More, Please: Pomona College Student Protesters Arrested

Enough is enough. That is the message that some college administrations are sending about the pro-Hamas protests on campus. 

A pro-Hamas protest erupted at Pomona College in Claremont, California on Friday. President Gabrielle Starr said the students would be “subject to immediate suspension.” She was reacting to protesters who refused to identify themselves to Campus Safety and Student Affairs staff. They were verbally abusive to staff. The students used an anti-black racial slur when speaking to an administrator. 

“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 wrote in a letter to students on Friday evening.

“Students from the other Claremont Colleges will be banned from Pomona’s campus and subject to discipline on their campuses. All individual participants not part of The Claremont Colleges community are hereby banned from campus immediately,” Starr said.

She said the college community members who protest on campus in compliance with the college’s demonstration policy would not be affected. 

There was a heavy police presence on campus Friday. At least 18 people were reported to be arrested. Protests had occupied part of the campus center for a week. The campus officials took a slow approach, allowing the students to use their right to protest. 

“For the past week, masked individuals who are part of a protest have occupied a portion of the Smith Campus Center (SCC) lawn. This occupation was against our policies, but as we have expressed in the past, we work with students who are exercising their right to protest unless that protest impedes on the rights of others,” Starr wrote.

By Friday afternoon, the protest devolved into students storming the president’s office. By the end of the evening, 20 students had been arrested and booked by local police. Nineteen students were charged with trespassing, a misdemeanor, and one with obstruction of justice. Police from the Claremont Police Department, Pomona, Azusa, and La Verne responded. The police presence grew as the protest grew to include a larger crowd of students.

The protest began after the college dismantled a piece of protest art the pro-Hamas students erected on campus. It had been standing since March 28. Enablers of the protesters spoke out for them. The crowd grew to about 150 people.

The 32-foot-long, eight-paneled “apartheid wall” outside the Smith Campus Center was a physical and artistic protest designed to highlight “the unequal treatment of the Palestinian people living under the brutal conditions of the illegal Israeli Occupation,” and underscore the administration’s refusal to heed the will of students, who voted in February for the college to divest from companies seen as aiding Israel.

“Civil disobedience and peaceful protests by students were met with tactical gear and assault rifles,” wrote members of the Claremont Consortium Faculty for Justice in Palestine in a statement about the event. “Students who are scheduled to graduate in less than a month are being threatened with suspension for non-violent protest. This response is shameful.”

Are college officials finally growing a spine to get campuses back under control for all the students? It seems some are beginning to act. 

Jewish students nationwide have reported feeling unsafe on campuses as cases of antisemitism increase, and have called on school leaders to take action, while other students have filed lawsuits against schools for allegedly not adequately responding to antisemitism on campus. 

“This is a moment of reckoning… for universities, for social media spaces, for elected officials. It’s a moment of reckoning for what we have enabled for far too long in that moral ambiguity, if you will. This is a time for moral clarity and courage in calling out the moral ambiguity,” Michal Cotler-Wunsh told Fox News Digital in an interview last year.  

Things have gotten out of control and allowed to escalate on college campuses for too long. Professors and college staff often join in with pro-Hamas student protesters. Jewish students no longer feel safe on campuses across the country. This madness has to stop. It’s time that college administrators do their job and protect all students.