Scripps tells Motley to take down Palestinian flag or stay closed. Students workers fight back

On Sept. 9, a Scripps administrator told Motley Coffeehouse student managers that they had to take down a Palestinian flag in the space — or they wouldn’t be allowed to re-open.

In the spring, faced with a similar demand for censorship, Motley managers had prioritized baristas’ jobs and negotiated a compromise with administrators. But this time, when the managers met with each other and their baristas to figure out what to do, they made a different decision.

The flag was staying up. It was time to fight.

Motley student workers called for students to rally on Sept. 12, a day before the Motley’s scheduled re-opening, when the administrator said they would come check that the flag was taken down.

Over 160 students answered the student workers’ call, crowding inside the Motley as baristas spoke out in defense of the Motley’s historically political values, and in solidarity with Palestine solidarity and divestment organizing on campus.

The administrator didn’t show up on Thursday, citing bad traffic. She said she would be back another day. But Motley managers said that they were committed to maintaining the precedent that the coffeehouse would fight against admin repression.

“The fight has been at Pomona, the fight has been at Pitzer, the fight has been at Harvey Mudd,” one manager said in a speech, referring to campaigns to divest from weapons manufacturers and companies complicit in the Zionist genocide in Palestine on each campus. “I think it is time that the fight is also here at Scripps.”

Scripps tells the Motley to take down flag, or stay closed

In a series of emails from Sept. 9 through Sept. 12, the Interim Special Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs Deborah Hebert said that the Palestinian flag must be removed due to its violation of “campus policy and conduct standards.”

Hebert first told student managers that she had noticed the flag through the Motley’s window on Sept. 9, in an email with the subject line “UhOh.”

“I believe I saw a Palestinian flag in the window,” she wrote. “The Palestinian flag must be removed immediately.”

In the Sept. 9 email, Hebert said that “Legal did get involved” when the Motley and Scripps Store displayed Palestinian flags in the spring, and that “both groups were explicitly told the could not display flags.”

In a Sept. 11 follow-up, Hebert elaborated that the Motley is “a business open to all of the Scripps and 7C Community it needs to be a welcoming environment for all of the community, not just part of the community.”

Motley managers responded to the initial request by sharing that they did not feel comfortable taking down the flag.

“The Motley historically and presently has been a space of political dissent and expression. [We] do not feel like it is our place to take down a flag that was collectively put up by our baristas in the space,” two of the Motley’s managers wrote in an email to Hebert on Sept. 9.

Hebert responded by doubling down on the demand for the flag to be removed.

“I need you to understand, this is not a choice … Removal of the flag is a condition to being able to open the Motley,” she wrote in the Sept. 11 email. “As such, if you want to open the Motley for business on Friday, it needs to be removed by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday.”

Hebert said that she would personally visit the Motley on Thursday to verify that the flag was no longer displayed.

Motley workers decide to fight back

On Sept. 11, two of the Motley’s managers initially complied with Herbert’s request to take the flag down, with the intention to put the flag back up after the Motley re-opened.

But when other managers gathered at the Motley around noon that day, they started discussing whether it would be possible to fight back more directly.

In the next two days, Motley baristas met several times as student managers and as the entire staff. The night of Sept. 11, Motley student managers met to discuss how they would approach a conversation with baristas about potentially keeping the flag up. They decided to put the flag back up as they planned their next steps.

One manager told Undercurrents that the meeting was “emotional.” The managers talked through fears about keeping up the Palestinian flag and the potential impact to baristas if the Motley were not allowed to open in the next week.

On the morning of Sept. 12, Hebert had stopped by the Motley and, after seeing the flag hung up again, confronted two Motley managers and threatened to report it.

During lunchtime on Sept. 12, 38 out of the Motley’s 51 total student workers met — and came to a consensus that they would keep the flag up and call for community members to come to the Motley in support that afternoon, in response to admin’s threat of repression.

160+ rally in support of baristas

At 4:15 p.m. on Sept. 12, over 160 people came to the Motley in response to the baristas’ call to action, which Pomona Divest from Apartheid, Nobody Fails at Scripps and Claremont SJP had co-posted on Instagram just hours before.

During the gathering, baristas and managers shared the fear they had felt due to the administration’s threats over the past couple of days — and the joy and bravery that the crowd’s presence incited in them.

“Last year, we were bullied by administration into taking down our flag with a threat of closure hanging over our heads,” a Motley manager said. “This year, we do not want to stand with the administration’s attempt to strategically suppress the voices of our baristas and management, to deny Palestine’s right to self-determination and statehood, and to try and hide our administration’s involvement in the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

One manager emphasized how administrators’ description of the Motley as a “college-owned, student run” cafe diminished the work that baristas and managers did, and their ownership of the space.

“We’re student run. We are the ones who are training our baristas. We are the ones who are decorating it, planning, opening, making drinks, doing all the fucking work for them,” they said.

The manager also said that Scripps’ claims that the Motley violated the code of conduct by having the flag up was made arbitrary by the fact the Scripps changed the code to create retroactive policy violations — and that the crackdown at the Motley was part of a broader wave of repression of Palestine solidarity organizing.

“This is in the context of so much crackdown happening across the campuses here, of course across the country, across the world, and within the context of the 5Cs, like everything from the arrest last semester, to all these little things like Pomona bringing in their new ID policy,” they said, referring to Pomona President Gabi Starr calling riot police to arrest 19 students participating in a sit-in in April, and Starr’s decision to lock all Pomona buildings going into the new school year.

The manager emphasized that the fight to keep the flag up at the Motley was part of a broader fight for “Palestinian rights.”

“If standing up for humanity has the consequence of not being able to work at the Motley, then so be it. You know, I would rather not work at a place that’s gonna crack down on Palestinian rights,” they said.

Afterwards, the baristas opened the floor up for attendees to share how they felt about the threat of anti-Palestinian censorship at the Motley.

One student, a freshman who identified themselves as Palestinian, also talked about how they had felt scared prior to coming to the Claremont Colleges, and emphasized that the action made them feel safe and welcome.

Another speaker expressed their solidarity with the Motley workers’ decision to keep the Palestinian flag up as a Jewish student.

“The Motley has never made me feel unsafe. The only thing that makes me feel unsafe is how quickly and blatantly our admin is willing to shut down a community space that has done nothing but good,” they said.