Pomona, Pitzer and Scripps Colleges were mentioned in a Sept. 23 report by Amnesty International USA (AIUSA) and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) addressing suppression of “pro-Palestine speech and dissent” across college campuses nationwide. In a statement to TSL, a Pomona spokesperson wrote that the report “makes serious errors, unsupported by the source material.”
The two-year investigation sought to document “the heavy-handed and excessive responses by some university and college administrators and police to campus protests concerning Israel’s assault on Gaza following the Hamas-led attacks in southern Israel on October 7, 2023.” The report included 80 schools across 28 states.
“It really is a multi-layered report that gets to all the different issues that we’ve witnessed over the past two years and compiles it into one particular resource that can hopefully be used by universities but also by students to stand up for students’ rights and faculty’s rights on campus,” Justin Mazzola, deputy director of research at AIUSA, said to TSL.
The investigation began after AIUSA and the ACLU collaborated with Human Rights Watch on an open letter to universities, published on Oct. 31, 2024, emphasizing the right to peaceful protest. After sharing the letter, AIUSA and the ACLU decided to create a more in-depth report, outlining specific alleged violations of students’ rights, including forced removal from protest locations, according to Mazzola.
Scripps was cited in the report for its September 2024 administrative order that The Motley Coffeehouse remove its Palestinian flag, which students reported to Palestine Legal. Scripps did not respond to TSL’s request for comment.
Pitzer is mentioned in the context of a February 2020 warning letter condemning “college-sponsored anti-Semitism” from the David Horowitz Freedom Center to Pomona and Pitzer’s presidents.
The report references Pomona’s disciplinary actions following the “campus demonstration” on Oct. 7, 2024, at Carnegie Hall as part of a trend of “increased surveillance” on campuses nationwide, citing a November 2024 TSL article as evidence, among other sources.
Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr is referenced, with the report stating that she “invoked her ‘extraordinary authority’ to use Wi-Fi signals to trace student participation in an October 7, 2024, campus demonstration and suspend 10 students for the academic year.”
In a statement to TSL, a Pomona spokesperson wrote that the use of extraordinary authority was not invoked when the college tracked Wi-Fi signals, but instead only during the interim suspension process, “given the severity of the alleged infractions.”
On its ”Carnegie Hall Incidents FAQs” page, the college explains that, according to the Pomona College Student Code, “the president shall have the authority to act in extraordinary circumstances to ensure the safety of individuals, the protection of property, and the continuity of the educational process, notwithstanding any other provision in the Student Code or any other College policy to the contrary.”
TSL spoke with two students suspended after the Carnegie demonstration, referred to hereafter as suspended student A and suspended student B. Both recalled receiving an email from the Pomona Dean of Students informing them of their interim suspensions about four days after Oct. 7, 2024.
“They were like, ‘We’re still investigating what you did, but it seems like you’re a threat to campus, so we ask you to remove all your stuff from your dorm,’” suspended student B said. “They revoked our swipe access for every building, except for the dining halls and the dorm buildings.”
Suspended student A recalled that the short turnaround time created difficulties for all of the students notified of their immediate suspension. According to both suspended students, the college also notified them that they were not permitted to stay with other students, regardless of whether they lived on- or off-campus.
“We had less than 12 hours to get all of ourselves ready, find a place to stay, get food, figure out everything we possibly could,” suspended student A said.
Both suspended students said they struggled to locate food and housing on short notice. Suspended student B noted that in their initial communication with the college, Pomona offered to provide assistance to suspended students, but did not do so.
“They had also mentioned, if you felt like you would have food insecurity to reach out, and they would help you with that,” suspended student B said. “And I did reach out about this to them, and I was like ‘Hey, I would love support on this,’ and they sent me a response and said, ‘We’re unable to do so.’”
According to suspended student A, the college responded similarly to their request for housing support.
As Pomona’s investigation unfolded, both students stated that they were initially undergoing the JBoard process, in which a student-led disciplinary body determines responsibility for alleged violations of the student code and assigns appropriate sanctions, while they served their interim suspension. They said they were several steps into the JBoard process before they were notified via email that Starr was invoking extraordinary authority to bypass the procedure.
“It was in the middle of our JBoard process that we got this email, basically saying this process is now irrelevant,” suspended student B said.
“People were scrambling, moving between different houses, struggling to find food,” suspended student A said. “At the very end, after this whole month of us sending repeated appeal letters over and over again, they gave us one meeting for 30 minutes with the president and the two deans.”
The AIUSA-ACLU report also states that “although there was no evidence linking specific students to alleged violations, the university claimed the Wi-Fi signals proved the students’ participation in the demonstration.”
The college spokesperson told TSL that a “range of evidence” beyond Wi-Fi tracking — including photos, videos and eyewitness accounts — was used to link specific students to alleged violations in the Oct. 7 “incident.”
According to suspended students A and B, the college did not present evidence of their individual involvement in initial communications. They said that after writing multiple letters appealing their disciplinary action, the college provided Wi-Fi data as evidence of their participation in the Carnegie demonstration.
“They just said, ‘Here are the Wi-Fi timestamps we saw you connect to. We have your phone connected to Pomona Wi-Fi inside of Carnegie at X time, X time, and X time,’” suspended student A said.
Both suspended students said that no additional evidence of their specific involvement was provided.
“They sent us photos and eyewitness accounts, but they were incredibly general photos of the vandalism, and eyewitness accounts of people who were violent coming in … but none of it had anything to do with us [suspended students],” suspended student A said.
The school’s use of Wi-Fi data to identify individuals who participated in the Carnegie demonstration raised concerns among some students regarding both data privacy and accuracy.
“It really is a multi-layered report that gets to all the different issues that we’ve witnessed over the past two years and compiles it into one particular resource that can hopefully be used by universities but also by students to stand up for students’ rights and faculty’s rights on campus,” Justin Mazzola, deputy director of research at AIUSA, said to TSL.
“They used Wi-Fi signals to think that some people were in the building, and those people had evidence that they weren’t in the building,” suspended student B said. “So this evidence is not fully accurate.”
According to the college’s website, the information about students’ Wi-Fi connections was collected in accordance with the Privacy Policy in the Informational Technology Services Policy section of the Student Handbook.
“The College’s computer and network resources are the College’s property, and students should not have any expectation of privacy when utilizing these resources,” the policy states.
In their statement to TSL, the Pomona spokesperson also disputed the report’s characterization of the events at Carnegie on Oct. 7.
“The report makes the insinuation that the underlying incident was a mere protest,” they said. “… This was not a wholly peaceful protest. The extent of the vandalism displaced faculty, staff and students for days.”
The suspended students stated that they did not personally witness any of the “unpeaceful” aspects of the protest.
“I didn’t know that vandalism had occurred until after, when it was reported,” suspended student A said.
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