Students End Demonstration; Colleges Vow Diverse Hiring

Proclaiming “Victory Is Ours,” students chanted, clapped and cheered as they surrendered control of an administration building early Wednesday after securing pledges from the five Claremont Colleges to aggressively pursue ethnic and sexual diversity in hiring faculty and accepting students.

The dramatic conclusion of a two-day occupation of Pomona College’s Alexander Hall came at 1 a.m. after a negotiating session between college administrators and students calling themselves “Liberation through Education.”

Yusef Omowale, a 20-year-old Pitzer College sophomore who was one of the student negotiators, announced the settlement in a fiery speech to more than 200 students assembled in front of the hall.

“There is only one thing left to say,” he said. “Victory is ours. Those of us on the inside have chosen to leave the building on our own terms. There will be no business as usual. Usually, the administration decides when folks leave buildings by calling the police.”

But, he said, students this time would give no one any excuses “to send in your fascist pigs . . . We took this building from you. We have chosen when to give it back.”

But Omowale acknowledged that the group fell short of achieving all its goals. And a few students shouted: “You sold us out.”

Students later marched to the home of Scripps College President Nancy Y. Bekavac to demand that the college fill a faculty position in Hispanic/Chicano studies. The college is not filling the position in 1993-94 for budgetary reasons, but Bekavac said all Chicano studies classes will still be offered and the position will be filled in 1994.

College officials were pleased with the outcome.

Marilyn Chapin Massey, president of Pitzer College, said, “We’ve worked through to a wonderful set of principles, something that Pitzer has been committed to all along.”

Pomona College President Peter W. Stanley said the demands by students were fairly easy to address, but the tactics used were “the worrisome thing.”

“Almost everything they want was something we would be happy to do anyway without their taking over a building,” he said. “Taking over a building is something we really can’t tolerate.

“It happened this time and we responded to it the way we did partly because we thought their issues were legitimate ones. If there were reason to believe people were getting into the habit of taking over buildings, our reaction would be different.”

The seizure of the two-story administration building forced Stanley and nearly 100 other employees out of their offices and upset some students, who circulated counter-protest petitions.

Frank Price, a Pomona College junior, said most students were unaware of the problems being raised until after the protest.

But the students who led the takeover said they had tried for years to work through the system.

“I don’t know how many petitions I’ve signed,” said Kiana Burleson, a Pomona College sophomore. “They don’t respond to us if we’re quiet and polite. We have to get their attention.”

The protest was triggered by a decision by the Pomona College English Department to reject for a permanent faculty appointment three African-American candidates, including Sue Houchins, who has taught at the Claremont Colleges for years on temporary assignments.

College administrators said the English department’s action was out of order, and they have promised in the agreement to make an appointment by May 1 for the position, which the English department shares with the Intercollegiate Department of Black Studies.

All of the colleges declared their commitment to aggressive affirmative action programs and promise to work to increase enrollment for minority and low-income students. Other points in the agreement include a pledge by Pomona, Pitzer and Harvey Mudd colleges to work toward developing an Asian-American studies program, and a promise by Pomona College to develop a plan by April 1 to increase the number of tenure-track faculty members of color by 50% in the next seven years.

Currently, 17% of the Pomona College faculty and one-third of the students are minority. Minority figures for other college faculties are 19% at Pitzer, 15% at Scripps and Harvey Mudd and 7% at Claremont McKenna. Claremont Graduate School’s faculty is 2% Asian, 1% black, 2% Latino and 93% Anglo.