During the spring 2026 semester, a group of Pomona-Pitzer (P-P) student-athletes formed what is now known as Pomona-Pitzer Athletic Culture Transformers (PPACT). The group, assembled in response to a series of racist incidents, works toward athletic department reform.
“We wanted to get a group together to talk about these issues and make it a point that this isn’t what the athletic department stands for and that’s not how we want to be represented in this community,” Zakiah Sesay PZ ’28, PPACT founding member and women’s soccer player, said.
PPACT’s agenda consists of three main goals: to establish a student-led restorative-based disciplinary body for student-athletes, to build community across teams and to reform the student-athlete handbook. In recent meetings, PPACT has added a fourth pillar, with goals to reform and diversify recruiting. New Director of Athletics Danielle Lynch signed on to their efforts, especially regarding handbook reform.
“A code of conduct only works if the people living under it understand it and believe it’s fair, and if it holds up when it’s actually used,” Lynch wrote in email correspondence with TSL. “Our goals are a code written in plain language, easy to find and clear about what happens when someone raises a concern. Restorative practice is at the core of it.”
Sesay revealed that the largest issue with the prior handbook was the lack of accessibility. She said that in the past, the handbook was difficult to find on the athletic website, filled with typos and failed to address many issues that could arise. Sesay hopes the new handbook, currently under review by Pomona College’s legal team, can unite the department behind a common understanding of expectations.
“When you can all realize the common value of the department and what those values mean in practice and action, you can live it out a little better, and that comes with the department making those values more prevalent and spotlighted,” Sesay said. “If people don’t know what’s expected of them, they can fall short in as many areas as they want.”
“ When you can all realize the common value of the department and what those values mean in practice and action, you can live it out a little better,” Sesay said.
Another key goal of PPACT is the establishment of the A-Board: a committee of student-athletes assembled to both respond to instances of harm within the community and provide proactive anti-racist education.
“It’s a privilege to be an athlete, and you don’t reserve the right to have that privilege if you’re going to be a disgrace to the community in a way,” Sesay said. “We do have certain values within the athletic department, and you’re not upholding those standards and those values when you do things like [the spring incidents].”
While PPACT leaders remain optimistic that A-Board can be instituted in some capacity, the legal framework for doing so could pose difficulties. The First Amendment and California’s Leonard Law make it so speech, even that containing hateful language, is difficult to punish on college campuses. As Pomona or Pitzer College students, P-P athletics have to work within that protected legal framework to find a new lane towards accountability.
“We can set clear team-level expectations, offer education and restorative processes, and make sure coaches know how and when to escalate concerns,” Lynch wrote. “Some things are harder, and that’s part of why legal counsel is involved. Athletics operates within College-wide policies and federal law, so conduct matters, discrimination and harassment complaints, and issues involving speech have to go through the College’s established processes, with due process and privacy protections for everyone involved.”
The third original pillar of PPACT was community building, bringing the over 550 Sagehens into one intermingled group. PPACT, independent of any individual team, serves as a way for student athletes united in an anti-racist mission to collaborate and build relationships.
“A lot of what we also do in our meetings is we bond,” Sesay said. “There [are] icebreakers. You’re getting in groups you would never get in before. The [first-years] are familiarizing themselves with people across sports, so they have better connections. Yes, the root thing is we don’t want people to be racist, but we also want people to find a community within the athletic department, not just the team.”
That community building extends beyond just the athletic department. In coming together to fight against racism within athletics, PPACT also works to build a space welcoming to all and mend the ties between athletics and the rest of campus, reforming athletics’ reputation alongside its policies.
“Everyone should have a place where they feel comfortable,” PPACT member and Sagehen softball player Maya Grande PZ ’29 said. “Everyone should get some basic level of respect from everyone else, whether you’re friends or not. We’re all part of a community on campus; we’re all athletes, and when one person does something, it can harm all of us because we’re all grouped together.”
As PPACT works to implement its core goals, its driving force rests in its student voices. Only students can push for wider recognition for student issues and that is exactly what PPACT aims to do, according to Sesay.
“[Faculty and administration] need to care about this,” Sesay said. “It needs to be brought up the chain of command so that things can actually get done. Because once the people at the top understand what we want, it can trickle down to everyone, and the standard can be universal.”
The group has already engaged with a host of people “at the top” including Lynch, who admits that without student voices, any handbook reform would be missing the tie into team- and department-wide culture that student buy-in brings.
“A handbook written only by administrators misses how things actually feel on a team, in a locker room or on a bus,” Lynch said. “Students who are willing to put their time and energy into improving it are a gift, and I don’t take that for granted. They are working alongside coaches, faculty and legal counsel on the revision, and their perspective is shaping it.”
While the official new athletic handbook and the A-Board committee are both still in development, PPACT continues to build upon their early work as we enter a new academic year. The founding group meets regularly, and frequently holds additional meetings that welcome the full P-P student-athlete community to shape future goals.
Disclosure: The reporter on this piece, Zachary LeBlanc, is a P-P athlete on the football team and a member of PPACT.