On Oct. 9, Claremont McKenna College’s Vice President of Student Affairs Diana Graves sent an email announcing that CMC students could apply to be in a working group to revise the Claremont Colleges Policy on Demonstrations and CMC’s Freedom of Expression Policy. The working group was conceptualized in Apr. 2024, when students at CMC voted on a resolution calling for its establishment.
The working group comes amidst Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr’s recent suspension of 12 students for the remainder of the 2024-2025 academic year without complete judicial hearings, and her ban on dozens of non-Pomona 5C students from Pomona’s campus following the vandalism of Carnegie Hall during a pro-Palestinian demonstration on Oct. 7.
According to Graves’ email, CMC’s dean of students met with the authors of the resolution and the president of the Associated Students of CMC (ASCMC) to discuss next steps.
“The meeting was collegial and constructive; all agreed that freedom of expression is of critical importance at CMC and recognized that reasonable limits to what is acceptable or not on our campus should be clearly communicated and broadly understood,” the email reads.
To find the balance between freedom of expression and its limits, student leads in the working group — who work closely with administration and trustees to review current policies and help write new ones — are currently reviewing the existing Claremont Colleges demonstration policy. They are also selecting students for a committee to meet with staff, the president’s cabinet, public safety and CMC’s legal team to assess these policies.
Sofia Arzola SC ’28 said she noticed a significant portion of her classmates in a class on Pomona’s campus were gone, and many students had to join through Zoom. Arzola alleged that the absence of many of the students was due to the bans and suspensions and estimated that the usual class of 35 students was down to 15-20 people.
“That made the class feel incredibly tense and awkward,” Arzola said. “That class meets only once a week, so the time that we do get to spend is really valuable.”
Arzola said she believed that some of the students demonstrating in the Oct. 7 protest were likely unaware of the policies at the 7Cs, noting that students should be made more aware of their rights and responsibilities.
“[I don’t think it’s right] to be suspended and not really have any sort of warnings or know about [the policies] to begin with,” Arzola said. “I feel like it caught a lot of students off guard.”
Arzola added the need for strengthened collaboration between the students and administration to establish respect and understanding between all parties involved.
“At the end of the day, we just want to go to a college that reflects our opinions, but also feel that we can safely express our opinions at that school,” Arzola said.
According to their website, CMC aims to promote “civil dialogue” among students and faculty through several initiatives, including the Marian Miner Cook Athenaeum, Open Academy and the Civility, Access, Resources and Expression (CARE) Center.
According to Elijah Emory-Muhammad CM ’26, CMC’s student leads, who are currently working on the Claremont Colleges demonstration policy, share the same goal of open dialogue, but also have aspirations to create real change.
“They [the administration] tends to leave it there, but we want to have more activism that’s outside of just dialogue, because dialogue by itself isn’t going to bring change,” Emory-Muhammad said.
Emory-Muhammad shared that as a Black and Muslim-identifying student, he, like many other marginalized students, feels personally impacted by these issues.
“When you come from a marginalized identity, you tend to be on the front lines of wanting to organize and demonstrate,” Emory-Muhammad said.
As a student lead, Emory-Muhammad’s role is to deconstruct, analyze and amend the current policy before pushing it forward to trustees for approval. He noted lessening punishments for students as one of his main priorities.
“In the future, I hope that suspending students is a very, very last resort,“ he said.
He highlighted the power imbalance between administration and students as often being problematic in situations such as calling law enforcement on student demonstrators.
“It’s left to the president to make that final decision if they want the police to arrive on campus,” Emory-Muhammed said. “We feel like that’s a disproportionate amount of power.”
Diana Graves, Vice President of Student Affairs at CMC declined TSL’s request for an interview.
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