Earlier this month 20 students were arrested at Pomona College after occupying the office of University President Gabrielle Starr in support of Gaza. The students were also served with an “Emergency Interim Suspension” over the protest.
That sit-in began in response to the school dismantling a mock apartheid wall that the students had erected on the Claremont, California campus. For months they’ve been demanding that the school disclose its financial ties to Israel and divest from the war on Gaza.
Mondoweiss spoke with first-year Pomona student Sinqi Chapman, who was arrested and suspended over the protest.
You were arrested during a sit-in at the school earlier this month. Can you talk about your experience?
Sinqi Chapman: I was one of the students who participated in the sit-in in the lobby of President Gina Gabrielle Starr’s office.
Prior to us entering Alexander Hall, which is the building that the president’s office is in, we were defending our mock Apartheid Wall which was supposed to represent the apartheid that Pomona College is funding. The reason we were protecting the wall is because our administration was violently stripping it down and pulling it out of students’ hands, snatching students’ belongings, and throwing them in trucks as well as pieces of the wall.
The reason the administration wanted to get rid of the wall is that they wanted to use the space we were occupying for a seven-day celebration that is supposed to demonstrate school pride. Students defending the wall were saying, “There is no school pride while Pomona College is funding genocide.”
Since the arrests, we’ve learned that President Starr had initially called the riot police on the students, and it is said in reports that the riot police were called off because the crowd got too big.
A group of students went inside, and before we even got to her office, we were met by Starr telling us that we were all subject to an immediate suspension. Actually, just a day prior, some students who are unionizing were in her office, and she said, “Students are welcome in my office anytime. This is your school.”
Nineteen of us proceeded to go inside the office and we sat down. We were just met with this frantic president. The administration wasn’t level-headed at all, they threatened to call the police probably seven times, before bringing in the riot police. Starr ordered the riot police to circle around the campus as an intimidation tactic to try to get students to leave.
While we were in there Starr called on campus security to detain a student media member. Campus security physically put their hands on this student, pushed him outside the room, shoved him to the ground, kicked him in the face, and pushed him against the wall. This individual was never detained so they were actually just assaulted as a result of an order by Starr.
While we were sitting inside we were not not blocking any walkways. We were sitting and talking to each other, but most of the time it was silent. We kept a walkway for people because we didn’t want it to be a fire hazard at all. The secretary was sitting in there and didn’t feel threatened by our presence at all matter. In fact, Starr asked the secretary if she wanted to leave early and she casually said, “Oh, I’m just finishing up a few things.” It was very obvious that this person didn’t feel threatened by our presence or feel like it was unsafe.
While we were in there we got a school-wide email notification saying a lot of police were coming to campus but that there was “no threat” to our community. but there is no threat to our community.
Since then, President Starr has continued to say that we were the ones who created an unsafe environment when the reality is she ordered maybe twenty riot police from about five different departments to come in and violently arrest many black students, many brown, indigenous, and undocumented students. While we were in the office, I witnessed my peers get violently arrested by riot police with semi-automatic weapons. We were all taken one by one to the local police department. Rather than just citing us and releasing students, which is an option, Starr deployed riot police and sent 20 students to jail for more than five hours.
We were denied lawyers. We did not consent to being searched and we were searched anyway. There were students who were interrogated inside. In the jail, some students were denied medication. I was also one of the students that did not consent to being searched and was searched.
I think it’s important to bring up that students were actually held in jail longer than they needed to be because Pomona College and Claremont PD work as one unit. The head of campus security was walking in and out of the jail. Personally, I was not allowed to leave. I had already been booked, my fingerprints were taken, and they had all my information so I should have been released, but the jailers said they were waiting for my suspension letter from Pomona College. I was given my suspension letter by the head of campus security. I’m suspended indefinitely.
When we were released from jail it was past midnight, we received the suspension letters, and we were essentially evicted from our dorms. We did not have any housing. We did not have any food. Pomona College chose to respond to us in such a punitive and carceral way because they felt threatened by student dissent and students challenging their investments.
That’s how it unfolded.
What did Palestine activism at the school look like leading up to this moment? I assume it has increased since last fall.
Yes, since October there’s been mobilization efforts on campus. There have been die-ins, boycotts, rallies. Right now students are engaging in an escalatory campaign towards divestment. The students are demanding that Pomona College discloses and divest completely from all weapons manufacturers and all institutions that aid the ongoing occupation of Palestine, adhere to the USACBI academic boycott of Israel, publicly call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire in Gaza, publicly condemn the Zionist regime’s occupation, ethnic cleansing, genocide, and dehumanization of Palestinians, institute anti-discrimination policies explicitly for Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, SWANA, Black, Brown, and indigenous students.
These demands have been presented on several occasions to the administration, and they have done nothing but try to stomp out any kind of student dissent in regard to divestment.
Earlier this semester, ASPC, which is our student government body, sent out a referendum, which is just a way to get student opinion on an issue. This referendum was specific to Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions. This was historic. It showed that 85% of students support divestment, 90% of students support the school disclosing its holdings, disclosure, and 78% of students support an academic boycott.
So divestment is popular among the student body. It is just the administration that is demonizing any type of organizing that is threatening their investments. We are organizing with the understanding that the student body is behind us and students will continue to escalate until these demands are met because nobody on campus wants to be complicit in the genocide.
We want to hold the administration accountable. Pomona College was invested in South African apartheid and we have every right to believe that Pomona College is invested in Israeli apartheid. We will continue to escalate until our demands are met because we believe in a free Palestine and we believe that we will do everything in our power by any means necessary to achieve divestment and liberation.
Can you talk about the organizing that’s been going on at the school since the arrests? I know there was just a huge walkout on campus.
Yes, that walkout was actually the largest turnout of the whole year. I’m suspended so I’m banned from all Claremont Colleges, but it was really beautiful. I followed it on Instagram. More than 700 walked out, demanding divestment and disclosure. 700 plus students believe that the response from the administration to militarize their campus is just appalling. 700 plus students are ready to mobilize when the administration criminalizes dissent.
We’ve seen dozens of encampments pop up across campuses over the past week. What are these protests growing and growing?
I am just so proud to be amongst people who are fighting for liberation. It’s a collective struggle and we’re all in it together. We are. We are all fighting for our liberation and the students across all campuses understand that none of us are free until Palestine is free.
We will all continue to escalate, continue to shed light on the ongoing occupation and genocide in Palestine and we’ll continue to do all we can with the privileges that we have being in the West. We want to work towards a radically reimagined world, a liberatory world, a world where the imperialist core has been defeated and all peoples are free.
So I’m honored to be part of this struggle and I’m grateful for the ancestors who have put me in a position to continue the struggle.
It will be interesting to know how many of these police officers, seen in many videos being very rough with the protestors, were trained in the genocidal nation. If they were trained by them, it would be very ironic, and would explain a lot.