Protesters rally to overturn student suspensions.
On Monday, November 25th, lawyers for Pomona College responded to a November 13th letter from five legal advocacy organizations claiming that Pomona violated the free speech and due process rights of students suspended for participating in the October 7th takeover of Carnegie Hall. Pomona’s letter was shared to students over email by President Gabi Starr.
Derek Ishikawa, a Pomona alumnus and partner at Hirschfeld Kraemer, wrote the response on Pomona’s behalf. Ishikawa’s letter denies any wrongdoing by Pomona, claiming that the letter by the legal groups “contains incomplete facts and other materially inaccurate statements that result in incorrect application of the relevant law.”
The initial letter, jointly signed by the ACLU of Southern California, Asian Law Caucus, Center for Protest Law & Litigation, National Lawyers Guild, and Palestine Legal, claimed multiple violations of the suspended students’ rights. In punishing students, it alleged, Starr had violated the First Amendment and California’s “Leonard Law,” which requires private, secular colleges to abide by First Amendment standards in governing speech on their campuses. The letter further claimed that by suspending students for vandalism, despite there being no evidence of any particular students having perpetrated the extensive vandalism in Carnegie Hall, Starr had violated students’ right to Fair Procedure by punishing them under the unconstitutional theory of “guilt-by-association.”
In his response, Ishikawa highlights that Pomona did not suspend or discipline any student for vandalism, and that the only conduct students have been sanctioned for “[involved] disruption to the College’s academic operations.” He adds that the college used “individualized, student-specific data” to identify students, and did not punish any students on the basis of guilt by association.
Ishikawa then addresses the Leonard Law, calling the initial letter’s invocation of free speech rights “inapplicable to the factual circumstances at issue.” While Ishikawa acknowledges Pomona’s obligation to respect First Amendment standards, he writes: “[U]nder longstanding precedent, schools that are subject to the First Amendment have a special interest in regulating speech that ‘materially disrupts classwork or involves substantial disorder or invasion of the rights of others.’” The initial letter, he notes, “does not and cannot identify any legal authority that obligates institutions to look the other way while academic operations are effectively incapacitated and the rights of other students to pursue their coursework are intruded upon.”
Some students have defended themselves by claiming ignorance of the fact that Carnegie Hall is an academic building, or that they were unaware that the protest was in violation of policy. “The College’s position,” Ishikawa writes, is that students “should have known that it was an academic building (the majority of protestors displaced an ongoing scheduled academic course, taking over a classroom for their own teach-in).” With respect to ignorance of policy violations, Ishikawa adds that the Demonstration Policy explicitly states that ““[i]gnorance of this policy or lack of intent to violate this policy is not an acceptable justification for violating it.”
Addressing the Fair Procedure claims, Ishikawa notes that Pomona conducted a “multi-stage process that complied with Fair Procedure principles,” and that the groups’ letter was likely “drafted well prior to the completion of the College’s investigation and disciplinary process,” rendering its factual claims “incomplete and inaccurate.” In the groups’ letter, they accuse Pomona of violating Boermeester v. Carry, a 2023 California Supreme Court case that required colleges to provide “accused students with notice of the charges and a meaningful opportunity to be heard.” Ishikawa argues that the initial suspensions were in compliance with Boermeester and Pomona’s Student Code, and that students had multiple hearings and meetings, including one before the Preliminary Sanctions Review Board, and then meetings with Starr, Dean of Students Avis Hinkson, and Dean of the College Melanie Wu. In addition, Ishikawa claims that students were presented with “a detailed notice of the allegations, along with related supporting evidence.”
“The College understands that this process has been difficult for the students that were suspended,” Ishikawa writes in conclusion, but it has “focused its efforts on maintaining its academic environment, one that has been visited by deep polarization.”
In response to the suspensions, Pomona’s student government called for a “black-out” day in which students wore black clothing to silently protest the College’s actions. Students also organized a letter writing campaign to demand Pomona’s administration overturn the suspensions, and an Instagram account representing the 12 suspended students garnered over 800 followers.
Once published, the original letter from the civil rights groups was heavily promoted by campus organizations allied with student protesters. On November 15th, the suspended students held a press conference in Claremont’s El Barrio Park. Speakers—including two suspended students, a faculty member, and College staff—frequently referenced the letter, and organizers held a banner reading “Pomona College: Drop the Illegal Suspensions, Lift the Illegal Bans.” No representatives from the civil rights groups who penned the letter were present.
Afterwards, attendees accompanied one of the suspended students to campus, where he cleared out his dorm room under the watch of Campus Safety officers and Pomona Housing and Residence Life staff. The last suspended student to clear his belongings from campus, he spoke to the students who had gathered outside his room in support, telling them that the administration's hard crackdown was a sign that the protest movement could win.
Asked how they would proceed following Ishikawa’s letter, none of the legal groups responded to the Independent’s requests for comment.