Words by Ben Lauren PZ ’25

After nearly four months, Pitzer College has begun the final stages of its judicial process for students banned from Pomona College campus for their alleged participation in the Oct. 7, 2024 takeover of Carnegie Hall.

Over the past two weeks, the banned students completed their individual exploratory hearings where they met with Pitzer Assistant Dean of Residential Engagement and Community Standards Joe Koluder to review their charges and decide whether they wanted their case to be reviewed by the Judicial Council or sent to administrative review.

While the students may face sanctions from Pitzer if they are found responsible for violating the Student Code of Conduct, Pitzer’s decisions will have no bearing on the bans from Pomona.

Nozomi Shima PZ ’25, a banned student who had her exploratory hearing last week, believed Pitzer’s process is moving along swiftly after Pomona took seven weeks to provide Pitzer with evidence against her and the other banned students.

“After having to wait for all Pomona’s evidence and everything, [Pitzer has] been much kinder, I guess, or more understanding of the situation,” Shima said.

Pomona filed its incident reports and sent evidence of wrongdoing to Pitzer on Nov. 25 — two days before the start of Thanksgiving break — according to Pitzer Assistant Vice President and Dean of Community Life Alayna Session-Goins. She explained Pitzer’s administration felt it was necessary to push students’ hearings to the spring semester given how late in the semester they received the evidence from Pomona.

“Due to the large number of respondents we have, it took time to get through the initial investigative interviews with students due to Thanksgiving Break, and then the pause of official charge letters going out due to the Winter Break,” Session-Goins said in an email to The Outback.

Due to the influx of students potentially going to Judicial Council hearings, Session-Goins stated that the Council has triggered the ‘under normal circumstances’ clause in the Code of Conduct, informing the leaders of the college’s shared governance bodies that hearings may be scheduled after the normally required period of 25 class days.

She added that this may also result in multiple students charged with the same violation being tried together.

“Group hearing boards have taken place in the past,” she said in the email. “If students go into a Hearing Board process as a group, Community Standards is requiring that each individual student sign off that they understand they are forfeiting their ‘Right to a hearing separate from that of another respondent’ … Students also must acknowledge that evidence related to their individual involvement in an incident will be shared with other Respondents and their advisors (if applicable) during the Hearing Board.”

Meanwhile, for students opting into Administrative Review — performed internally by the Dean of Students Office — their reviews will be scheduled “by the end of February at the latest,” Session-Goins said via email.

Students who have any outstanding charges or incomplete sanctions will be delayed from graduating. As a senior, this was key in Shima’s decision to choose Administrative Review.

“I think the process will just be done faster … and if I need to do something for whatever sanction [I could receive] then I would rather know sooner than later,” Shima said.

Based on her exploratory hearing, Shima was confident she would be receiving fair due process throughout her administrative review.

“Joe [Koluder] was really nice in our meeting and communicative,” Shima said. “He emphasized that the Administrative Review would be more of a conversation rather than a trial, and take into consideration how we’ve already been affected, what we do on campus, and what we’ve learned from the whole process … He was big on emphasizing education for Pitzer students rather than punishment.”

Shima’s review will be in the next couple weeks, but she expects to remain banned from Pomona’s campus for the rest of her college career. Since her appeal was denied, she has only received one message from Pomona.

Shima said, “they told me to sign up for Duo Push because my media studies thesis classes technically through their Canvas, but that’s it.”