Pomona says it will fully cooperate with Congress request for disciplinary records

This article was updated on April 7 after a Pomona College spokesperson responded to a request for comment and provided Undercurrents with a full copy of the statement it sent to the Los Angeles Times. 

The statement clarified that the College would cooperate “consistent with our legal obligations.” These obligations are based on “the requirement that the College respond to a Congressional inquiry and the legal requirements related to FERPA [Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act] and other relevant privacy laws,” according to the spokesperson’s comment to Undercurrents. Under the College’s Student Records Privacy Policy, which discusses FERPA protections, the College is permitted to “disclose information from educational records to…third party entities in specific situations” including “to certain federal, state or local government authorities in connection with the audit or evaluation of educational programs” and “in compliance with court orders and subpoenæ.”

The article was also corrected to clarify that the letter did not explicitly ask for a list of student names, but for disciplinary records that include student names and a variety of information about students involved. For transparency, the original version of the article is archived here.

The House Committee on Education and Workforce sent the letter on March 27 to President Gabi Starr, Interim President Robert Gaines and Board of Trustees Chair Janet Benton. The committee additionally sent similar letters on the same day to the administrations of Northwestern, Bowdoin, Barnard, and Sarah Lawrence, seeking to investigate anti-Zionist actions at the schools.

This investigation comes following the Zionist entity’s resumption of its bombing campaign in Gaza on March 18. Palestinian UN representatives said that the Zionist entity violated the January 19 ceasefire at least 962 times in the span of 42 days before declaring it broken on March 18. Since then, the Zionist entity has displaced over 140,000 people and killed over 900 in its resumed bombing and ground invasion of Gaza.

Pomona said that it would “fully cooperate” with the inquiry in a statement to the Los Angeles Times. When this article was originally published, toTo Undercurrents’ knowledge, the administration hads made no direct announcement of the request or their cooperation to its students or the broader campus community.

In a March 29 statement sent to the Pomona student body, Gaines confirmed that Pomona “will meet the requirement of responding in good faith to the committee’s request for information,” but also asserting an “unwavering commitment to protecting the release of personally identifiable student information consistent with the relevant privacy laws.”

On April 4, after a request for comment, a Pomona spokesperson provided Undercurrents with the full text of the statement sent to the Los Angeles Times, emphasizing that the college said it would cooperate “consistent with our legal obligations” and thus “did not say it would expose student identities.”

In their statement to Undercurrents, the spokesperson elaborated that “legal obligations” includes both “the requirement that the College respond to a Congressional inquiry and the legal requirements related to FERPA and all other relevant privacy laws.”

According to Pomona’s Student Records Privacy Page, which Gaines linked in his email to the student body on March 31, FERPA “permits institutions to disclose information from education records to parents and other third parties under specific situations and certain conditions.” One of these conditions allows the college to provide records “to certain entities conducting studies or audits on behalf of the College, by federal, state, or local education authorities.”

The request specifically asks for all documents including email communications related to disciplinary action for the Oct. 7, 2024 takeover of Carnegie Hall, and for any action related to Starr’s residence. Pomona suspended 12 students and banned at least 36 students from its campus after the Carnegie Hall action. Undercurrents is not aware of any disciplinary actions related to Starr’s residence.

The request also asks for “a list of all student disciplinary/conduct cases associated with antisemitic incidents from October 7, 2023,” including previous disciplinary records of “alleged perpetrators” and email communications related to disciplinary actions.

The request specifies that, for its purposes, “antisemitic” includes any “incident involving the targeting of … Israel … Zionism, and/or Zionists.”

The letter was signed by committee chair Tim Walberg. At a town hall in March 2024, Walberg advocated for using force similar to the atomic bombings of Japan during WWII to end Palestinian resistance.

“We shouldn’t be spending a dime on humanitarian aid … It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick,” he said.

The request mentions that Pomona has an obligation under the Civil Rights Act to “promptly address discrimination, harassment, and a hostile environment” in order to receive federal financial assistance. It asks for the requested information by noon Eastern Time on April 10, 2025.

On March 7, the federal government pulled $400 million in grants and contracts from Columbia University as a result of an investigation into anti-Zionist activities on its campus. Since then, in an effort to recover its funding, Columbia has put its Middle East studies department under new supervision, revised their policies on student protestors and expanded its Institute for Israel and Jewish studies, as well as expelled, suspended and revoked the degrees of student protestors.

The federal government has also weaponized ICE against student protestors, detaining students from Tufts, Columbia, Georgetown, University of Alabama and Cornell, as well as revoking the visas of at least 300 students. At least five students and academics are currently detained, though ICE is still searching for others and President Donald Trump has indicated the desire to detain many more.