Pro-Palestinian activists continue Pomona College protests despite arrests, suspensions

Californian pro-Palestinian protesters continued to hold disruptive demonstrations and threatened to occupy buildings at Pomona college this week, intensifying their activism after students were arrested and suspended for occupying the president's office on April 5.

"Hey [Pomona College President] Gabi Starr, which building is next?" Pomona Divest from Apartheid (PDfA) threatened in a Sunday Instagram post, listing out the names of several campus locations. "All activities at this college are subject to suspension! You have one day."

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The group said it would take action from Monday until Thursday, following on the heels of hundreds of students gathering on campus from across the Claremont colleges on Thursday in solidarity with suspended activists.

“We don’t want to hear a word about arrests or suspensions or bans unless, in the same breath, you’re condemning Israeli apartheid, occupation, and genocide, and calling for complete divestment from Israeli weapons manufacturers, Palestine-occupying institutions, for an academic boycott, for an immediate and permanent ceasefire, and for anti-discrimination policies for Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, SWANA [Southwest Asian and North African], Black, Brown and Indigenous students,” one of the suspended activists said in a speech read by another student according to PDfA. “If you’re not with divestment, you’re not with us. And if you are with us, we will win.”

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The activists have been calling for an academic boycott of Israel and the withdrawal of suspensions, charges, and bans on 20 students from Pomona and the Claremont College group.

Tens of students were arrested in protest

According to PDfA, 19 students were arrested for trespassing in Starr’s office during a two-hour sit-in protest demanding divestment from Israel, and another protester was arrested for interfering with justice.

“Any participants in today’s events on the SCC lawn or in Alexander Hall, who turn out to be Pomona students, are subject to immediate suspension,” Starr said in an April 5 statement. “Students from the other Claremont Colleges will be banned from Pomona’s campus and subject to discipline on their own campuses. All individual participants not part of the Claremont Colleges community are hereby banned from campus immediately. Individuals participating in this event must disperse immediately. Those who remain will be escorted off campus.”

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Starr detailed that Campus Safety and Student Affairs staff were verbally harassed and subjected to anti-black slurs when they attempted to remove the “apartheid wall” that the BDS group erected for the “Israel Apartheid Week” event.

The BDS groups had occupied the lawn of the Smith Campus Center with tents and the wall for a week against College policy, but Starr said that she had attempted to give room to the students to exercise the right to protest.

On April 3, Starr instituted more strenuous identity checks and warned about disciplinary actions when masked activists “repeatedly followed admission tour groups around campus and used amplifying devices that drown out all surrounding speech.”

Pro-Palestinian students had protested Starr after she condemned a March student BDS referendum.

“For many years now, the only nation on which ASPC has focused its activity is the world’s only Jewish state. This singling out of Israel raises grave concerns about the referendum’s impact on members of our community,” Starr said on February 16. “For this reason, and even though I know our students do not intend this, the referendum raises the specter of antisemitism, and it takes place against the backdrop of a challenging and even worsening national and international climate in which hate is despicably on the rise. Even as the authors of the referendum are standing up for a principle they believe in, the call for an academic boycott undermines the core principles of who we are as an institution.”