SEGREGATION NOW, SEGREGATION TOMORROW, SEGREGATION FOREVER! Scripps College pool party desegregated, then postponed.

After the Independent reported that event organizers segregated Friday’s pool party at Scripps College, barring white students from attending, the organizers changed their event’s description to allow all students regardless of race at the Claremont Colleges—a consortium consisting of Scripps College, Pomona College, Harvey Mudd College, Claremont McKenna College, and Pitzer College—to attend the pool party hosted at the college’s Sallie Tiernan Field House.

In a previous version of the Facebook event description, the organizers made it clear that the pool party was open only to students who identified as persons of color (POC):

“This event is only to 5C [Claremont Colleges] students identifying as POC.”

However, after the Independent’s article about the POC-only event reached a national audience, the organizers changed their event’s description to be more inclusive, and allow all students, including those who identify as white, to attend the pool party. The current version of Facebook event description states that the pool part “is open to all 5C [Claremont Colleges] students.”

Unlike the old event description, the new description, which does not bar white students from attending, avoids violating national civil rights legislation such as Title VI, and Scripps’s own anti-discrimination policy. Title VI prevents education institutions receiving federal funds—which includes nearly all private colleges including Scripps—from “discriminating when it comes to race, color, and national origin.” Recreational facilities at education institutions such as Sallie Tiernan House Pool must also abide by this law. . . .

The pool party has now been postponed. Scripps College President Lara Tiedens sent out the following email to students this afternoon:

“The pool party has been postponed due to concerns about student safety in the wake of numerous phone calls and emails from the public expressing hostility and threatening physical violence.”

In 1963, as part of “massive resistance” to desegregation, the city of Jackson, Mississippi closed its public pools rather than racially integrate them. It too, used worries about “violence” as an excuse.