Since achieving statehood in 1850, California has retained its appeal to people across the country. As the most populous U.S. state, California seems, on the surface, like a great place to live, work, and study. With its oceans, mountains, deserts, and forests, it is perhaps one of the most beautiful U.S. states. It’s also extremely wealthy; if it were a country, California would have the fifth-largest economy in the world. It seems that California is the epitome of the Ameri

A few weeks ago, I took an Uber from a student journalism event at the Richard M. Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda to Claremont. Right as I got in the car, the driver struck me, and my editor, as…interesting. He was wearing a t-shirt reading “Trump 2020” across the front. He asked us if we were college students, and when we answered affirmatively, he laughed. “I bet you don’t like Trump then, huh?” I told him that, while I hadn’t been old enough to vote in the 2016 e

Pomona College’s Politics Department has postponed a Friday event with California Democratic assemblywoman and alumna Cristina Garcia, after news broke that Garcia is under investigation for sexually assaulting a legislative aide. In an email to the Independent, Pomona College Politics Department chair Professor Susan McWilliams confirmed that Garcia’s talk will be postponed. While the original event description lauded Garcia, the current chair of the Women’s Caucus, as a pro

Welcome to West California, everyone. Well… if Tim Draper get his way. Draper’s idea to break up California into six different states has been trending across Facebook recently with students of the Claremont Colleges, and, surprisingly, most of the responses have been generally supportive of the idea. Draper argues that California’s government is too out of touch with the people, and that, therefore, California should split up into six states to bring government down to a mor

In the April 2014 issue of the Independent, my dear friend Martin Sartorius makes clear his distaste for Silicon Valley billionaire Tim Draper’s plan to split the Golden State into “Six Californias.” It is, no doubt, a crazy idea. Come November, I’ll probably vote against it. From a practical perspective alone, the thought of splitting one state into six is intimidating. There is, however, a case to be made for dividing California as outlined in Mr. Draper’s proposal. In fact