It’s been said many times — “Safety first.” And at Pomona College, they’re dedicated to the directive.

Apropos of asylum, the elite private Southern California school boasts an association welcoming almost all races: the Students of Color Alliance (SOCA). And the group happens to have a lounge.

To access the lounge, an electronic ID is required. In order to attain one, each student must complete a form which requests his or her identity group.

The security system was approved by the administration last month; ClaremontSOCA announced as much on Instagram:

Previously, there was no standardized process for granting swipe access to the lounge which limited the use of the space as it was intended. Moving forward, there will be a Google form that students of color can fill out to request swipe access to the space.

Groups included in the Student of Color Alliance:

• Latinx Alliance
• Caballeros & Señoritas Student Alliance
• Eritrean and Ethiopian Student Association
• African Student Association
• Women of Pre-Health
• Asian American Resource Center

In case you haven’t heard, People of the Pale are presently a pinch persona non grata:

University Allows Deadline Extensions for Nonwhite Students With Self-Reported ‘Racial Trauma’

College Op-Ed Asks if White People Should Be Kicked out of Parties

TikTok Teaches Etiquette: Whites Must Get Nonwhite Permission to Hang out — ‘White Shenanigans’ Are Brutal

UC Berkeley Professor Told Students Abolishing Whiteness Means Wiping out White People

Yale Medical School Welcomes Psychiatrist Who Dreams of ‘Unloading a Revolver Into the Head of Any White Person’

Tennessee University Segregates Students for ‘Antiracism’ Training, Hails the Absence of White People as ‘Magical’

At Pomona, they’re making magic. However, despite the Alliance of all the nonwhite groups, all the nonwhite groups are not aligned.

Per a report by The College Fix, there’s been a bit of a turf war:

Last month’s swipe-access decision was made amid larger turmoil over the lounge after Pomona’s Black Student Union was displaced due to campus construction and administration decided to “build a wall” to bisect the Students of Color Alliance lounge, partitioning off a portion for the BSU.

…

A “Stop the Wall” protest was launched in November, with students of color arguing they should be given their own exclusive “safe space” on campus, according to their solidarity statement.

SOCA’s statement:

The lounge is already shared by five student groups on campus, and building the wall would mean that our shared space would be minimized and limit our capacity to hold a safe space for students on campus.

The press release points to nothing wrong:

There is nothing wrong or ungrateful about requesting that both groups with differing goals, interests, and events have the safe spaces necessary to make it through the antiBlack white capitalist institution, Pomona College.

That sounds like a difficult institution to navigate. Hopefully, everyone will survive Pomona College — where diversity, equity and inclusion sometimes — as it appears — necessitates the opposite of diversity and inclusion.

-ALEX

See more content from me:

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Find all my RedState work here.

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