Plans to tear-down Pomona College’s Oldenborg Center in the 2026-2027 academic school year could threaten operations at the Coop Fountain, according to student representatives familiar with the situation.
The destruction comes as one step in the college’s Global Pomona initiative, described by Pomona’s website as a “campus-wide commitment to prepare every student to engage meaningfully with an interconnected world.” As part of the initiative, Oldenborg Center — a language-learning research center and residence hall — will be replaced with a new Center for Global Engagement (CGE).
The CGE is meant to serve as a site where community members at Pomona can engage with partners both locally and globally to explore “complex societal issues,” as the college’s website frames it. But one detail in the building’s plans has alarmed students: unlike Oldenborg, the new center will not have an industrial kitchen.
Oldenborg’s industrial kitchen currently houses Pomona College Catering, which is responsible for preparing various items for campus events. Without this space, catering services will need to be relocated — potentially to the kitchen that supplies the Coop Fountain, an on-campus cafe open weekdays from 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.
Robert Robinson, assistant vice president of facilities and campus services, says that multiple options for the Coop are under review — including closing the restaurant entirely and replacing it with a food truck — but a final decision has yet to be made.
“Importantly, there is no predetermined outcome, nor is there an intention to make changes to the Coop Fountain without appropriate consultation and advance communication,” he wrote in an email to Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) President Grace Zheng PO ’26.
But student representatives who have been in communication with Robinson and other administrative members say that discussion of alternatives has been limited, and that they’ve been otherwise left in the dark.
“We want to be a part of brainstorming at least the plan for next year, but it’s just been very vague, non-replies to our specific questions,” said Soren Murphy-Pearson PO ’29, Pomona’s South campus representative and co-chair of the Food Committee.
To Ireland Griffin PO ’26, ASPC vice president of student affairs, the administration’s approach to the situation indicates a broader issue: the prioritization of profit over the wellbeing of students.
“To close the Coop Fountain, even if it was only partially for catering — that is probably one of the most overt things they could do to say that they care more about potential college profit than student wellbeing, happiness, enjoyment and access to food,” Griffin said.
“To close the Coop Fountain, even if it was only partially for catering — that is probably one of the most overt things they could do to say that they care more about potential college profit than student wellbeing, happiness, enjoyment and access to food,” she said.
ASPC was entirely responsible for financing the Coop Fountain before they turned it over to the College in 2021. Before that, Pomona Magazine claims that the establishment “almost never turned a profit” and lost about $100,000 a year alongside the Coop Store. Since Pomona took control, Griffin says the establishment has been steadily raising its prices to ramp up profit.
Despite these changes, she explains that there has been a consistent agreement between ASPC and the college to keep the Coop Fountain open and accessible to students — a “memo of understanding” created back when the change of ownership first took place. While the agreement is not legally binding, closing the Coop Fountain would directly violate its terms.
A closure could also violate the shared governance principles that the college has been drafting for the past year. According to Pomona’s website, these principles are meant to promote faculty and staff involvement, since the institution is “strongest and most successful when all members of the community have appropriate opportunities to actively participate in College governance.”
But Griffin argues that if the Coop Fountain were to close before administration adequately consulted students and staff members, it would be a violation of the very premise of shared governance. Shutting down the establishment in this way, she said, “obviously is not a great show of confidence about future decisions the college might make.”
Elias Pluecker PO ’28, a former employee at the Coop Fountain and current member of the Claremont Student Worker Alliance, says the establishment’s closure would hit student employees especially hard.
Full-time staff members at the Coop Fountain are part of UNITE HERE! Local 11, a labor union located in Los Angeles. In the event of a closure, they would be protected under the union’s contract with the college, meaning that they would simply be relocated. Student employees, who joined the union last year and have yet to be formally added to the contract, have no such safety net.
“We tend to forget that the students at this school need a living wage as well,” Pluecker said. “Closing off these job opportunities is an attack on the student body and on those of us who need an income to pay to go to this institution.”
He added that closing the Coop Fountain so shortly after student employees joined the union would be an attack against the union itself, since it would weaken the solidarity between student workers and full-time staff.
While he is no longer affiliated with the union, Pluecker was a key player in its organization among students last academic year when he worked at the Coop Fountain. Many of the other organizers graduated that spring, and he and his coworker returned to campus in the fall as two of the union’s strongest student leaders.
That fall, they were also the only two student employees at the cafe who asked for their jobs back and were not rehired, according to Pluecker. Rehiring is not technically guaranteed, but Pluecker says that it’s standard practice; he claims that he and his coworker were fired for “inconsequential things that they do not have a history of firing anyone else for.”
“Pomona College has a history of taking whatever actions they are able to in order to weaken the union,” Pluecker said, citing the recent firing of Frary cook Rolando Araiza — one of the “strongest union organizers” at the college — as an example. “They fight the union tooth and nail wherever they can.”
Whether or not the Coop Fountain actually does close with the destruction of Oldenborg next year is still to be decided; as of right now, there is no set date for when this decision will be made. In the meantime, Griffin says student representatives are working on a resolution to present to the college. If it passes through ASPC, it could help push Pomona to commit to keeping the Coop Fountain open.
“Student spaces are continually being sidelined in order to prioritize college profit and efficiency,” Griffin said. “My hope is that, at least at the time being, this will come into public conversation and visibility before any concrete decisions are made.”
Facebook Comments