There is a strange link -- in my mind, at least -- between the events of Halloween night, 1984, an event that will occur tonight, President-elect Obama, Val Kilmer, and the OTHER big winner on November 4th. This will be a bit messy.

Halloween night, 1984. I was a 17 year old freshman at Pomona College (http://www.pomona.edu/). I distinctly remember suiting up that evening and taking the bus ride over to Occidental College for the annual varsity football matchup between the two SCIAC teams. That year was not a good one for Pomona, and Oxy was a league powerhouse. We got our clocks cah-leaned. The bus ride home was a lot longer than the bus ride there.

Harwood Court was the dorm I lived in that year. This is a beautiful building that has been used in many films and commercials. It was used that year, for instance, as a set in the film "Real Genius" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real_Genius) ("This is Jesus, Kent. And you've been a very naughty boy." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3CiX4JokAyM) and for a Sea Breeze commercial. That latter was a good day. :)

Returning home from the massive defeat, I remember crashing, just crashing, in my room there, falling asleep from exhaustion despite a legendary party raging just outside in the courtyard, with immortal punk rockers X (http://www.xtheband.com/) being the band on stage. (Exene's current "Sleep In Spite of the Thunder" tour is aptly named for that night.)

Tonight, November 8, 2008, Pomona and Oxy will clash again on the gridiron. I fear the final result may be similar to the year I played: the Sagehens are 2-5 (http://www.physical-education.pomona.edu/mens/football/scheduleresults20...) to the Tigers' perfect 7-0 (http://www.oxyathletics.com/sports/fball/2008-09/schedule). However it turns out, though, I am sure that memories will be made tonight just as they were made 24 years ago. That's what sports give you, win or lose.

So. All of this so far is just a rambling preamble, meant to say that my thoughts today turned back to my days in college. I learned many things from football, but by far and away my biggest take-away from my undergrad years was that I learned how to think. Not what to think, how. I remember, for example, reading Descartes' Discourse that freshman year (which I had purchased from the Pomona bookstore for a DIME) and being utterly stopped in my tracks. I had arrived on campus a physics major; I left a philosophy major. That's not to say anything bad about science. It's to say that one of the things that liberal arts colleges like Pomona and Oxy (and Westmont (http://www.westmont.edu), where I later transferred to and graduated from) do so well is give students the tools needed to deal effectively with ANY subject. "The heart of a Pomona education," says the Pomona website, "lies in training the mind broadly and deeply, in developing the kind of intellectual resilience that equips our students for lifelong learning." I firmly believe that and stand up for the value of a liberal arts education. I still think it is the finest type of education a person can get.

And that gets to the real point of my post: that liberal arts education won big on Tuesday, too: http://www.oxy.edu/x8270.xml. Congratulations to my old rival college. You've done well. And my hope is that the intellectual foundations you laid in the freshman Obama will benefit us all now. I think they will (http://www.newsweek.com/id/167618).