Damian R. Wilson

A particular kind of love emerges when choice is suddenly revoked. Not violently, as if someone stormed in and took your options away, but politely — through circumstance. Through geography. Through an institution that

On Wednesday evening, the Watson Lecture opened not with fire but with air. Professor François Tissot began by recalling a Los Angeles where smog once pressed so thick against the city that children were excused from school and pedestrians wore gas masks on Hollyw

Ricketts Hovse hosted a Norse-themed interhouse party Saturday night, transforming the space with decorated columns, runic wall designs, and DJ booth styled in Ricketts’ signature gothic aesthetic. The theme was introduced through a written narrative emailed to the student body, drawing on Norse mythology and framing the event as a journey from Múspellsheimr and Hel to Asgard and Valhalla. Stylized runes and signatures reinforced the visual motif. Inside, low lighting and backlit runic artwork

On Wednesday evening, the Watson Lecture opened not with fire but with air. Professor François Tissot began by recalling a Los Angeles where smog once pressed so thick against the city that children were excused from school and pedestrians wore gas masks on Hollywood Boulevard. You could see it in the photographs: the sky collapsed into a yellow-gray ceiling, visibility reduced to a block, eyes burning. (Tissot recalled how someone, seeing in these photos gas-masked men of the 1950s, asked if th

Oscar Wilde subtitled The Importance of Being Earnest “A Trivial Comedy for Serious People,” but the Theater Arts at Caltech (TACIT) cast made clear in their recent productio

Senior Director for Campus Activities and Alumni Engagement, Tom Mannion, has been a fixture of Caltech life since 1993. His name is synonymous with many of the Institute’s most cherished traditions: House dinners, Cooking 101, the Olive Harvest, and the vibrancy of student life. To learn more ab

![Photos from the pre-year field trip. Clockwise from top left: Prof. Paul Asimow and company—TA Yuri Tamama riding shotgun—on the road to the Coso geothermal plant, students stand in front of the Earthquake Fault on Mammoth Mountain, a

Richard Kipling, former director of the Los Angeles Times’ Minority Editorial Training Program (Metpro), advocate for diversity in the newsroom, and longstanding advisor of The California Tech, passed away on October 27 following a str

Page Hovse kicked off Interhouse season with a full-throttle throwback to the year 2000—back when the world braced for computer doom and dial-up tone

What are your histories at Caltech? Chris: So I was brought on as the Student Affairs case manager, and when I started and the scope of my role was specifically case management for students of concern. Over the course of the last two years, that’s shifted and developed into my role now as the Director of the Center, where I continue to provide leadership to the CARE team, and also develop Accessibility Services while casting a vision for the future of student support at Caltech. Jocelyn:

On October 13th, JPL announced that it will lay off roughly 550 employees—about 11 percent of its workforce—in what Lab Director Dave Gallagher described as a “reorganization” effort to “secure JPL’s future” through leaner operations and refocused priorities. The layoffs, affecting staff across technical, business, and support divisions, mark JPL’s fourth major reduction in the past two years, following cuts that eliminated more than 850 p

Dear reader, The California Tech is at once delighted and horrified to announce that we have, as of October 2nd of this year, been cited in another publication. Namely, by the National Association of Scholars (NAS), a conservative 501©(3) founded in 1987 for the preservation of “Western intellectual heritage.” In other words, we happened to wind up in an alt-right think piece that, while using an LLM to make its

Content warning: This article contains brief mention of suicide. A small layout hiccup in our last issue left Joseph Greenwell captioned incorrectly, featuring Betsy Mitchell’s instead of his own. (Greenwell/Mitchell’s inscribed purp

[This article has two parts, between Damian’s and Camilla’s perspective:] The email pops up on my screen: of course, today is FoodFest! Who knows what surprises Tom Mannion—the mastermind of it all—has planned for us. I was finishing my last physics problem when suddenly Californian tunes started whistling through the Fleming window

This fall, Caltech introduced its pilot Integrated Core curriculum, a new approach to the first-year experience designed by faculty members collaborating across all five divisions. The program emerged from two years of faculty discussions convened by the Provost and Vice Provost for Education, focused on how to improve retention of foundational material and rekindle the sense of excitement students bring to campus. Rather than teaching physics, chemistry, biology, earth science, and math in iso

Hi, friends! When public voices—whether late-night hosts or national reporters—find themselves censored or silenced for speaking plainly about those in power, the role of independent student journalism becomes all the more vital. A campus newspaper is not a frivolous exercise in layout and deadlines: it is one of the final spaces where young writers can question authority, challenge orthodoxy, and tell the truth without corporate approval or political clearance. At Caltech, where scientific ri

On May 3rd, Frautschi Hall, 7 p.m., as part of MACH 33: The Caltech Festival of New

I am obsessed with David Lynch. Maybe unhealthily so. Few directors feel as fluent in the art of the somnambulistic; I know of no other director who could so deftly craft phantasmagorical operas of the manifold dream-nightmare that is the human experience. Desperate for Lynchian vibes at 3 a.m. one recent night, I sifted through Spotify playlists until I stumbled upon Peggy Lee—specifically one of her most popular songs, first performed in 1969. The song is based on Thomas Mann’s 1896 short sto

Contrary to a certain rumor, this year’s Senior Prank did not involve placing a Cybertruck on the roof of Beckman Auditorium. Instead, we celebrated Nobel Laureate Prof. Kip Thorne’s 85th birthday foll

![Protestors from the Caltech (UAW 2478) and USC (UAW 872) contingents march through Downtown Los Angele

At the Kill the Cuts rally on April 8th, I gave the following speech to Caltech and USC contingents in front of the 300 North Los Angeles Federal Building. I hope its words resonate with the current scientific/political/cultural moment. They represent my truest feelings, the joyous

On April 12th, as part of Make-A-Difference (MAD) Day with the Caltech Y, seven other Caltech community members and I joined Lila Rodriguez-Aceves at the Chief Ya’anna Regenerative Learning Village—12 acres of unceded land in El Sereno, ab

Last Monday, in celebration of Cinco de Mayo, a special dinner in Br

JPL implemented its third round of layoffs in 2024 on November 13, cutting 325 employees—roughly 5% of its workforce. This latest reduction follows earlier waves: 100 contractors in January and 570 additional employees and contractors in February. As a result, JPL’s workforce now stands at approximately 5,500 employees. These job cuts stem from a funding crisis centered around the Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, a flagship NASA initiative designed to retrieve and analyze Martian rock and dust

![Cast of Earth Data, from left to right: Kathryn Bikle, Ellis Spickermann, Cai Tong Ng, Jocelyn Argueta, Joony Kim, Anya Janowski, Armin Kleinboehl, the author, Maria Azcona Baez, Eric Smith, Joey Jefferson, Julian Wagner, Solvin Sigurdson, Jessica Kilgore, Josef Svoboda, Leslie Maxfield, Boyuan Chen, Maat Braaten. Just out of frame are Joži McKiernan and Michael Gutierrez.](https://xguzskbxiptvhbyggkpl.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/media/1411cbde-6d28-80b8-96d1-fe99ceb2d99f/5181bbfc6a93

On November 13, JPL laid off 325 employees, or 5% of its workforce. This is the Lab’s third round of layoffs in 2024: first was the January reduction of 100 on-site contractors, followed by the February layoffs of 530 employees and 40 additional contractors. As a result, the JPL workforce currently stands at roughly 5,500 employees. These reductions stem from a funding crisis for the Mars Sample Return mission, which intends to

Mannion’s review: Casa Bianca is located at 1650 Colorado Boulevard in Eagle Rock. This stretch of Colorado has become quite the destination for good food over the past few years. You will find Milk Farm, Lemongrass Café, Oinkster, and many other good places to eat or to buy food. For those of you who do not know Eagle Rock, it is the area where you will find

_“When wireless is perfectly applied the whole earth will be converted into a huge brain, which in fact it is, all things being particles of a real and rhythmic whole. We shall be abl

Background The Center for Technology and Management Education (CTME) is a relatively unknown subdivision of Caltech’s Department of Engineering and Applied Sciences. According to their website, the purpose of the CTME is to “elevate individuals and organizations, fostering innovation and driving transformative growth.” To this end, they claim to offer the “best programs and courses” through their “rewarding, practical, and economical approach to professional education.” Most of these progra

Red Door: the campus café so inextricable from Caltech existence that it requires no introduction. How, then, to reword this introduction for the fourth entry in this series? As part of an ongoing effort to make the voices of Red Door staff heard in The California Tech, ensuing something of a hiatus in recent issues, the following interview was conducted with Deveon Howard, the Assistant Manager of Red Door. ![Photo of Manager Deveon Howard, standing on the lawn outside Red Door with a smile