On Nov. 2, Pomona College and Interwoven Insights (formerly Rankin Climate) consulting firm published results from an anonymous campuswide ‘Campus Climate’ survey in a 107-page report. Respondents’ concerns ranged from students of certain identities feeling unsafe on campus — namely Jewish and Muslim or Middle Eastern and North African (MENA) students — to issues of sexual harassment.
Roughly 45% of the campus community — or 1,259 people — took the 126-question survey last spring, marking 18% higher turnout compared to the last time a similar survey was conducted in 2020, according to Pomona’s press release. The survey was facilitated by a working group of 20 faculty members, students, staff and college administrators called the ‘Climate Survey Working Group,’ and was generated by Interwoven Insights.
Several student groups reported concerns around religious identity. While 55% of Jewish respondents reported feeling safe on campus, 32% said they felt the need to hide their Jewish identity or were concerned about their safety because of their actual or perceived support of Israel.
Olivia Rosenthal PO ’29 said she felt the survey results were inaccurate.
“I think the results did underestimate how, at least [of] the Jewish students that I know and I talk to, feel about anti-semitism on campus,” Rosenthal said.
Rosenthal said she wished Pomona was an environment where people were more open to hearing out each others’ opinions.
“No matter the political belief — if it’s about Israel, or the most recent election, anything — I just think listening to each other and hearing other people out and not just completely cutting them off because you disagree with one thing [is crucial],” Rosenthal said.
The survey also found that 58% of Muslim or MENA respondents said they felt unsafe on campus, while 43% reported that they have felt the need to hide their identities on campus.
Leili Kamali PO ’29, who said her family is Iranian and Middle Eastern, noted that while she does not particularly feel the need to hide her identity, she has noticed a decline in the number of MENA students participating in activism on campus after backlash toward protests against the genocide in Gaza over the past several years.
“There was a lot of backlash, in particular, on students of color and Middle Eastern students for protesting or perceiving to be involved in some kind of protest, [and] those individuals and that subsection of the population of all the schools are not involved in organizing anymore,” Kamali said. “It’s completely changed the culture of our school.”
The report also found that 48% of survey participants reported experiencing sexual- or gender-based harassment since arriving at Pomona. Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) vice president of student affairs Mujeebat Gbolahan PO ’27 said she and fellow senators were shocked by the findings.
“We were very appalled by the results of the sexual assault [and] harassment percentage,” Gbolahan said. “That number shouldn’t be as high as it is.”
Although the survey aimed to provide the community with insights on campus culture, some students expressed concern with the validity of the results. Tendo Lumala PO ’28, ASPC vice president of academic affairs, said the report failed to contextualize certain compensation concerns and noted that some of the incentives for students to take the survey, like getting free boba, may have ultimately weakened its results.
“I know of students who are like, ‘I’m just going to press neither agree or disagree and get through it as fast as possible to get some of these incentives,’” Lumula said. “So I don’t know if the survey itself is the best way of understanding the unique challenges that Pomona College students are facing right now.”
Kamali echoed Lumula’s discontent with the survey, saying the college’s attempts to find solutions to student issues often come off as disingenuous.
“I feel like them putting out this survey is almost sort of a joke to people,” Kamali said. “Not respecting workers’ contracts and students’ right to protest, and then being like, ‘What can we do to support you?,’ It just obviously doesn’t sit well with students, and therefore is not taken seriously by students, which is upsetting.”
While there was an uptick in the percentage of staff member respondents who reported believing their salaries were competitive and fair, staff raised concerns in the survey with Pomona’s performance review process, limited advancement opportunities, hefty workloads, tension with supervisors and a need for greater compensation.
Earlier this semester, dining hall staff, student workers and community members delegated to Pomona administration, demanding higher pay, an end to alleged union-busting practices and protections for student workers.
In the published results, faculty respondents similarly “identified concerns about compensation and perceived inconsistencies in the promotion and tenure process, writing that messaging about standards for promotion are somewhat unclear,” according to Pomona’s press release.
In an interview with TSL, Benjamin Keim, classics professor, co-chair of the climate study working group and faculty chair at Pomona, said results about faculty compensation did not come as much of a surprise given the “high inflation environment” and “very high cost-of-living area” that Pomona is in.
“To say that there’s little here that comes as a surprise is not to suggest that everything is peachy keen and perfectly fine and there’s no work to be done,” Keim said. “A survey like this is meant to help us collect data, to have a sense of what’s going well and what’s going not so well, so that we can, as a community, work together to do a better job of addressing these concerns and [help] Pomona be a community where all of us can flourish together.”
Following the publication of the climate survey, Keim said the climate study working group’s tasks were complete, noting that next steps would be tackled by a new working group.
Jonathan B. Williams, a co-chair of the survey working group and Pomona vice president and dean of admissions and financial aid, said in a statement to TSL that administering campus climate surveys every few years is a great way to evaluate the strengths and areas of improvement of the college over time.
“Conducting climate surveys at regular intervals allows us not only to take a deeper look at our living, learning and working environment, but also to assess the long-term impact of initiatives implemented as the result of previous climate survey findings,” Williams said. “For example, the 2019-20 climate survey drove initiatives focused on college-wide salary equity, holistic health and wellness and enhanced faculty mentorship.”
Williams said that since the survey was conducted in the spring, Pomona has already implemented initiatives to address concerns brought up in responses, including mandatory Title VI training for students and employees, anti-bias workshops for athletes, student leaders and first-year students, and the formation of the Advisory Council on Jewish Life & Antisemitism.
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