College Towns

In less than five minutes, Pomona College freshman Jason McDevitt can walk from his dorm room to the middle of the quaint, leafy row of shops known as the Claremont “village.”

But that’s a stroll McDevitt, along with many of his fellow students at the five undergraduate Claremont colleges, says he rarely makes.

“The village is ideal for a romantic date, but I haven’t done that yet, ‘cause I’m ugly,” McDevitt said, his sly grin belying this statement.

The boutiques and restaurants adjacent to campus do not really cater to the colleges’ 5,200 undergraduates, said Diana Miller, owner of Bella Cosa, a high-end gift shop across the street from McDevitt’s dorm.

Pomona College--founded in 1887 in the adjacent city of Pomona--moved to Claremont in 1888 and grew up with the city, which was founded in 1887 and incorporated in 1907. Scripps, Harvey-Mudd, Claremont McKenna and Pitzer colleges were added to the campus between 1926 and 1963, as eastern Los Angeles County boomed in population. The colleges, specialized and intimate but offering many of the benefits of major universities, were modeled after England’s Oxford and Cambridge universities.

But the students do not dominate Claremont, a town of 34,000, the way their English counterparts do their little villages.

“I love the students,” Miller said. “But they don’t really come here. My sense is they’re studying.”

Not so, said juniors Sonja Klopf and Kristin Connor. They just can’t find what they need--movie theaters, fast food, clothing stores that are open in the evening--in the village.

So they drive to nearby malls or stay on campus, where music performances, movies and, of course, parties abound.

Down the block, in a restaurant noticeably devoid of students, 20-year Claremont resident Rick Moore said he thinks it’s a shame there is not more interaction between the school and the town.

“I think the colleges want to make the gesture, and the town does too, but they just can’t figure out how to do it,” he said.

Students say busting their parties is not the gesture they had in mind.

But McDevitt and his friends said they don’t condone students’ call for a boycott of the village to punish townspeople for their refusal to tolerate pulsating music.

“I do feel welcome in the village,” he said. “I went to get a haircut the other day, and the woman told me she hopes I get really good grades this semester.”