SAN MARCOS—On Oct 30, Peter Bono had a Q&A session where the ESL department showed up concerned about DACA and immigrant students.
The Republican candidate is running for the U.S. House of Representatives for California’s 50th Congressional district, but Bono doesn’t identify as a politician, but just a concerned U.S. citizen. He claims he is not like his Democratic opponent, Scott Peters. Throughout the session, a microphone was passed for anyone wanting to ask questions.
When asked about his stance on student loan forgiveness, Bono described a program where he would go after financial institutions. One way he planned to do so was eliminating all interest on student loans.
The moderator asked about home and food insecurities and ensuring that college students won’t have to face these issues. Bono discussed that once he’s in office, he will do anything to help people.
When asked about what federal policies could help affordable housing, Bono claimed he didn’t need to go to the federal level. Instead, his place would be to hold politicians accountable, those he referred to as “corrupt.”
Before Peter Bono arrived on campus, an email to all faculty inviting them to attend the event went out. Lawrence Lawson, President of the Faculty Union and ESL professor sent a reply to all faculty urging them to do some research before going into the session completely blind.
According to Lawson, he found “pretty inflammatory rhetoric” on Bono’s website, including sections like “Invasion USA” and “Update Foreign Visitor Policy,” and asked Bono to give his perspective about DACA specifically.
“I’m a firm believer in law. I’m not just a Republican, I’m an American. Any DACA students, see me on February first,” said Bono. Bono added that he wanted to introduce legislation to protect DACA recipients from deportation.
Nicole Siminski, a ESL faculty member, asked Bono how he would uphold Palomar’s values of being a safe and inclusive space for all students.
“I want our education system in the U.S. and our district to be the greatest education system. I will support whatever it is that makes our district safe again,” said Bono.
Later, Bono explained that he didn’t agree with the “woke movement,” and would put an end to “trans parties” on campus. Palomar recently held a National Coming Out Day event on Oct 10, where the first LGBTQ+ Mariachi band came to celebrate.
Palomar has an official statement regarding inclusivity, “Palomar College has adopted an action plan to support our African-American/Black community and to further Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in the District.”
After 35 minutes the Q&A session was called to close, even though it was booked for an hour, with many of the questions not receiving full answers from Bono. While some questions did result in conversation, Bono answered most with “If you have a problem, contact me.”
Corrections – Nov. 5, 2025 @ 8:46 p.m., in a previous version of this story the term “trans parties” was misspelled as “trans parities.” This mistake has since been corrected.
