Dear Pomona College community,
As you know, on March 27 the College received a letter jointly signed by the chairs of the U.S. House Committee on Education and Workforce and its Subcommittee on Higher Education and Workforce Development requesting certain information from the College by April 10. As I have shared in prior related updates, since receiving this letter, we have been working with legal counsel and other advisors to fully understand every aspect of the committee’s request.
Discussions with committee representatives have produced an amended timeline for the College’s response to the committee. Specifically, we will be responding to their request in several parts over the next few weeks. Yesterday, consistent with that revised timeline, we provided the committee with the first part of our response, which was information related to the September 2024 protest incident at the President’s House. Our response made clear that this incident did not result in any disciplinary actions. And let me stress that, consistent with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (commonly called FERPA), no identifying information of any kind about individual students was shared with the committee.
As we complete our obligations to the committee over the coming weeks, we will continue to ensure that we uphold Pomona’s mission and values and protect the privacy of our students.
In legal investigations the College protects the confidentiality of the related materials at all times. We therefore will not be sharing our responses to the committee beyond the committee itself.
I will share another update with you on this matter in a few weeks, after we provide the final material to the committee on the revised timeline.
Best wishes,
Bob
Robert Gaines
Acting President
Edwin F. and Martha Hahn Professor of Geology