Pomona President Responds to 'Misinformation' on Cooperation with Congressional Probe

Image via OpenVerse. Copyright Dave and Margie Hill.

In an email Monday evening, Pomona College Acting President Bob Gaines responded to flyers distributed around Pomona's campus and “media reports” which claimed that the college would “expose student identities in its response to the recent Congressional inquiry” received by Pomona. 

The flyer, which was placed on car windshields around Pomona’s campus, claims that “Pomona College is throwing its students into the Trump deportation meat grinder. How many of your current and former classmates will be disappeared?... Pomona must feel more pain from compliance with fascism than it feels from resisting it.” Below a Palestinian flag and an inverted American flag, the flyer calls on readers to “Act. Get in their face. Disrupt. Shame them.”

The letter sent on Friday to Pomona by the House Committee on Education and Workforce requested disciplinary records related to anti-Israel protests and antisemitic incidents at the college. On Sunday, Gaines wrote in an email that Pomona would “meet the requirement of responding in good faith to the committee’s request for information,” while also abiding by Pomona’s “unwavering commitment to protecting the release of personally identifiable student information consistent with the relevant privacy laws.”

Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the college has a legal obligation to protect student records containing “personally identifying information.” Any documents shared by Pomona with the Committee would likely be redacted in order to comply with the law, which proscribes the sharing of information “linked or linkable to a specific student that would allow a reasonable person in the school community, who does not have personal knowledge of the relevant circumstances, to identify the student with reasonable certainty.” 

“[C]ontrary to the misinformation on the flyer and in some media reports,” Gaines wrote, “the College will not expose student identities unless obligations to the law stipulate otherwise—and that is not the case at this time.”

A widely circulated article and Instagram post by Claremont Undercurrents reported that Pomona would comply with a congressional request for “a list of students” involved in disciplinary cases. A screenshot from the article is featured on the flyer. 

The Committee’s letter, however, does not request a list of students, but asks Pomona to share information including “the date, a description of the incident, the undergraduate/graduate status and school of the alleged perpetrator, the entity/entities responsible for reviewing the case, the disciplinary process/processes being used to review the case, case status, actions taken to date (including any modification of proposed or imposed discipline), and the standing of the alleged perpetrator (good standing, suspended, expelled, etc).” Student or protester identity is not mentioned.

“I do not know who is distributing this flyer, but I am sorry it is propagating misinformation,” wrote Gaines, concluding his email by sharing a ‘campus questions’ email address where students can send their questions relating to “federal policy and debates.”