams, including the repair of the boy's broken flute.

The Claremont Graduate University (CGU) is a private, all-graduate research university in Claremont, California. Founded in 1925, CGU is a member of the Claremont Colleges consortium which includes five undergraduate and two graduate institutions of higher education. The university is organized into seven separate units: the School of Arts & Humanities; School of Community & Global Health; Drucker School of Management; School of Educational Studies; the School of Social Science, Policy, & Evaluation; the Center for Information Systems & Technology; and the Institute of Mathematical Sciences. It is classified among "R2: Doctoral Universities – High research activity."

Scripps College is a private liberal arts women's college in Claremont, California. It was founded as a member of the Claremont Colleges in 1926, a year after the consortium's formation. Journalist and philanthropist Ellen Browning Scripps provided its initial endowment. Scripps is a four-year undergraduate institution and enrolled 958 students as of 2020. It offers instruction in the liberal arts with an emphasis on the humanities, and is known for its extensive interdisciplinary core curriculum. Its 32-acre (13 ha) campus was designed by Gordon Kaufmann in the Spanish Colonial Revival style and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Scripps is regarded as the premier women's college in the West Coast of the United States. It is a top producer of Fulbright students. Its athletes compete on the Claremont-Mudd-Scripps Stags and Athenas joint team in the SCIAC, a Division III conference.

The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College, known colloquially as the Benton, is an art museum at Pomona College in Claremont, California. It was completed in 2020, replacing the Montgomery Art Gallery, which had been home to the Pomona College Museum of Art (PCMA) since 1958. It houses a collection of approximately 18,000 items, including Italian Renaissance panel paintings, indigenous American art and artifacts, and American and European prints, drawings, and photographs. The museum is free to the public.

The Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management, or more commonly, the Drucker School of Management, is the business school of Claremont Graduate University, which is a member of the Claremont Colleges. The school is named in honor of Peter Drucker, who taught management at the school for over 30 years.

Claremont McKenna College (CMC) is a private liberal arts college in Claremont, California. It has a curricular emphasis on government, economics, public affairs, finance, and international relations. CMC is a member of the Claremont Colleges consortium. Founded as a men's college in 1946, CMC became coeducational in 1976. The college focuses primarily on undergraduate education, but in 2007 it established the Robert Day School of Economics and Finance, which offers a master's program in finance. CMC is known for its faculty's conservative political orientation relative to comparable liberal arts colleges. As of 2019, there were 1,338 undergraduate students and postgraduate students.CMC competes in the NCAA Division III's Southern California Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (SCIAC) conference in a joint athletic program with Harvey Mudd College and Scripps College.