Starr suspends Pomona College students for remainder of academic year without judicial hearings

At the time of publication, 10 students had been suspended. However, two more suspensions have since been issued bringing the total suspension count to 12.

Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr has suspended 10 students for the remainder of the 2024-2025 academic year without complete judicial hearings. The suspensions follow the student takeover of Carnegie Hall on Oct. 7 in which protesters called for the college to divest from companies tied to the Israeli government.

On Wednesday morning, Starr sent an email to the Pomona community announcing the academic year-long suspensions of several Pomona students. 

12 Pomona students originally received notice of interim suspensions on Oct. 11, including steps for a judicial process. Upon receiving this notification, multiple students submitted appeals to overturn the suspension. Only two of the students were successful and their suspensions were nullified. 

These suspensions enacted immediate campus bans, with one Pomona senior, who requested anonymity due to fears of further repercussions, recounting what this experience was like for them.

“When I returned from fall break on Tuesday evening, they had changed the lock on the door of my dorm, and I had to call [Campus Safety] when I got there to have them let me in,” they said. “I was only given 45 minutes to leave.” 

On Wednesday morning, the 10 interim-suspended students learned of their finalized full-academic year suspensions and the cancellation of their judicial processes.

In order to independently impose suspensions without outside approval, Starr invoked the Extraordinary Authority of the President as outlined in the student code. In her email, Starr explained that the decision did not require consultation with the Judicial Council (JBoard), a student-run conduct board that normally helps oversee cases of suspensions. In an email to TSL, JBoard stated that Starr did not notify them of her decision prior to sending out the announcement.

Starr also stated that students who received the year-long suspensions can request to have this decision reviewed. This review process is conducted by the college’s president, vice president and dean of the college and the vice president and dean of students, according to the student code.

Referring to the code, she included three conditions of cases that allow this extraordinary authority to be applied: “they threaten safety of individuals on campus, involve the destruction of College property, and the disruption of Pomona’s educational process.”

The suspended Pomona senior said that the email notifying them of their suspension claimed they were in violation of Article III sections 2, 5, 6 and 10 of the student code.

In her email, Starr also reiterated that the college has been administering and will continue to administer campus bans to non-Pomona students who have been identified as participating in the events of Oct. 7. Starr noted that non-Pomona students made up “most of the participants.”

These suspensions and bans bar affected students from Pomona’s campus and any events held by the college or The Claremont College Services (TCCS). One of the suspended students, a Pomona freshman who will remain anonymous due to concerns of further punishment, spoke on how the suspension will derail their pursuit of a college education if upheld.

“The lack of connections that I have is just so widely deepened by the idea that everyone’s going to forget about me, and that I’m no longer going to be part of the community,” they said. “I’m going to be stripped of this really foundational year of making friends and networking and joining clubs and learning about the college process.”

Several hours after Starr’s email, the president of the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC), Devlin Orlin, released a statement via email in which he denounced her decision, pointing specifically to the lack of a hearing process.

“This decision comes at a time when many students have expressed that the actions of administrators do not prioritize the well-being of the community, and to utilize the extraordinary authority of the president today, which has not been used for at least President Starr’s entire tenure, causes greater harm to the community by denying students a process in which their peers adjudicate questions of accountability,” the email reads.

According to Orlin, ASPC’s executive staff met with the college’s executive staff — which includes Starr — the morning of her announcement and voiced their concerns about the choice to suspend students and about the college’s “lack of action around divestment.” In the meeting, the college allegedly denied ASPC’s requests to provide the suspended students with a judicial process. Orlin echoed this request in his statement.

“The Judicial Council exists especially for these circumstances where cases are complicated, and peer voice is essential to adjudicating an outcome that best reflects the values of our community,” he stated.

As outlined by Orlin, JBoard was created following on-campus demonstrations during the Vietnam War which were met with harsh administration response. Last semester, Pomona’s JBoard participated in the process of student hearings regarding suspensions after police arrested 20 5C students during a pro-Palestinian occupation and protest. Orlin noted this in his statement, emphasizing Starr’s contrasting “unilateral action” with the recent suspensions.

In her email, Starr explained the specific grounds on which the recent disciplinary actions were made.

“The damage to Carnegie, including to teaching infrastructure, was egregious and is being separately adjudicated; however, the most far-reaching violation of the individuals thus sanctioned by the college was their involvement in the takeover of a building, the forced end of classes and the disruption of our academic mission,” she wrote in her email.

Starr’s community-wide announcement comes after the college began enacting disciplinary action last week against those students allegedly involved in the demonstration. According to a Pomona professor who attended a faculty meeting last week and is familiar with the administration’s investigation, camera footage and faculty knowledge of students have been used in the process of identifying students who were present in Carnegie on Oct. 7. 

In her email, Starr clarified that the investigation into the events of Oct. 7 is ongoing and the college will continue to issue conduct notifications in the coming weeks.

Another suspended senior at Pomona — who has also been granted anonymity due to concerns about further punitive action — spoke on the uncertainty brought on by the full-academic year suspension.

“I’m a senior, so I was planning on graduating in May along with all my peers, all the people I’ve known and been in classes with,” they said. “What am I going to do for the next year if I can’t come back to campus until fall of 2025?”