The Claremont Collegian was established by Ed Wood, its first Editor-in-Chief, in January of 1966. The publication was a merger between The Student Life of Pomona College and The Associate of Claremont Men’s College, Harvey Mudd College, and Scripps College. Publication was approved on a one-semester trial basis with the goal of increasing communication and coordination across the five colleges. The first issue was published on February 19, 1966 and announced the Collegian’s publication board which consisted of three Pomona College representatives, two Claremont Men’s College representatives, and one representative each from Scripps College, Harvey Mudd College, and Pitzer College.

The Collegian was regularly debated throughout its eleven-year-run, beginning with a protest by former Student Life employees who were upset by the assumption of The Student Life into the new Collegian. This protest spawned a privately-financed mimeographed newsletter that ran in opposition to the Collegian, titled The Abbreviated Student Life. The student body was largely in support of maintaining both The Student Life and the Collegian and the papers began running concurrently in 1967, though this caused increased tension between the staffs of the two papers.

In the early 1970s, issues surrounding the Collegian’s funding arose, with writers for The Student Life upset about the $35,000 that the Collegian received each year from the ASPC (compared to their $4,000). They argued that the Collegian was a poorly-executed newspaper that lost money and overpaid its staff. They cited $12,000 worth of debt accumulated by the Collegian, $4,000 of which had to be assumed by the ASPC.

Volume 23 is the final volume of the Collegian, with its last issue published on May 19th, 1977. The final issue cites “a long period of funding difficulties, disputes with student body governments and organizational problems" as key reasons why the Publications Board voted to dissolve the paper. This decision was unanimous, sans the Collegian’s publisher at the time, Steven Allan Temkin, who abstained.