EDITORS' CORNER
‘Persecuted in and out of the classroom for simply existing’
An elite private college in Southern California is facing a barrage of allegations that racism is running rampant at the school — even though the institution is led by a black woman.
Pomona College leaders are grappling with accusations from black students that the $90,000-per-year institution is enabling a racist environment, the Claremont Independent reported.
The college’s Black Student Union recently held a town hall attended by hundreds of students alleging black students have been “subjected to hateful experiences on this campus, experiences that range from microaggressions to explicit hate speech to moments that feel like racial violence” and “persecuted in and out of the classroom for simply existing,” the Independent reported.
An Instagram post detailing the complaints that went viral also alleges some sort of black face party.
Perhaps surprisingly, students “focused their criticism on black Pomona administrators, including the President and Dean of Students,” the student newspaper reported.
The president is G. Gabrielle Starr, who has led the college since 2017, and previously served on Gov. Gavin Newsom’s California Higher Education Recovery with Equity Taskforce, according to her bio. Starr is the first woman and the first African American president of Pomona.
The college’s dean of students is Avis Hinkson, also black, who has “more than three decades of higher education experience, including at Barnard College and UC Berkeley,” her bio states.
Among the racist incidents flagged by protesters is the “use of the n-word by student-athletes and faculty, heated interactions between a staff member and black students at a party, and alleged vandalism in the First-Generation and Low-Income (FLI) student lounge by a group of students,” the Independent reported.
“Pomona administrators communicated to the Independent and Pomona’s student government that the FLI lounge incident was a misunderstanding; students left trash behind in the room, which was interpreted by FLI leadership as a targeted incident.”
The BSU’s list of reform demands for Pomona include the establishment of an “independent bias response and accountability office, separate from existing administrative systems, because students should not have to report harm to the same structures that fail to address it,” the Independent reported.
Mandatory bias training for staff and faculty “with real consequences for repeated violations” was also on the list, as well as increased funding for black affinity groups and the Office of Black Student Affairs.
Starr is no stranger to controversy.
She made headlines in April 2024 with her hardline stance against anti-Israel protesters at the height of the Israeli-Hamas war when she brought in riot police to handle the students who had stormed her office.
In September 2024, a Pomona Divest from Apartheid video showed students screaming at the top of their lungs outside Starr’s home near campus during a midnight melee.
In October 2024, after numerous anti-Israel activists took over and trashed a Pomona building, Starr followed up and made sure students involved were suspended.
Apparently some of those disciplinary efforts were mentioned by a student during the recent BSU town hall, the Independent reported, quoting the student as saying: “They still targeting students [sic] … we have to mobilize every time a black student is unsafe. The campus police run around thinking that shit sweet. Be provocative, be invigorating, be challenging.”
“They don’t want us here, they don’t care about us being here, they will never care about us being here,” the student reportedly continued, expressing a disinterest in “fake support,” and calling out “zionists in the crowd right now.”
