Claremont McKenna College - Controversies

Controversies

• On January 30, 2012, President Gann announced that a senior admissions officer had been inflating SAT scores reported to the US News and World Report by 10-20 points over the previous six years.

• Professor Jonathan Petropoulos' resignation in April 2008 as director of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Center, amid controversy over the failed restitution of a Pissarro painting looted by the Nazis in 1938.

• On September 27, 2007, the College announced a $200 million gift from alumnus and trustee Robert A. Day '65 to create the Robert Day Scholars Program and a masters program in finance. CMC literature professor Robert Faggen sent a letter signed by several other literature professors to President Gann, saying they are concerned that the gift will "distort the college into a single focus trade school."

• On the evening of March 9, 2004, after attending and speaking at a campus forum concerning a recent spate of racially insensitive incidents, Visiting Assistant Professor of Psychology Kerri Dunn reported that her car had been vandalized and painted with racist, sexist and anti-semitic slurs. In response the Claremont Colleges and a series of demonstrations, candlelight vigils and community meetings were called to address the threat posed by an alleged and previously unknown group of violently intolerant students. Subsequent investigation by the City of Claremont's police department and the FBI revealed that Dunn had, in fact, slashed her own tires and applied the insulting phrases to her own vehicle. She was subsequently found guilty of filing a false police report and attempted insurance fraud. She was sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay a fine of approximately $19,000 in restitution.