But it was Enrich and Grossmann who did the bulk of the work building the site, and both are open about another trait they had—the desire to tick off authority figures. "The Drudge Report blossomed about nine months prior to claremontmckenna.com," says Enrich, "and it was pretty influential on Matt and me. I was very confident that what we were planning was legal and appropriate, but it did appeal to us to rile up the administration."

Enrich's first posts to claremontmckenna.com got students and faculty paying attention quickly. Besides photos taken of CMCers in the midst of raucous weekend parties, they posted two stories: "The Horrendous Hub," an unfavorable review of CMC's student center, and "The War," which used anonymous sources to detail a rift in CMC's faculty concerning accreditation.

In early 1999, CMC administration attempted to stop the use of the claremontmckenna.com domain name, offering to refund the $150 registration fee. The founders found this offensive—especially at a time when dot-com stocks were soaring and the domain-name trade was big business (with business.com and autos.com selling for $7.5 million and $2.5 million, respectively). The application of trademark and copyright laws to the Web was being decided in court battles daily. Household names such as Volkswagen, Harvard, the New York Yankees, and Coca-Cola all were either entering lawsuits or settling to protect their intellectual property.

"From the start, the school was very emphatic that the problem was not with the content of the site," says Enrich. "It was about the name—about their intellectual property."

While CMC and the five went back and forth wrangling over the name, Enrich broadcast daily updates of the dispute on claremontmckenna.com. Fellow classmates and alumni visiting the site witnessed a real-life soap opera unfolding, with CMC Goliath to claremontmckenna.com's David. The founders encouraged supporters to e-mail CMC, and hundreds of students and alumni did. All the while, Enrich and company continued to improve the site, adding a review of Kevin Starr's official history of CMC, as well as more stories of campus life. And that February, they were tipped off to Pamela Gann's selection as the fourth president of CMC—days before the information was public. "I actually called President Gann at her home in North Carolina that night," Enrich remembers. "She was friendly, but she wouldn't discuss it with me." He also debuted an interactive guide to student body elections, with photos and personal statements from each candidate.

It wasn't long before claremontmckenna.com's gritty content led to sticky legal issues for the College. Enrich's exposes on student body fund mismanagement often accused fellow CMCers of abusing positions of authority for personal gain—sometimes relying on sketchy sources. And while CMC's code of conduct forbids injurious speech about fellow students, California's state law upholds U.S. Constitutional rights to free speech in private colleges. The result: long hours of mediation with Dean of Students W. Torrey Sun and a retired judge.

Enrich pushed to keep building more features, adding a guide to nearby restaurants, a list of online radio stations, weather forecasts, and more. "Many of these were no more than a link to a page on Yahoo! or the Weather Channel," Enrich explains.

Claremontmckenna.com's very thorough Insider's Guide offers a detailed photo tour of campus, right down to the lawn chairs.