Editor’s note: Soren Murphy-Pearson PO ’29 is an Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) Senator and South Campus Representative. This is not a news article, and the information stated here is not stated on behalf of ASPC. Murphy-Pearson is also part of an ad-hoc committee involved in the policy discussed in this article.
Pomona College Vice President Chief Operating Officer and Treasurer Jeff Roth sent an email on Sept. 1 to the student body titled “Building Access Policy: Campus Review and Feedback,” requesting student feedback on a proposed security policy. The new policy would require a 5C ID to enter Pomona academic buildings at all hours, a change from the current open access policy from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays.
As Roth explained to me and other members of ASPC during our public Sept. 24 meeting, the policy was created with the help of third-party consultants, partially motivated by concerns regarding the Dec. 2025 shooting at Brown University and violence perpetuated by the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).
Several students I spoke with, including Nimay Shankar PO ’28, a 5C Critical Mass steering member, have expressed concern over how the new policy would affect student privacy.
“There are a lot of byproducts because of a policy like this, with the amount of student data that would be collected,” he said.
In the ASPC meeting minutes, Roth is paraphrased as stating that “swipe data is kept at the consortium level and Campus Safety runs atypical access requests by the colleges first. Data is rarely accessed — aside from an incident a couple of years ago — and students were notified when it was done.”
While usage of swipe data is limited, Pomona has used similar forms of student data in relation to disciplinary measures in the past. The student handbook states that “the college’s computer and network resources are the college’s property, and students should not have any expectation of privacy when utilizing these resources.”
The college used Wi-Fi logs in 2024 to track and later suspend students involved in the occupation of Carnegie Hall who were advocating for the college to divest from companies and manufacturers supporting the Israeli government. This year, humanitarian organizations condemned the college’s use of Wi-Fi signals in enforcing disciplinary action.
Mark Andrejevic, a Pomona media studies professor, explained in an email statement to TSL that personal data is often used for more expansive purposes after being collected.
“Once a data trove is created, it can be subject to ‘function creep,’ which refers to additional uses beyond those for which it was originally designated,” he said. “For example, information about people’s movement throughout the course of the day can reveal quite a bit about them, so it’s important to determine and explain what uses of the [swipe] data are deemed appropriate, and which uses are ruled out.”
In the last few years, schools including Barnard College and Arizona State University have used ID card swipe data to discipline student protestors and predict retention rates.
When asked about the proposed swipe access policy, Oona Eisenstadt, chair of religious studies and a Jewish studies professor, raised general questions about the normalization of increased security in an email statement to TSL.
“Whether [measures like the proposed policy] is intended to or not, the new security operates as an encroachment of people’s liberty, allowing them to be policed from inside the house,” she said. “And the security is almost never reduced after the threat withdraws.”
To limit the number of people in buildings during the COVID-19 pandemic, Columbia University established swipe access points on doors around campus — a system still in place today. Since then, these terminals have been used to surveil and discipline students, who wrote in the Columbia Spectator that when the measures were first enacted, they didn’t know they would be implemented longterm.
At Pomona, the Alexander Hall security check-in desk that was established after the 2024 student sit-in divestment demonstration still exists today. This serves as an example of a security measure remaining long after the threat it was created to address withdrew.
Eisenstadt stated that when an institution increases security in response to a threat, there are usually ramifications that subvert liberties.
“If the threat is real and the security is not too intrusive, the loss of freedom might be seen as a worthwhile trade-off,” she said. “But most often when this happens in a democracy, the curtailment of freedom is more severe than is warranted by the threat.”
Students criticized the college for calling the police during the Alexander Hall sit-in. Now, two years later, students have criticized the decisionmaking behind Pomona’s new security proposal, which is partially aimed at protecting students from ICE officers’ potential presence on campus.
“I would say it’s maybe not a very sophisticated solution,” Shankar said regarding the policy. “I think specifically in the context of our campus climate and the history of recent things that have happened, preventing student access to buildings have other implications that aren’t just related to the safety of the student body.”
Students I interviewed also expressed concerns about the college’s use of consultants in developing the proposal.
“A lot of this thinking can be within our own community,” Jason Murillo PO ’28, a member of Critical Mass, said. “Yet we go to outside people … and ask them to make decisions for us when they don’t know our campus.”
Shankar similarly said that the consultancy process often dilutes student perspectives.
“It would make more sense for me if the process for coming to this decision was more centered in the people who are affected,” he said. “I question whether consultants or the process in general was accommodating enough for students.”
Last semester, an ad-hoc committee was created to address the policy. The committee comprised several administrators and faculty members, and two students: myself and former ASPC Vice President of Academic Affairs Claudio Castillo PO ’26. Members did not vote on the policy; consultants presented recommendations to the committee and heavily informed the policy draft.
Reflecting on the committee meetings, Castillo said that students and faculty were more skeptical of increased security than administrators and other staff members.
“In the discussions, it was very clear the most apprehensive opinions to more restrictive access policies were faculty and students, although I was appreciative to have staff voices there,” Castillo said.
As of press time, the college has not made a decision on the proposed security policy.
Students were offered the opportunity to fill out a form to share their opinions on the policy per Roth’s request for feedback. According to the Sept. 23 meeting notes, the Facilities Student Advisory Committee was also specifically asked to provide feedback.
If the college does not revise the proposal to accommodate community concerns, it can alter the extent to which students feel the new policy is focused on their safety.
Shankar questioned the motive behind the policy, citing privacy-related impacts.
“If the policy is not what the admin say it’s stated for, I would be opposed to it,” he said.
Pomona College said in email correspondence with TSL that it is unable to comment at this time.