The other blue wave: diving into the 5Cs’ blue-haired population

This semester, I noticed that blue-haired students kept spawning. Intrigued, I approached nine of these students to find out how this trend came out of the blue. Though there were shared sentiments among students — being blue helped them stand out, pushed back against stereotypes or brought them closer to themselves and others — everyone had a different story to share. My first exposure to a blue-haired person at the Claremont Colleges was my first-year fall, when Phoebe Fogel SC ’28 and I took “Introductory Ancient Greek.” Fogel, a Classics and English major from Massachusetts, dyed her hair blue the summer before her senior year of high school. Her explanation: “I just think it looked cool.” I soon found out that many of my blue-haired subjects are new to the 5Cs, including Miriam Allen SC ’30 and Walker Lewis PO ’30. Allen and Lewis, who both hail from Berkeley, California, felt that changing their hair solidified their sense of selves in moments of instability.

This excerpt comes from the named source. Read the original for the full reporting.