Hours after graduating, members of the Pomona College class of 2026 gathered for a final celebration in the courtyard of Clark V. Their last night in Claremont began on Pomona’s north campus and ended on Platt Boulevard in a confrontation with the Claremont Police Department (CPD), after being followed across campuses by Campus Safety.
Multiple Housing and Residence Life (HRL) student employees commented on the abnormality of Pomona’s response to the party.
An anonymous student employee, who will be referred to as HRL student employee A, said they had “never really heard of CPD being called” in this context.
Lawrence Stampino-Strain PO ’26, formerly a Resident Advisor (RA) for three years, said the CPD being called was “definitely out of the ordinary, 100 percent. Calling the police…in my three years as an RA, I’ve never seen that.”
What students described as a disproportionately punitive response prompted TSL to investigate how Pomona and the broader consortium enforce residence life policies, particularly as they relate to The Claremont Colleges Services’ (TCCS) Campus Safety and the CPD. This investigation, conducted over the summer, entailed nine student interviews, the solicitation of public records and analyses of documents that might further clarify policy enforcement methods, such as Pomona College’s Student Handbook.
Seniors gathered in the courtyard of Clark V, a Pomona dorm primarily housing seniors, around 11 p.m. on May 17 with alcohol and a speaker. The celebration had been informally organized by a few seniors, including Emma Trieweiler PO ’26 and Stampino-Strain, ahead of move-out the next morning.
The party was “really chill,” Trieweiler said, and “kind of beautiful because our class usually doesn’t hang out all together.”
Luke Brown PO ’26, another recent graduate present, described the event as “nothing crazy. It was pretty much just all seniors.”
By 11:30, Campus Safety arrived. Officers told graduates they were responding to a noise complaint and requested that students turn the music down, which they initially complied with.
A July 6 statement from The Claremont Colleges Services (TCCS), which oversees Campus Safety, stated that Campus Safety was responding to “multiple disturbance complaints […] regarding loud music and alcohol use involving a large group.”
Several students expressed confusion as to where a noise complaint could’ve come from, referencing how Clark V is not near residential areas in Claremont, and all Pomona students besides seniors, RAs and those staying for summer campus jobs had moved out the previous day.
CPD, Pomona College and Campus Safety administrators did not identify precisely who had called in or received the noise complaint in correspondence with TSL.
Students turned the music on again, and Campus Safety returned to the Clark V courtyard around 12:15 a.m., unplugging the speaker and telling the group to disperse.
According to the same July 6 TCCS statement, “Officers initially requested that the music be lowered, and the group briefly complied before the disturbance resumed. An additional complaint was subsequently received through dispatch and the LiveSafe system.”
Officers told students that they needed to leave, and that the gathering was “unauthorized,” according to Trieweiler. “At that point, [Campus Safety] was like, ‘You can’t stay here,’ but they gave no clear directions on where we could go,” Brown said.
Most students remained in the Clark V courtyard.
Shortly after, around 12:30 a.m., Resident Life Coordinator Kimani Francois arrived and repeated officers’ calls for dispersal. Francois was the Administrator On Call (AOC) on May 17, according to Somya Singh PO ’28, a former Zone 98 RA who worked under Francois during the 2026-2027 school year. Francois did not respond to requests for comment.
An HRL student employee who requested anonymity, and will be referred to as HRL student employee B, noted that “there are usually a few steps before you go straight to Camp Sec [Campus Safety].”
Francois began repeatedly telling students that she would call the police if they did not disperse in 10 minutes, according to multiple students present. Trieweiler recalled Francois saying, “I have to give you 10 minutes” before calling the CPD, supposedly alluding to an existing protocol.
Stampino-Strain said he hadn’t heard of such a protocol either, nor had HRL student employee A and Singh.
“I have never heard of that [10-minute] policy ever in my life,” HRL student employee A said.
“We were never told about police ever being contacted or when to contact police,” Singh reiterated. “That’s never been discussed in our training, so I don’t know where [Francois] got the 10 minutes from.”
Students began moving or dispersing, with a smaller group of approximately 70-80 students relocating to the Frary Dining Hall steps around 12:45 a.m. Francois and Campus Safety officers followed them soon after, repeating their intention to call the police.
“[Francois] keeps following us, and as [Francois] keeps following us, more and more Camp Sec [Campus Safety] officers show up,” Jadin Porter PO ’26, another recent graduate present, said.
According to Trieweiler, Francois had said that if students left Pomona’s campus, they would be out of her jurisdiction. Brown noted that Campus Safety also seemed to be facilitating students moving off the campus.
The group then began walking through Claremont McKenna College toward Scripps College, at which point Francois had left, and the group had thinned to an estimated 20-30 students. By 1:25 a.m. they reached the Scripps Rose Garden, where they were met by several Campus Safety cars. Officers told students they had called the CPD.
Trieweiler recalls speaking to an officer who said, “‘I have to listen to what the dean has told me.” When Trieweiler asked who the dean was, the officer allegedly named Francois. “‘[Francois] has given me orders to call the police department. I have called them; I would run if I were you,’”she recalled.
Four CPD officers arrived at 1:30 a.m., according to the police incident report obtained by TSL.
When Campus Safety calls the CPD, that call comes in as an “Assist Other Agency” (AOA) call, as was the case in the early hours of May 18. An AOA call requesting assistance on Platt Boulevard came in at 1:14 a.m.
Officers were dispatched at 1:21 a.m. and on the scene by 1:30 a.m. The incident was marked “closed” seven minutes later, at 1:37 a.m.
Trieweiler said that CPD officers repeatedly told her and those remaining that they would be arrested if they did not immediately leave. Students present left, as did CPD, and no student was met with punitive action to TSL’s knowledge.
Although no one was arrested, the escalation of the gathering to the point of CPD presence provoked TSL to look into the protocols in place between CPD, Campus Safety and HRL.
Pomona’s HRL Policies and Procedures handbook does not mention police protocols.
HRL student employees could not recall CPD protocol being mentioned in their training, besides calling the police in case of emergency.
“In all my time as an RA, in my six trainings, not one time did they ever mention getting the police involved, unless it’s some horrible thing happening,” Stampino-Strain said.
Pomona College Student Handbook’s Emergency and Safety Policies and Procedures notes that police have the “right and responsibility to act in case of law violations” on campus as they would off-campus, and that Campus Safety will notify CPD in the case of “more serious cases.”
TSL also reviewed memoranda of understanding between Campus Safety and the Claremont Police Department.
Memoranda of understanding are non-binding documents that outline agreements and shared intentions between two parties. The California Education Code requires that colleges and universities “enter into written agreements with local law enforcement agencies that clarify operational responsibilities for investigations of Part 1 violent crimes, sexual assaults and hate crimes occurring on each campus.”
Campus Safety and the CPD have cosigned three MOUs in nearly five years: one in January 2022, another in July 2023, and a third in July 2025.
“MOUs are reviewed periodically to ensure they continue to reflect current operations, responsibilities and coordination practices,” TCCS wrote in a Sept. 4 statement to TSL.
The 2025 Memorandum of Understanding between Campus Safety and the CPD states that it aims to achieve the following goals: to address “felonies committed on institution property;” to “[enhance] cooperation [between the two agencies]” in providing support to community members who are victims or witnesses to crimes; and to support Campus Safety’s ability to “alert the campus community about crimes of a serious nature that pose a serious or ongoing threat to public safety.”
The MOU’s statutory jurisdiction section states that CPD has legal jurisdiction and authority “on those areas of the Claremont College campuses located within the City” to enforce city ordinances as well as state and federal laws.
“This authority does not include enforcement of TCC rules and regulations,” the section reads.
In its Sept. 4 statement, TCCS elaborated that “The MOU allows Campus Safety to handle most incidents without involving the police department, reducing police presence on campus.”
Multiple students present on the night of May 17, including Brown, noted that without outside involvement, the gathering likely would have died down within 30 minutes, and did not pose a serious threat to anyone involved. Students expressed confusion as to why the situation had escalated.
“They weren’t really operating off of a clear procedure or clear guidelines,” Jo Keyser PO ’26, another senior present, said of Campus Safety and HRL staff. “More, they were just saying different things and seeing if one of them would stick.”
Multiple students stated that at various times throughout the night, Campus Safety, CPD and Francois had alternately cited trespassing and “unauthorized party” violations, as well as alcohol use and noise disturbance.
All Pomona College student parties are required to be registered or “authorized,” but very few are in practice. HRL employees that TSL spoke to said they were not trained to strictly enforce party registration.
“By the book, all parties should be registered, but [HRL] knows [parties] happen,” HRL student employee A said.
“There have been a lot of unregistered parties in Clark V courtyard,” Stampino-Strain said. “I don’t even know what the registration process looks like; [HRL] didn’t communicate that with us; they didn’t tell RAs to tell our residents.”
Campus Safety and CPD officers’ claim of “trespassing” additionally caused confusion among students. Though they had graduated hours earlier, the students present were still Pomona College residents with keycard access to campus buildings.
“I think what’s happening with a lot of Res Life and admin is this disconnect between your role as community builders and policy enforcers,” Stampino-Strain said.
Multiple students interviewed emphasized that the ambiguity of these claims, and their use as justification for calling the CPD, was less the fault of any one person but rather indicative of both HRL and Campus Safety’s broader approach to policy and residential culture.
“I don’t know how much I can blame [Francois] versus the culture at Pomona in general,” Stampino-Strain said.
“I don’t even think it’s an issue of fault,” Brown said. “At the end of the day, it was a college party at the end of the semester, and Camp Sec [Campus Safety] had no situational awareness. They wasted, likely, an enormous amount of resources and time aggravating the situation.”
Stampino-Strain described what he identified as a shift in how the College and HRL handle policy enforcement.
“I think what’s happening with a lot of Res Life and admin is this disconnect between your role as community builders and policy enforcers,” he said.
The unfolding of the evening left graduates with a bittersweet ending to their time at Pomona.
“It was disappointing,” Trieweiler said. “It’s our last night, we just graduated; it’s the last time we know we’ll see these people [on] this campus we love and have grown in for four years, and they’re doing everything in their power to stop us and arrest us.”
Porter described the night as a meaningful, if disappointing, final moment.
“‘We are free to be together as we are, and we’re not harming anybody, nothing bad is happening,” he said of his class’ sentiments that night. “It was just a very poetic end to everything, given how the past four years have gone between students and administration.”
The 2022, 2023 and 2025 MOUs, as well as two press releases from TCCS, can be viewed in their entirety here.
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