Pomona College’s budget cut affects departments and student organizations.
Students and faculty at Pomona College are reportedly facing difficulties in securing funding from the college for their projects and initiatives, with some sources claiming that administrators have significantly cut budgets across nearly all areas of student life.
While administration did not respond to comment, Eloísa Tirres PO ’25 — who has spoken with several faculty members at length — said that they seem to have cut budgets for numerous enterprises on campus.
“The school’s budget cuts have affected all academic departments, which is really unheard of for an institution of our caliber,” Tirres said.
Tirres said that the impacts of the cuts are already being felt across campus. In Pomona’s history department, an American history professorship was recently eliminated. According to Tirres, this elimination complicates a student’s pursuit of the history major.
“People have to go to CMC or Scripps if they want to meet the requirement for studying U.S. history,” she said.
Tirres also expressed concern for the potential long-term effects of this budget shortage-induced elimination.
“When you cut a position out entirely, you’re not able to apply for it anymore,” she said. “That position can’t be opened up or filled by anyone. You’re essentially just shrinking the department, and when you shrink the department, the school is saying, ‘Oh this isn’t as important to us anymore.’”
Department liaisons — who act as intermediaries between academic departments and the student body — have also been impacted by budget cuts. According to some liaisons, their jobs are no longer paid positions.
Angel Yuan PO ’25, an international relations liaison, spoke about her reaction upon learning that she would no longer be paid for her work.
“When the Academic Coordinator for our department notified me that liaisons will no longer be getting paid, I was shocked,” Yuan said.
As a liaison, Yuan is responsible for creating opportunities for students within the department; her duties include planning and advertising events, coordinating between faculty and student affairs and answering student inquiries, among other various tasks.
Through the end of last semester, many academic departments paid their student liaisons hourly or provided a stipend. However, according to Yuan, once the Dean of Students office became aware of budgetary constraints in certain departments —which had already shifted some liaison positions to a volunteer basis — they concluded that it would be best to mandate that all positions become volunteer roles.
Vidusshi Hingad PO ’25, a psychology liaison, said that the decision could have been a matter of equity for liaison jobs across different departments. Still, Yuan expressed that making liaisons a volunteer role, instead of a paid one, was neither logical nor beneficial.
“If some departments aren’t able to pay their liaisons, the dean’s office should take steps to allocate additional funding to those departments,” Yuan said. “I don’t think the best solution there was to just cut funding altogether.”
Yuan also emphasized that the equity argument falls through in light of certain departments finding loopholes to continue paying their liaisons.
“It’s also frustrating to find that some departments ultimately still found ways to get around the dean’s restriction, so it’s still not 100 percent equitable at the end of the day,” Yuan said.
Yuan expressed concern that turning a liaison’s job into a volunteer position diminishes the efforts and responsibilities they shoulder.
“[We] aren’t getting compensated for the work we put in, and some students have to take on more jobs because this isn’t paid anymore,” Yuan said.
On The Loose (OTL), the Claremont Colleges’ robust outdoor club, has also struggled with similar monetary issues, according to staff members. The club relies on funding from the five colleges to provide these experiences and maintain its daily operations. For the 2024-2025 school year, OTL experienced a 70 percent decrease in funding due to Pomona’s budgetary cuts, resulting in a dip from around $12,000 last spring to $2,800 this fall.
“This is unbelievably frustrating, not only because the budget cut undermines the services of our club, but also because it came without any explanation or acknowledgment surrounding the reasoning and effect of such an extraordinary shift,” OTL staff Frances Carleson, Saya Kim-Suzuki, Stella Guy Warren said in an email exchange with TSL.
OTL staff reached out to ASPC and budget committees seeking justification for funding cuts but said that they were met with non direct and illusive responses.
“They just told us, ‘many clubs have received funding cuts’ and that ‘the amount was determined after a thorough analysis of expenditures from the past three years,’” OTL staff said. “This does not make sense considering we did meet our entire $12,000 budget from last year.”
This year, OTL has been forced to turn down many trip proposals due to a current inability to financially support them, leading to a growing sense of disappointment and frustration from OTL’s over 300 active members, staff members said.
“We are trying as hard as possible to maintain focus on our larger goals at hand, but we rely on funding to create the opportunities that OTL offers,” they said.
They added that they fear this cutback could diminish student engagement and community building, both key aspects of OTL’s mission.
However, OTL staff said that although funding is down, morale among student members remains high. OTL staff emphasized their dedication to keeping the club alive, applying for individual funding from the campuses, attending budget meetings and actively brainstorming creative ways to fundraise.
“Despite kicking off the semester with harsh financial difficulties, we are, and will continue to, prevail in our mission to be fancy-free and On The Loose,” they said.
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