Words by Emmy Knapp PZ ’27, Graphic by Ben Connolly PZ ’26

5C Critical Mass launched as an official club in Fall 2025, positioning itself as a hub for political education and social justice organizing for STEM students across the 5Cs. The club was founded by Lina McRoberts (PO ‘27) and Claudio Castillo (PO ‘26) after they noticed a persistent gap between STEM education and social justice theory and organizing. 

In Claremont, where social justice organizing is an everpresent part of student life, McRoberts said STEM curricula still lacks explicit connections between scientific research and broader social and political realities. 

“I would be in my physics or math classes, and I felt like students were not thinking about the way that our work as scientists, as physicists, is intersecting within the broader systems, structures, and culture of the socio-political sphere,” McRoberts said. 

Castillo echoed this disconnect. “We were talking about how could we make something here that helps us connect with more STEM students and do organizing work and political education as it pertains to STEM?” they said. “It’s just very clear from the people that we talk to, that that’s a need,” Castillo said. “They’re like, ‘I’m doing all this stuff and I’m seeing all the news and it feels like they’re so separate.’”

There are many opportunities for student organizing at the 5Cs. Pomona ASPC and CSWA continue their efforts to reinstate Frary dining hall cook and union leader Rolando Araiza after his unjust termination. CSWA is also campaigning to boycott Cafe 47 after Pomona entered a contract with Nestlé’s “We Proudly Serve Starbucks” program, linking the college to one of the nation’s largest union-busting corporations. 5C students have also been demanding further investigation into Diego Rios’s death in police custody last November, which was ruled as a homicide according to a release by the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office earlier this month. 

However, these traditional organizing spaces can feel intimidating for students new to activism, especially STEM students. That’s where Critical Mass comes into the picture. 

“Hopefully, for us, the space is a starting point for a lot of people,” Castillo said. 

Last semester, the group hosted a Defunding Science teach-in with STEM professors across the 5Cs, tabled at Leftist Coffee Hour at the Motley, and released a zine showcasing creative work by STEM students. 

“It can be hard as a STEM student to pursue creative endeavors between doing your problem sets, working in the lab and reading these textbooks,” McRoberts said. “If people have some sort of a motivation to like to pursue that and like to submit their work and have that shown, it’s beautiful.” 

McRoberts emphasized that organizing is fundamentally about community building and solidarity efforts. 

“A lot of people’s understanding of organizing or of activism is what’s called blocking activism, you know. Having all of his demands, rehire this person, get Starbucks off of Pomona college campus,” she said. “But just as important as (blocking) activism is building activism. Right now, what we need is more of this sustainable community organizing mutual aid work… Not so much aimed at destruction as it is a feeling of belonging.” 

The club is inspired by an organization called Free Radicals founded by Pomona alumni Alexis Takahashi and Sophie Wang in 2016. The organization started as a reading group connecting fundamental science, technology, and society authors like Robin Kimmerer, Deboleena Roy, and Donna Haraway with revolutionary theory. After six months, the group transitioned into organizing, with their first campaign organized against LAPD surveillance in 2016. 

5C Critical Mass is continuing their legacy. This semester, their primary initiative is to mitigate the harms of the Automatic License Plate Reader (ALPR) company Flock in Claremont. Flock is developing a nationwide network of mass-surveillance infrastructure, selling their ALPR technology to police departments and private companies. When Flock cameras pull license plate readings, customers can both collect the data in their own servers and access Flock’s nationwide database. Regulations regarding public records vary at both the state and municipal level, but ultimately, many cities with Flock’s ALPRs allow federal agencies, including ICE agents, to access surveillance data. 

“They’re in Claremont. There are a whole bunch of them on 6th Street, and they’re also a whole bunch in College Park. And so we’re like, what the fuck? Let’s get rid of that,” exclaimed McRoberts. 

Castillo pointed to other cities where community organizing has successfully pushed back against ALPRs. “In Santa Cruz and in Denver, Colorado, members of the public have gone to city council and said, ‘You know, we’re concerned about the upcoming surveillance technology,” they said. “And they’ve actually been successful in passing resolutions to get rid of ALPRs, because of a fear of the increasing totality of the surveillance state of the technology.”

Critical Mass hopes to bring similar concerns to Claremont City Council. 

“Ideally, our asks would be like, how can we ask for more transparency around it? How can we have this data used in the least endangering way for our community?”

For McRoberts, STEM and social justice are inextricably linked. 

“Someone asked me, ‘How is STEM and social justice related?’ And I was like, that’s the question!” she said. “How is it that we have the technology to bomb children, or how does the Israeli military complex, as an industry, exist? It’s because of mechanical physics, engineering and computer science. How is it that ICE is able to identify people? That’s all linear algebra. How is it that we have electric cars? From exploiting people in the Congo who are dying in these lithium mines.” 

The work that Critical Mass is doing is especially important in the larger landscape of American politics today. The technologies that STEM students are learning are not neutral, but deeply embedded in the machinery of state power. With ICE crackdowns intensifying across and the increasing use of force in state violence. 

Regarding this, Castillo emphasized that safety is essential to the group’s organizing strategy. “I think risk assessment is the hardest thing that we can do right now”, they said. “There are people who, by most standards, are very at risk but still really want to do the work. Anyone who contributes is doing good work and anyone who feels unsafe to do so, we definitely want to have people that are hearing their needs and supporting the community.” 

This community-oriented approach is part of how the group builds trust and lowers to barrier to participation, especially for students who may be engaging with organizing for the first time. 

For McRoberts, that process begins with helping students rethink their relationship to STEM itself. “What we’re doing is getting people to question a worldview and in that questioning of the worldview also questioning what it means to be a STEM student,” she said. “When they see themselves as a creative, or as an artistic individual, there’s a questioning of what it means to be a STEM student, and then I think that can be extended to a question of what can STEM students do in organizing, and then we can begin to question the system itself.” 

Critical Mass is carving out a space for an organizing culture at the 5Cs that centers both care and collective action. 

General Body meetings are on Tuesdays at 7pm at the Scripps Student Union above Malott, with current working groups that focus on teach-ins and anti-surveillance campaigns.