Letters to the Editor: The consequences of civil disobedience at Pomona College

Los Angeles Times Opinion
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CLAREMONT, CA - APRIL 11, 2024 - Over 200 Pomona College students and students from the other Claremont Colleges, shut down a section of College Avenue to stage a sit-in in front of Alexander Hall to protest Pomona College to divest from Israel, Israel out of Gaza and over the recent arrest of 20 students last week at in Claremont on April 11, 2024. Students were arrested for trespassing last week during a sit-in inside Alexander Hall on the Pomona campus. (Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)
Pomona College students and others shut down a section of College Avenue in front of Alexander Hall, calling on the school to divest from Israel, on April 11. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
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To the editor: As a 1975 graduate of Pomona College and a veteran of many campus protests, I am disturbed that neither protesting students nor some faculty seem to understand elementary civil disobedience. ("'I can't focus on anything but rage.' Pro-Palestinian protests roil elite Pomona College," April 12)

If students choose to break the law by trespassing on an administration building or violating other school policies, they should be subject to suspension and arrest and accept that actions have consequences. Henry David Thoreau, Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. understood this.

Pomona College President G. Gabrielle Starr did these students a favor by teaching them that in the real world, actions have consequences.

Ian Campbell, Pasadena

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To the editor: Your article on the recent Pomona College protests quotes the faculty chair as saying that the new generation of students is more aggressive than those of yesteryear.

His evidence? They mask and cover up.

What the professor fails to acknowledge is that the students have very good reasons to do so.

We are now in the information age, where any student can be doxxed, their personal information spread all over the Internet. The potential is there for those with differing views not only to wreak havoc on a protester's personal life, but also to affect their ability to secure internships, jobs and entrance to graduate school.

Pamela Nagler, Claremont

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To the editor: The troubles in the region that was once identified as the British Mandate for Palestine go back to the early 1900s. The war that is now going on is a continuation of mistakes made a century ago.

Protests in our country, no matter how well meaning, are not going to resolve the differences between the antagonists. Still, I have no problem with students expressing themselves on either side of the argument.

That said, I do not agree with those students who claim their free speech is being suppressed yet wear masks and otherwise hide their identities. Anonymous protest brings into question the sincerity of their beliefs.

Martin Parker, Thousand Oaks

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.