"But they were part of our master plan to make the Web site a popular portal for CMC students." And as Enrich added features, the other four founders offered support and advice. In the spring of 1999, the site introduced claremontmckenna.com e-mail addresses and the Insider's Guide to CMC, a Web page for prospective students promising, among other things, "the dirt on CMC," written by Ben Mori '01. Traffic on the site grew to 400 unique visitors a day—considerable, but a fraction of the thousands of unique visitors to CMC's official site. By this year, their online message board was averaging more than 100 posts a day, and claremontmckenna.com had grown into the source for news and information about student life.

This May, after almost three years of negotiations, CMC and the founders reached an agreement. The founders agreed to relinquish the name and launch a new site, cmcstudents.com, which will be linked to the old site for a year. The College set aside restricted funds of $50,000 to cover operating expenses for 10 years. Dan Carroll '04, Jon Huang '04, Marie Kurahashi '03, Dave Mahler '03, Sarah Rice '04, and Dave Shlachter '03 were named by the founders as the new student managers of the site. In addition, CMC also agreed to fund three scholarships in the cmcstudents.com name: one administered by the Robert A. Day 4+1 Program to be given to a CMC student entrepreneur; one administered by CMC's Salvatori Center to be given to a student conducting research in civil liberties and new technologies; and a fund administered by the Kravis Leadership Institute to support Web-based student projects. The operating expense fund and the annual scholarships are being funded by donor gifts for these purposes. (This cover story was also part of the agreement.)

Having earned their degrees and moved on beyond Claremont, the founders look back on their experiences with pride. "We thought there was a huge void at the school. We took the initiative, and we filled it successfully. We've successfully completed everything we set out to do," says Alvillar, who leaves CMC for an investment banking position with Goldman Sachs in New York.

"We had a lot of run-ins with the administration—it would have been easy to back down," Prager says. "I'm really proud of us for sticking together." Prager also is taking the investment banking route—with Bear Sterns in New York. Enrich, banking on his ability to ferret out a good story, leaves CMC for journalism, starting with a stint at U.S. News & World Report.

"It's probably a pretty common entrepreneurial step to start a venture, not completely sure of what you're going to do but with an overall vision and a hope it's going to grow into something," muses Grossmann, whose senior thesis on multiparty democracy in America took best thesis honors from CMC's government department. He is pursuing a doctorate in political science at the University of California at Berkeley.

"What we did here totally epitomizes CMC's ideal of 'Leaders in the Making,'" says Erhardt, who will join McKinsey as a consultant. "We recognized an opportunity, planned out what it would take, utilized new technologies, and did this all by working as a group."