Frances Walton ’26 and Belén Yudess ’25
Editor-in-Chief and Copy Editor
Note: All Motley baristas and managers who interviewed with The Scripps Voice (TSV) have requested anonymity due to concerns for their employment.
On Sept. 9, Interim Special Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs Deborah Hebert ordered the removal of the Palestinian flag hanging in the coffeehouse’s window in an email to The Motley manager team. In a follow-up email, Hebert said that The Motley “violated campus policy and conduct standards” by allowing the flag to remain in the space.
After the staff refused to comply with these demands, Hebert sent an email ultimatum on Wednesday, Sept. 11: “Removal of the flag is a condition to being able to open the Motley. As such, if you want to open the Motley for business on Friday, it needs to be removed by 5:00 p.m. on Thursday.”
Contrasting earlier emails sent by Hebert, the Sept. 11 correspondence was “sent to our Motley Gmail, but also to both of our student emails [with Dr. Sha] CC’d, and an attachment of the screenshot [of a photo of Motley training with the Palestinian flag in the background] from our Instagram story,” a manager said. “I felt isolated in my position by that message and by that sort of framing.”
Following Hebert’s ultimatum, The Motley, in a joint post with other on-campus organizations, set up a show of solidarity in the coffeehouse on Thursday, Sept. 12, at 4:15 p.m., right before the ultimatum deadline. Approximately 160+ members of the 5C community attended in support of The Motley.
“The flag that is currently hanging is not part of some broader display recognizing the international students at Scripps,” Hebert said in the Sept. 11 email. In response, students adorned The Motley with flags representing their heritage before the gathering.
Motley staff opened the gathering but invited any community member to speak as the crowd waited for Hebert to arrive for a meeting with the managers to ensure the flag’s removal at 5 p.m. Two students, one of Jewish heritage and the other of Palestinian heritage, chose to speak at the gathering. Both explained that the Palestinian flag made them feel more comfortable in The Motley.
The gathering culminated with Hebert leaving a voicemail to the managers stating she was “stuck in traffic [and would] not make it there [that] evening.”
The managers were confused. “I guess that begs the question: Do we get an extension on our deadline? Are we opening tomorrow?” a manager said at the event.
After a meeting with Hebert on Friday, The Motley opened Friday night with the “Motagascar” opening party and continued with their regular business hours starting Monday, Sept. 16.
However, on Sept. 18, Hebert and Executive Director of Facilities Management & Auxiliary Operations Josh Reeder emailed the managers’ student emails. Seven minutes later, that same email, with an introduction from Dean of Students Dr. Sha Bradley, was sent to the Scripps Student List. The subject line read, “Commitment to Freedom of Expression and Inclusion-Motley Coffeehouse.”
In the email, Hebert and Reeder requested that the managers “promptly remove any unauthorized signage, decorations, flags, posters, or other materials from The Motley.” Earlier in the email, Hebert and Reeder cited the Principles of Community and the college’s posting policy and said, “Adherence to all applicable policies related to the business environment is a condition of employment.”
“I was glad such a blatant display of hypocrisy and self-contradictory messaging [was made] accessible to the inbox of every other student on this campus,” a manager said. “I think it was a move that was supposed to make us feel visible and vulnerable, but I was glad that [they sent] such a ridiculous email where so much nothing was said.”
The managers saw contradictions between The Motley’s actions and the posting policy Hebert and Reeder cited. “From what I understand where it does talk about [postings], it talks about flyers, like, event flyers,” a manager said. “It doesn’t talk about decor. It doesn’t talk about wall art. It doesn’t talk about permanent installations.”
Part of The Principles of Community, mentioned in the email from Hebert and Reeder, states that “recognizing that such expressions [of free speech] may offend, provoke, and disturb, Scripps affirms its dedication to encourage rather than limit expression.”
The email stated that The Motley employees “displaying decorations or signage that advocate for specific positions or statements may inadvertently limit the expression of diverse opinions and beliefs within a shared space.”
A manager believed that Hebert and Reeder’s request “put [the managers] in a position where they have to make up for the pitfalls of admin, and it’s super stressful,” she said. “It’s super, super inappropriate, and it adds so much [pressure]; we’re not full time workers.”
When TSV asked Hebert for a statement regarding her correspondence with The Motley, the Office of Marketing and Communications referred TSV to the email sent to the Scripps Student list. They declined to comment further.
On Sept. 20, the managers sat down with Hebert and Reeder for a meeting, scheduled before the Sept. 18 email, regarding the flag’s presence in the space.
Hebert first asked the managers to recount what had happened in The Motley, “despite her being the one who’d been imposing all of these policies and restrictions on us,” a manager said.
Then, the managers pressed Hebert and Reeder to identify the specific policies that they were breaking. “We received no citations of any clauses that could be applicable to the situation whatsoever,” a manager said. “We got no clarity from the meeting, only a deadline, which is that the flag needed to come down by close of business on Monday [Sept. 23] evening.”
Reeder said little in the meeting while Hebert answered questions posed by the managerial staff. From the managers’ perspective, Hebert seemed unprepared to answer many of the specific questions they asked.
“Whoever told her to enter that meeting and say whatever she had to say, they gave her no policy to back it up with,” a manager said.
Already struggling to understand the rationale behind the mandate to take down the Palestinian flag, the managers sought clarity on how Scripps would handle future decor.
“We were like, ‘who’s deciding this?’ And she goes, ‘Well, unfortunately, that’s going to have to be me,’” a manager said. “And we were like, ‘is there going to be a policy that you’re going to follow that’s going to be written down?’ They could not provide us with any sort of policy.”
Requiring Hebert’s approval for everything that goes up in The Motley introduces a range of issues related to themed shifts or the staff’s ability to set up spontaneous decor.
A manager said Hebert “[sees] decor as something permanent, as something that doesn’t change that much.“ Considering The Motley’s quick turnover of decor, the manager said, “Clearly, [she] knows nothing about Motley.”
The managers also questioned if Pride flags, which could inadvertently limit the expression of conservative beliefs, would be held to the same standards as the Palestinian flag. Hebert told them that sexuality was protected.
One manager told Hebert in the meeting that “nationality is protected, and she just froze after that was brought up.”
To the managers, Hebert seemed to lack knowledge of the policies cited in her email and the greater context surrounding the Palestinian flag. Hebert could not identify the flag’s name and called it the “Afghan flag” in the meeting. “She kept calling it a conflict, an issue, complicated,” a manager said.
The 9 a.m. meeting concluded when Reeder had to leave, and the managers did not feel that they had come to an agreement. “She started the meeting off by saying, ‘My goal is to hear you guys, and we just want to be heard as well,’” a manager said. “But that to me was inherently frustrating because I don’t think they have ever heard us.”
After the meeting, the students were left confused regarding what would happen following the Sept. 23 deadline for the removal of the flag. Hebert told them that the employees would not individually face disciplinary measures, but The Motley as an entity would be out of compliance with campus policies.
Hebert’s Sept. 9 emails said that the conversation around flag posting was not new. “Last year Legal did get involved as both the [Scripps] Store and Motley had flags displayed and both groups were explicitly told they could not display flags.”
This situation is reminiscent of events that occurred last semester following a Jan. 17 meeting with former Special Assistant to the Vice President for Student Affairs Adriana di Bartolo-Beckman. Bartolo-Beckman requested a manager to ensure that The Motley would comply with Scripps’ posting policy and that it was one of the requirements to open The Motley in the spring semester.
“It does feel very similar to last year, and it’s not an isolated incident here,” Anna Babboni ’24, a former Motley barista, said. “It’s been happening as long as pro-Palestinian organizing has existed on these campuses.”
Multiple managers felt that Scripps was enforcing their policies arbitrarily to quiet student advocacy for Palestine.
“We want all the decor in the space to stay up, and we don’t want to be subject to these arbitrary policies … that have never been in effect for the past 50 years,” a barista said. “[Policies] are clearly only being applied because of how terrified the college is that their students are expressing solidarity with Palestine.”
Upon reflection, baristas connected the limitation of expression at The Motley to other rules at Scripps, including existing requirements for poster and event approval.
“Events [and posters] happen in The Motley because students know that OSE would not approve them using other Scripps spaces,” a barista said. “So for this issue to be positioned as ‘something in The Motley is restricting the freedoms of others and making them feel unsafe’ when it’s the other way around, in that the dominant ideology of the administration forces students to use The Motley as their only channel for expression.”
Many Motley employees felt that taking down the flag and more general decor infringed on the community of expression that The Motley has historically represented. “We’ve had this mission statement that states that we are a political space [and] we’ve been a political space for 50 years now,” a manager said. “Only now are they being ‘No. No. No. The Motley is for neutrality and coffee.’”
The enforcement of these policies worried Motley employees, who expressed concern for the sanctity of The Motley as a student-run community space. “Scripps uses The Motley as a platform for them to market their student experience,” a barista said. “We just won number one for student experience. Where is student experience happening at Scripps? It’s happening at The Motley.”
That same barista concluded that the effects of this decision could have long-lasting consequences on the Scripps community.
“So they’re trying to sanitize and purify what The Motley is and boil it down to merely just a coffee shop,” the barista said. “They’re going to lose the entire spirit of the school.”
A barista described how The Motley has served as a haven, especially for students of marginalized identities, when other spaces may be absent or unavailable.
“SCORE is in shambles and the affinity spaces are in shambles,” a barista said. “This is the one community space that people are dedicated to, regardless if you’re a customer, someone who works in The Motley, or you’re a manager … And not only that, the administration is going to hold [work study] over students who desperately need the [income] and are coming from different backgrounds. That’s just so messed up.”
As Motley managers prepare for the administration’s potential response regarding the Palestinian flag, they remain invested in protecting The Motley’s legacy of political freedom.
“The Motley is a space of activism and free speech,” a manager said. “This is one of two designated student spaces: this and the student union. Not allowing [The Motley] to reflect student opinions and values is dangerous. We can’t say that Scripps is not a political campus because it’s inherently political in our existence as a [historically] women’s college.”
Another manager agreed with this sentiment, citing their stance on the flag’s impact in the space as integral to The Motley’s future.
“In fifty years from now when everyone’s talking about this conflict, Scripps admin will be like, ‘our coffee shop was part of a movement,’” a manager said. “We need to remember and cement in history who was telling us to take that flag down. It’s important that it’s recorded that The Motley was on the right side of history here.”
Correction: A previous version stated that Hebert called the Palestinian flag the Afghan flag “multiple times.” It has been corrected to remove this phrase.
Photo Courtesy: Frances Walton ’26
