Nearly three weeks after masked individuals disrupted a Claremont Hillel event marking the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, Pomona President Gabrielle Starr confirmed in an email last week that two of the four individuals have been identified and neither are affiliated with Pomona.

The Claremont-Mudd-Scripps (CMS) men's swim and dive team was temporarily suspended last week as they underwent an investigation by the Claremont McKenna College (CMC) Office of Civil Rights into “some concerns” about the team’s culture, according to an email from Coach Charlie Griffiths obtained by the Independent.

Last week, an Oct. 7 memorial hosted at Pomona College by Claremont Hillel featuring Yoni Viloga, a survivor of the attacks, was disrupted by protestors. Afterwards, an anonymous statement defending the disruption was sent to multiple campus newspapers, referring to Viloga as “Satan” and “the spawn of a genocidal lineage,” and to Zionism as a “death cult that must be dealt with accordingly.”

Masked protestors disrupted an event held Wednesday evening in commemoration of the two-year anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, shouting at attendees that they were “all complicit in genocide.” The memorial event, hosted at Pomona College by Claremont Hillel and the Claremont Colleges’ Jewish Chaplain, featured a talk by Oct. 7 survivor Yoni Viloga.

On Tuesday, Oct. 7, students and faculty across the Claremont Colleges participated in pro-Palestine events, including vigils and speaker events, to mark two years of conflict between Israel and Hamas. A point of contention is the decision to host these events on Oct. 7, the day when Israel experienced Hamas’s ambush and had not yet begun its offensive into Gaza.

The U.S. News & World Report released their 2026 rankings for liberal arts colleges on Tuesday. Pomona College slipped down to seventh place, now tied with Claremont McKenna College and Wellesley.

The Equal Protection Project filed a Federal Civil Rights Complaint on Aug. 28 with the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), alleging that a number of programs and scholarships at the Claremont Colleges violate Titles VI and IX of the Civil Rights Act.

Approximately two dozen students gathered last week at Claremont McKenna College in memoriam of Charlie Kirk, founder of the MAGA-aligned organization Turning Point USA and leading conservative figure for college students across America. Vigil attendees were met with intermittent heckling, small-scale disruption, and digital harassment.

Claremont McKenna College claimed first place in the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression’s 2026 Free Speech Rankings on Tuesday, while Pomona College clocked in at 247th of 257 colleges. The other Claremont Colleges’ placements spanned between the two, with all but CMC earning an “F” grade.