MAPPING STUDENT RESISTANCE

The purpose of this map and toolkit is to visually represent and document the history of student organizing over time. Students at the Claremont Colleges build significant political power, but challenges such as high turnover rates and the limitations of the semester calendar hinder the development of meaningful archiving initiatives. As organizers representing various on and off-campus groups and movements, we've observed a recurring issue: whenever a student seeks information about past organizing efforts, whether it's strategies employed or institutional responses, they are compelled to start from scratch and "re-invent the wheel." This often involves navigating through the institution's inaccessible library archive or delving into a labyrinth of Google Drive folders.

To support ongoing and future student organizing efforts, this archive is structured to be user-friendly and bolster campaigns. Past efforts are presented visually, employing formats such as maps, timelines, or photo slideshows. These visualizations serve to either expose the broader impact of oppressive systems stemming from the school outward or delve into the college's response to specific campaigns. The site concludes with a "Resources" section featuring key tools to support student organizing.

 The Activist Handbook , a site of 450+ guides for activists, includes a page on "Ethics of Archiving." It discusses how "imperial archives," whether government-run libraries or those funded by institutions like the Claremont Colleges, control narratives. In contrast, "community archives" or "liberatory archives" empower us to reclaim control over our stories, countering the narratives shaped by oppressive institutions. Explore the site below.

The first section of this archive is Divestment, which will cover 3 campaigns: Divest from South African Apartheid, Drop Sodexo, and KKR Kills. Financial decisions, budgets, and investments provide insights into the values prioritized by educational institutions. As the endowments and investments of the Claremont Colleges expand, they become increasingly entangled with issues such as the climate crisis, the military-industrial complex, and the carceral state. Without transparency about their investments, we are left to infer involvement in funding pipelines, funding the U.S. military and arms, and more.  Nashiha Alam and Agatha Palma help us define divestment  in the SJP Divestment Handbook:

In 2022, the endowments of the 5C colleges were valued as follows: $3.031 billion (Pomona), $179 million (Pitzer), $1.22 billion (CMC), $540 million (Scripps), and $444 million (Harvey Mudd). Student organizers, throughout different periods, have focused on urging schools to divest from various sectors, including fossil fuels, arms, and states associated with apartheid. Currently, there is a call from leftist groups for divestment from companies investing in the Israeli military in response to the ongoing genocide and ethnic cleansing in Gaza.

In 1979, 5c students first discovered that Pomona College had involvement with South African Apartheid stock holdings when the Faculty Commission on South African Issues released Vice President Fred Moon's financial report. In response to this, there were student demonstrations and lively debate over the issue in the early 1980s- including marches, demonstrations, opinion pieces written about apartheid being "a slow genocide," and the formation of student organizations.

Student protests and calls for Pomona to divest from the apartheid state escalated later in the 80s. "In 1985, the country  was still embroiled  in a nearly 40 year struggle with apartheid –- institutionalized racial segregation of Black South Africans — a government enforced system rooted in white supremacy. The South African government poured money into American businesses, and the institutions that invested in them, which included the 5Cs" (TSL). In response to call-outs for supporting the apartheid regime, then-president of Pomona said that “it would be deeply offensive" to him if he were "accused of being for apartheid" and that selling the stocks invested in the apartheid would not make him "a better person" (TSL).

Students Against Apartheid (SAA) emerged as the main organizing group on campus, an intercollegiate coalition of the six colleges. Their mission was "To encourage Democracy in South Africa through eliminating American support for the Apartheid system." The group Students for South African Awareness was the public face of SAA, with legitimate club status and resources, while its students organized behind the scenes under the name SAA. Eventually after over a decade of student organizing, Pomona divested from apartheid only after California Bill 134 passed. As 5c leftist organizers today call for Pomona to divest from both fossil fuels and Israeli arms, looking at how the institution has responded and carried out divestment in the past informs our current work.

 Drop Sodexo  was an active student campaign fighting for Scripps to end their contract with Sodexo Quality of Life and Services as their dining provider in Mallot Dining Commons. Sodexo is a French multinational food and hospitality corporation that has been criticized for its connections to private prisons and worker exploitation (Thomas).

The campaign sought to pressure the Scripps administration to end its contract with the company and ideally create an in-house dining hall plan, similar to Pomona College. In their petition, Drop Sodexo demanded that Lara Tiedens, the former Scripps president, “prioritize people over profit,” by ending the 2020 contract with the corporation (Sodexomustgo).

Scripps College re-upped with Sodexo without an open bidding process. In contrast to the College’s quiet approach to re-upping with Sodexo, students engaged in a number of high-profile direct actions, holding weekly Drop Sodexo meetings in the student union, writing blog posts under the “sodexomustgo” banner, and organizing the Scripps student body to eat at other college’s dining halls, thus forcing Scripps to pay those colleges for each meal eaten off-campus. All of this was intended to pressure the administration to drop Sodexo. In 2020, finally exposed to an open bidding process where Sodexo had to defend itself in public rather than just to administrators behind closed doors, Sodexo came to campus and was crushed by a deluge of students at Sodexo’s public presentation. Shortly thereafter Sodexo was replaced by Bon Appetit.

The Drop Sodexo website connects Sodexo’s practices to racism, sexism, and classism as a rallying cry for their cause. According to their website, the Sodexo corporation perpetuates the organization of the racial experience in this country and internationally because of its connections to and ownership of private prisons. According to Elizabeth Brown and George Bargainer imprisonment practices are purposely racialized and gendered. Over 60% of people imprisoned are Black or brown and this has served to benefit the white population by maintaining surveillance and upholding racial-governance strategies. Also, Sodexo has notoriously denied workers their rights and it has been heavily involved in anti-unionization efforts. They also benefit from worker exploitation, whether that be incarcerated people, who make furniture and goods for next to no pay, or the staff who work in dining halls like Malott who are often not paid a living wage. The Drop Sodexo movement aimed to address the fact that these issues affect people of color.

Our collective recognition of this recent event and rooting it in the spatial history of Scripps’ Bowling Green Lawn Scripps College history is important to maintaining institutional memory of protest events to keep the momentum going for future action and to hold Scripps’ administration accountable for its contribution to human suffering.

Scripps College is dropped Sodexo as its dining services provider in favor of Bon Appétit Management Company, effective July 1, 2020.

 KKR Kills  was a group of students in solidarity with Witsuwit'en and Yoeme communities calling for the removal of Kravis and Roberts from CMC for investing in the Coastal Gaslink Pipeline and Sempra Energy.

CMC Trustees Kravis and Roberts, and their company KKR, are currently pushing through a Liquid Natural Gas Pipeline over Indigenous Witsuwit'en territory. The pipeline is planned to travel under the Wedzin Kwa, a sacred river to the Witsuwit'en. The pipeline's plans will destroy Witsuwit'en people's source of water and subsistence. Kravis and Roberts have donated hundreds of millions to Claremont McKenna College and their names are celebrated on major buildings on campus. The KKR Kills campaign believes that students have the power to disrupt Kravis and Roberts' reputations by calling for their removal and putting pressure on them to stop the pipeline.

The Apartheid archive consists of scanned TSL articles in the 1980s. The articles range from 1984-1987 and include opinion pieces on students' thoughts on divestment, responses from Pomona College to student organizing (lots of responses from President Alexander), and the political landscape of the colleges at the time.

The Drop Sodexo archive consists of links to all media related to the campaign. This includes TSL article links, mentions on social media, the Drop Sodexo website, as well as interview content with lead organizers of the campaign.

The KKR Kills archive consists of links to all media related to the campaign, as well as outside media about the pipelines and the people who protested them. The media includes TSL article links, and mentions on social media.

Assorted archives of student activism from 1960s-1990s, including articles, communications from administration, and posters from teach-ins.

Assorted archives from ethnic studies movements and affinity groups from the 1960s-2020s, including BSU, LSU, and CAPAS.

 History of BDS at the 5cs  

 National SJP Divestment Handbook 

 Activist Handbook  

 From Activist Handbook: Direct Action Tactics 

Divest Now! A Handbook for Student Divestment Campaigns- Navigate to the handbook at the button below:

 Claremont Activism Archive:   Antiwar Protests at Scripps (1968-1972), Seeds of Change: Defining Black Space at the Claremont Colleges (1968-69), Taking Root: Developing the Black Studies Center at the Claremont Colleges (1969-1979)

Explore this in-depth map of environmental struggles across southern California. The map includes student struggles in Claremont, organizing across the state, as well as the institutions that contribute to and combat oppression. Toggle on and off the layers on the righthand side of the dashboard by Transit, Education, General Environmental Organizing, Food, Future of Energy, Immigration, Indigenous Legacies, Labor Rights, Legal Industry, Locally Unwanted Land Uses, Prisons/Policing/Surveillance, Public Health, and Water for a more narrow view at a topic. If you want a point added to this map, fill out the Google form in the second tab of the dashboard. The third tab has a short list of action items compiled by the past PJE cohort. Finally, they define neoliberalism in the fourth tab, which outlines the framework with which they conducted their research and decided to include points on the map.