On Wednesday, the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) organized a student forum with President David Oxtoby to discuss the recent terminations of Pomona dining hall workers. About 100 students attended. After outlining the situation – from Oxtoby’s first email notifying the Pomona community of the allegations against him and his administration to the eventual termination of 16 workers – the dialogue session began.

There has been uproar on campus in the wake of the documentation checks and eventual terminations of employees. Workers for Justice organized boycotts of the College’s dining halls. The Concerned Students of Pomona College protested the College’s actions and set up tents outside Alexander Hall in a vigil. After the firings, around 150-200 protesters marched on campus, and 15 were arrested. Michael Teter, a Pomona alum and former visiting Professor of Politics, wrote letters challenging the College’s actions, which the College’s legal counsel Sidley Austin LLP responded to in a letter that was forwarded to the Pomona community yesterday. Also yesterday, the National Labor Relations Board issued a complaint against the College for its union-busting efforts. There has been much frustration over the way the College has acted, and the ASPC forum offered students the the opportunity to clear up some of the confusion.

Pomona President David Oxtoby (photo courtesy of pomona.edu)

Most of the questions at the forum were about the lack of clarity surrounding the entire issue. In the email that Oxtoby sent on December 1 (the day the workers were terminated), he emphasized that Pomona had no choice but to obey the federal laws, and also that “our community would need time to heal.” In response to this, a student asked one of the most pressing questions on people’s minds, “If we don’t know everything, the details of this accusation, how do you expect us to heal?” When asked why the Pomona community does not know all of the details, Oxtoby replied, “I don’t know everything either.”

Earlier that day when the Pomona faculty met and voted on a resolution to demand that the College provide full financial and legal support for the fired workers so they can get proper documentation then rehire them with backpay, Oxtoby said that he had no knowledge of what had been happening until September. According to him, he was “in the dark” until he was openly accused of violating federal labor law. Certain students expressed their sentiments regarding all that had happened, but Oxtoby continued to emphasize that although the terminations scarred the Pomona community, they were unavoidable because the college had to abide by the laws.

In order to dispel rumors, there were also questions that sought to verify what had truly happened: Were the workers given access to Spanish translation services? Could they bring their own lawyers? Did Pomona provide lawyers? David Oxtoby’s answers to most of these questions implied that Pomona was fair in their treatment of all the workers. He added that one worker asked for an extension, received it and was able to maintain his job.

Another question on students’ minds was why Oxtoby did not extend the deadline despite the vigils and letters asking him to. In response to this, Oxtoby said that he felt that the December deadline was adequate. According to him, extending the deadline could only create space for dialogue between the administration and Pomona community and would not have necessarily solved the problem, as some workers simply did not have their documents and this would have given them “false hope.” Oxtoby reiterated that Pomona has agreed to rehire any worker who could present legal documentation within the next six months.

A reference was made to a similar incident in 2000 that occurred when workers were also trying to unionize. In response to this, Oxtoby said that the termination of workers at the time had to do with the dining hall service that Pomona was using. They apparently had unhealthy conditions, among other defects, and this made Pomona terminate their contract. “It had nothing to do with documentation,” Oxtoby said.

Generally, the forum allowed Pomona students to express their frustrations and ask Oxtoby the burning questions they had. Oxtoby’s answers overall emphasized sympathy for the affected community and hope for a healed campus, but underlined the fact that Pomona had a “legal obligation” and could not violate the law. Despite Pomona College’s dedication to the “principles of inclusion,” disobeying the law would be seen by many as unethical and would be dragging the entire college into an act of “civil disobedience.” This would not be fair to those who did not want to be involved in that sense.

Some of the fired workers at Friday's protest (photo by Arielle Zionts PZ '14)

Although Oxtoby tried to give answers for each question he was asked, some attendees left with a sense of frustration and unfulfillment. The president’s persistent inability to make matters entirely clear still leaves doubt in the minds of many students. According to a student who prefers to remain anonymous, “He knew that he could not please us. We still don’t have answers that we seek.”

Unknown to many, Scripps College recently faced a similar situation but took a different approach. President Lori Bettison-Varga halted checks of seven employees’ work documentation by Scripps’ Human Resources department last week. In an email to Scripps faculty, staff and students, Bettison-Varga said that the checks were made because the workers’ documents were “not readily available in on-campus files.” She said that she believes that “the I-9 forms forms not stored on campus are at CUC in deep storage where personnel records from 1986 to 1998 are archived.” Bettison-Varga continued, “Scripps College has always had a policy and practice of collecting appropriate documents for all employees at the time of hire.”

This is a sharp contrast to an email from the Pomona Board of Trustees on November 28 that said, “The College’s procedures to verify and document the legal work authorization of employees at the time of hire were and are in compliance with the law,” and even though “there was no support for those allegations against the administration and the College…document deficiencies were nevertheless discovered.” In Sidley Austin’s response to Professor Teter’s letters, the law firm states that Scripps’ decision to halt the documentation check “is irrelevant to Pomona’s situation” because “Pomona was not in compliance with its legal obligations until it had followed up with all [employees with deficiencies in their documents] to verify their documents as required by law.”

Large questions still remain: Who was the anonymous employee who accused Pomona? Why was Oxtoby “in the dark” before these allegations were made public? Was the situation Pomona faced really all that different than Scripps’, and could Oxtoby have taken a similar approach to President Bettison-Varga’s?

Deborah Frempong is a freshman at Pomona College.