Approximately 48 hours after the arrest of a Pomona College faculty member on charges of trespassing, Dean of the College Melanie Wu issued the college’s first statement to faculty on Friday, according to an email obtained by TSL.
In the statement, Wu said the college “does not consider trespassing to have occurred on our campus.”
Wu also reiterated The Claremont Colleges Services’ Friday statement to TSL, which indicated Pomona had not learned about Campus Safety’s decision to request the assistance of the Claremont Police Department (CPD) until after the arrest.
“Our expectation is that Campus Safety would have consulted with Pomona’s senior administrator on call before contacting police in a nonviolent, nonemergency situation,” Wu said in the statement.
Wu added that no one at Pomona was involved in Campus Safety’s decision to call the police.
In another email to faculty sent Friday evening, Wu directed faculty to the TCCS statement for more information, which TCCS initially sent to TSL midday Friday.
Wu also added that she hopes the administration can provide more information by the time of the next faculty meeting next Thursday.
As of Sunday, the college has not sent any communication to students or the wider Pomona community regarding the arrest of the Intercollegiate Department of Chicanx/Latinx Studies faculty member.
President Gabi Starr sent an email Friday evening to the college community about the threats “antisemitism, Islamophobia and shared ancestry discrimination” pose without specifically mentioning the arrest.
“We have reviewed or are reviewing every complaint we have received, and any violations found will be addressed with discipline under our code of conduct,” Starr wrote.
Starr said Pomona will also add “shared ancestry” as a category in the college’s harassment policies to clarify protections for faculty, students and staff, explaining how antisemitism and Islamophobia apply to the updated nondiscrimination policies.
The college also plans to clarify its protected speech policies.
Jenna McMurtry PO ’24 was the editor-in-chief of TSL from May 2022 to December 2022. Before that, she was a news editor and news writer for two semesters each. She also brought back the Special Projects desk, added a data desk and co-founded the Spanish translation desk.
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