The Women’s Union at Pomona College will host a “for POC, by POC” art show next month at which white students will not even be invited to attend, much less participate.

“People of color are hurting, scared, and angry … [but] are also healing, loving, creating and enjoying community, and supporting each other,” according to an online description of the event’s purpose. “This show’s intent is to create a space that is pro-POC, pro-black, and anti-white supremacist.”

“While you may want to invite a white friend or ally... we ask that you do not.”

The document elaborates that “This show is not for allies nor [sic] the general student body,” explaining, “the purpose of this show is not to educate, but to empower and support our community.”

Indeed, not only is participation in the show limited to persons of color, but so is attendance, even for non-POC students who might wish to show their support for the cause.

“While you may want to invite a white friend or ally, to make this a safe and comfortable space for other POC, we ask that you do not,” a flyer advertising the show states, encouraging students to instead “invite your POC friends.”

Those whose participation is welcome have until November 28 to submit their entries, which can utilize any artistic medium to explore the theme of “hurting and healing” in the POC community, particularly in terms of “how audience impacts the artistic process.”

As documented by The Claremont Independent, demands for “safe spaces” are becoming increasingly common throughout the Claremont system, most visibly in the case of Claremont McKenna College, where the Vice President and Dean of Students, Mary Spellman, was recently resigned amid student protests claiming she had not done enough to create a safe space on campus.

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The situation has become so oppressive, according to The Independent, that two CMC students recently reacted with a scathing rebuttal in which they “object in the strongest fashion to institution-sanctioned physical safe spaces whose purpose is to discriminate based on racial or sexual identities, and which physically bar certain students from their premises.”

The Pomona College Women’s Union states on its website that men are welcome in their facility, asserting that “the WU strives to provide a safe space for people of all genders,” but spokespersons had not responded by press time to requests for additional information about the art show, so it is unclear why they chose to make that particular event an exclusive affair.

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