Pamona College Student Govt. Votes to Punish School Clubs Dealing with Chabad, Hillel and other Jewish Orgs

Student government presidents. - Payal Kachru, Becca Zimmerman , Mariesa Teo, Johnson Lin, and Safia Hassan

Update May 5th: Amid Backlash, Pomona Student Government ‘Tables’ BDS Resolution to Strip Funds From Jewish Groups That Refuse Israel Boycott; more here.

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The student government at California-based Pomona College voted unanimously on Thursday on a resolution calling the student union to cut funding for any clubs not boycotting companies that "support the Israeli occupation of Palestine " - including the school’s Hillel and Chabad.

The resolution at Pomona, which is one of the colleges in the Claremont College Consortium, was first proposed by Claremont Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Claremont Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) along with several other student organizations, and includes the cutting of all funds to any clubs that would "knowingly invest or spend their funds of items that contribute to further encroachment into Palestinian occupied territories," according to the resolution, which was viewed by The Jerusalem Post. In addition, stores managed by the student government, known as the Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC), will also be prohibited from using and selling products from the boycotted companies, according to student news outlet Claremont Independent.

So far, the ASPC is the second student government in the Claremont Consortium to boycott Israel, following the Pitzer Student Senate at Pitzer College, which did so in 2017.

But the ASPC resolution is different in a number of ways. Most notable among them, however, is its broad scope. The list of companies that Pomona clubs would lose funding if they engaged with them is taken directly from a United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) blacklist released in February 2020. The list itself included 130 businesses, many of whom are among the largest international companies and conglomerates such as General Mills, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Airbnb, Booking.com and Motorola.

As such, given the wide breadth of many of these companies – General Mills, for instance, is among the world's largest food conglomerates – the number of clubs that may have engaged with them could be very high. And if the list is updated annually as the UNHRC mandated – though High Commissioner for Human Rights Michele Bachelet has said this is not financially feasible – then the number of companies could grow even larger.

Moreover, the resolution would seemingly, in principle, also result in funding cuts to organizations like campus Hillel and Chabad, according to the Algemeiner.