Pomona College became embroiled in a controversy over student privacy and dorm security after a sponsor was removed from his position and told to leave his dorm room last month because of hard alcohol found in his room during a “Gotcha” check for unlocked doors.

Andrew Hong PO’13, the former sponsor in Blaisdell 1 Side, admitted that he violated college policy and his sponsor contract by keeping hard alcohol in his room. Still, he criticized the procedure that led to the loss of his position, and many Pomona students have loudly echoed his concerns.

The Gotcha program, a years-old campaign to encourage students to lock their doors, requires Pomona RAs to check their residence halls periodically for unlocked rooms with no students inside. If no student answers an initial knock, RAs are authorized to open unlocked doors to check for students and open windows, another security concern.

RAs opened Hong’s door during a Gotcha check on Jan. 24, when Hong was out of his room and had left the door unlocked. According to the account that Hong said an RA had given him, the RAs who opened his door saw a bottle of wine on his desk, prompting them to enter the room where they subsequently found more than 20 bottles of hard alcohol, which they confiscated later that evening.

Associate Dean of Students and Dean of Campus Life Ric Townes said that Pomona residence halls have a high rate of theft that makes raising security awareness a high priority for the Office of Campus life. He added that intruders are “going into the buildings on a daily basis, stealing things from students” across the Claremont Colleges.

Mudd-Blaisdell-Gibson Head Sponsor Nelly Agyemang-Gyamfi praised the Gotcha program for its role in promoting security.

“I like to go to bed feeling like my residents are safe,” she said. “It helps make my job easier. It helps make the jobs of the sponsors easier.”

Brigitte Washington, an RA in Gibson, said that Gotcha was the most effective way the OCL had found to encourage students to lock their doors.

“They feel like every other method they had been using was ineffective,” she said.

While insisting that Gotcha is a safety awareness program rather than a policy enforcement mission, Townes said that reporting illicit substances is part of an RA’s job re In 2009, according to Annual Campus Safety Report, there were eight reported residential burglaries on Pomona’s campus, out of the 106 total burglaries reported on the 5Cs that year. gardless of the context.

“Without question, since the beginning of this program, RAs were instructed to report violations of college policy wherever they saw them,” he said.

However, Townes dismissed “the suggestion that the college would then use [Gotcha] to extend its reach” in student room searches.

“That’s not Pomona College,” he said.

Washington added that RAs are instructed to confiscate banned substances only when the RAs can see it without searching the room.

Yet, some Pomona students claim that the Gotcha program by nature diminishes student privacy and constitutes an overreach of the college’s policy enforcement efforts. A letter addressed to Townes and signed by several sponsors says that Gotcha “violates student privacy and is tantamount to illegal search and seizure.”

Danielle Maldonado PO’14, another Blaisdell resident whose alcohol was found in her room during the Gotcha checks, echoed these concerns regarding privacy.

“How does the safety of my door grant them the right to look around the room?” she said.

Maldonado added, “It seems like we’re living in a place where we don’t have any rights, don’t have any privacies. That makes me feel less safe.”

According to the college’s student handbook, college staff personnel and RAs may enter student rooms “for health, safety, or security reasons or to determine compliance with Pomona College policies” without notice. The handbook also states that “reasonable effort, where appropriate, will be made to notify the occupant of a residence hall room in advance when a representative of the college seeks access to a student’s room.”

Townes said that in the past RHS has sent emails to residents notifying them of upcoming Gotcha checks, but that this time around communication was not ideal.

“I thought we were going to give all students notice about a week in advance of the program,” said Townes. He said he was “not aware until after the fact” that little or no notice was provided to residents for the Gotcha checks of Jan. 24.

Campus Life Coordinator Jacque DuBose said that she did not consider advance warning to be an important part of Gotcha procedure, since students should lock their doors regardless of whether they expect a Gotcha check.

“The point isn’t to lock your door for Gotcha,” she said. “The point is for people to lock their doors for safety issues all the time.”

Hannah Yung ’13, another sponsor, questioned the need for the Gotcha program. “While I appreciate the college’s good intentions, I think the students I know would prefer to be given the autonomy to choose whether or not to lock their own doors,” she said.

DuBose countered that OCL is obligated to address the needs of students who not only feel uncomfortable leaving their own doors unlocked, but who feel that other students’ unlocked doors attract intruders to the residence halls.

According to Townes, Pomona leads the nation in dorm-related robberies.

“Gotcha may go away forever, but we’re not going to stop getting people to lock their doors. As long as the bad guys see us as soft, they’re not going to go away,” he said.

In 2009, according to Annual Campus Safety Report, there were eight reported residential burglaries on Pomona’s campus, out of the 106 total burglaries reported on the 5Cs that year.

Many students have voiced concerns regarding the process by which Hong was removed from his position. Yung said she wished there had been a “wider community discussion or even discussion with the head sponsors” before the decision was made.

Townes said that the decision to relieve Hong of his duties as sponsor was neither immediate nor without consultation with the other deans in OCL.

“I do not make unilateral decisions,” he said.

Townes said the decision was formed throughout the day after Hong met with Townes in the morning to explain the situation and admit that he had been keeping hard alcohol and brewing beer in his room. Several deans were involved in the conversations surrounding the incident, and all agreed that Hong had violated his sponsor contract and would be terminated.

Despite what Townes said about the decision process, Hong said that he came away from his meeting with Townes under the impression that the decision to remove his sponsorship had already been made.

“[Townes] said, ‘You won’t be a sponsor by the end of today,’” Hong said.

Hong added that he thought OCL should have consulted head sponsors and considered “mitigating circumstances” before revoking his sponsorship.

“I feel that while I had alcohol in my room, my use of it was very responsible and did not involve my kids in any way, so I don’t think it was a reflection of my shortcomings as a sponsor or anything like that,” Hong said, adding that he used the alcohol to practice for a future job in bartending.

Hong’s former sponsees reported a change in the hall dynamics since he was removed from Blaisdell 1 Side.

“The people in our hall wrote a letter that we all read and signed saying that this has had a negative effect on our sponsor group,” said Alex Johann PO’14, a sponsee in B1S.

Johann also confirmed that Hong did not provide alcohol to his sponsees. He added that OCL has yet to officially notify the sponsor group as to what happened or why their sponsor was removed.

When asked about notification to the sponsor group, Townes said, “I assume that information got communicated.”

Hong’s co-sponsor, Loren Hinton ’13, agreed that Hong’s absence has been to the detriment of the sponsor group. She says she senses a worry in the hall that they will also lose her as a sponsor.

“There is pressure to leave if my vision for the sponsor program is not the same as [OCL’s],” she said. “That’s the impression I got from interacting with some of the deans in OCL.”

Yung and Hinton both said they sensed tension between OCL and some sponsors.

“I think the vision OCL has for the sponsor program has changed since the beginning of the year, and they haven’t communicated that to sponsors, so we’re coming at it from different directions and there’s this collision,” Hinton said. Yung agreed.

“Given OCL’s reaction and the lack of communication, there are concerns about how the sponsor program will function in the future,” she said. “This is regrettably becoming a divisive issue within RHS with a lot of people being silenced.”

“Sponsor applications are approaching and I want to be able to tell first years in good conscience that it will be a valuable experience,” she added.

Townes said that he is working to diffuse tension related to Hong’s removal and does not want the controversy to distract students from their academic lives. He added that OCL has learned from its recent experience and will consider making changes to the program.

“I think there are things that we didn’t do as well, that we could learn from,” Townes said. “I want OCL to listen and hear what people are saying.”