https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/may/04/columbia-university-student-protest-gaza?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
We Columbia University students urge you to listen to our voices
Columbia College Student Council
Please, listen to us – not political figures, radical fringes and misguided media
On
Tuesday night, we watched in horror as hundreds of riot police flooded
our beloved campus and brutalized our classmates. The next day, students
awoke with swollen faces, bruised wrists, and lacerations – all results
of inhumane police treatment. The past two weeks have been tumultuous,
marked with mass arrests of student demonstrators, an encampment on our
lawns, national media attention, and vile acts of hatred. Countless have
spoken on our behalf. But by speaking over us, media outlets and
politicians have created a distorted narrative – one which unfairly
characterizes our community.
Now,
it is time to elevate student perspectives, the “us”, rather than the
“them”. The traumatic environment and militarization of our campus are
not the sole product of ill-intended protestors or reckless
non-affiliates as claimed by administrative emails; rather, they are the
fault of the senior administration themselves. For months, this crisis
has brewed as administrators neglected student and faculty voices. We
must be clear: the administration has put our students’ safety at risk
and has failed to ensure a conducive learning environment. As student
leaders, it is time for our voice to be heard.
The
seeds of the NYPD’s 30 April raid on Columbia University were planted
nearly six months ago. On 24 October, Columbia’s senior administration
unilaterally created an illegitimate university event policy in the
aftermath of peaceful pro-Palestinian demonstrations, granting them the power to regulate protests and “‘sole discretion’ to determine sanctions
on student organizations and their members”. Thus, senior
administration circumvented process and procedure and undermined shared
governance, rather than adhere to the rules of university conduct,
adopted by our university senate and set out in the university statutes.
This
was only the beginning of what would become a pattern of executive
overreach. The results of this unprecedented action first manifested on 3
November, when the Columbia chapters of Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP)
and Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were suspended due to
unsubstantiated claims of “threatening rhetoric and intimidation”.
When this rationale was questioned in January, senior executive vice-president Gerald Rosberg admitted that “there was no intent to insinuate that one group was threatening” and “ if the reference was read that way, he offered his regrets”.
This dismissive and inactionable apology was inadequate and
unproductive. Rosberg’s comments did not rectify the University’s
wrongdoing, and only further initiated a standard of stifling free
speech. The move, condemned by both faculty and students, elicited a commitment from the administration to re-evaluate its actions and engage in more transparent decision-making processes.
Unsurprisingly,
this was an empty promise. The administration has continued to make
decisions without our input, disregarding our community’s wellbeing,
values, and rules. The task force
created to address antisemitism did not include students and was
inefficient. The administration also failed to properly acknowledge,
much less tackle, the growing presence of Islamophobia and
anti-Palestinian hate on our campus.
Adding
fuel to the fire, senior administration then enabled our campus to turn
into a hotspot for politicians, radicalists, and opportunists, despite
repeated claims by the senior administration that they are working to “keep all members of our community physically safe”.
Shai Davidai, an assistant professor in the business school, publicly
characterized Jewish students at pro-Palestinians demonstrations as “terrorists” and “Judenrat” whilst receiving more than 50 complaints. He was permitted to remain on campus for months. Professor Joseph Massad described the 7 October attack as “awesome”; he remains on campus. Even the co-founder of the terrorist militia group Proud Boys gained access to Columbia.
These
administrative choices to avoid disciplining or barring extremists
exposed many of our peers to known threats, perpetuated the narrative
that Columbia is hatred-ridden and set the stage for political
theatrics, without advancing the safety of Jewish students. As our
community slowly burned, our president, the co-chair of the taskforce on
antisemitism, and the co-chairs of the board of trustees were
questioned in Congress on the basis that Columbia tolerates antisemitism
through hateful protests. Contrary to these allegations, the protests
at Columbia were organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest
(Cuad): a non-violent and decentralized coalition of more than 100 recognized student groups across the political and cultural spectrum. At the hearing, the administrators also failed to defend our university’s commitment to academic freedom – a legal requirement and a core tenet of all educational institutions, furthering the false narrative of hate that continues to misrepresent our community.
On
17 April, in response to the persistent disregard by our
administrators, student activists chose to demonstrate through a
peaceful encampment on our university’s lawns – a description
corroborated by the NYPD’s chief of patrol.
Media and politicians sensationalized these students as largely violent
extremists. Yet, we witnessed students create and uphold community
guidelines disavowing all forms of hate. We witnessed people of different faiths and religions protecting each other during prayers. We witnessed a community form, with student groups dancing, singing, teaching, and making art together.
But
instead of engaging with these protesters or charging them with rules
of university conduct violations, the administration chose to call the
NYPD on to campus–leading to the arrests of 108 student protesters and
the unsanctioned arrests of two legal observers on April 18th, 2024.
This action marked a gross escalation in the administration’s negligence
of shared governance: ignoring a unanimous veto by the
university senate executive committee, who are required to be consulted
before police enter University grounds. This neglectful decision was
met with harsh rebuke
from much of Columbia and mischaracterized our community as violent
extremists. Rather than quell the protest, tensions inflamed and a
second encampment, even larger than the first, was erected within hours.
As the sky turned dark on Tuesday night, students received an ominous ‘shelter-in-place’ directive
Of
all the administration’s actions, the days preceding this week’s NYPD
raid have been the most emblematic of their tactics to heighten tension
and fear on our campus, silencing speech in the process. Their initial
move to end the second encampment involved leveraging title VI,
an anti-discrimination law, to mass discipline students, citing the
sensationalized narratives promoted by politicians and the national
media. In response to the mass suspensions following a failure to come
to an agreement in negotiations, an “autonomous group” of student activists occupied Hamilton Hall at about 12.30am on 30 April.
Within
hours, the administration imposed a campus-wide lockdown, preventing
all students from accessing vital resources – food and medical
assistance – as well as one another – during final exam season. The
overwhelming majority of us woke up shocked at this disproportionate
university response. Subsequently, the administration denied EMTs and
legal observers access to campus – a clear demonstration of what they
were trying to accomplish: isolating the occupiers.
As
the sky turned dark on Tuesday night, students received an ominous
“shelter-in-place” directive. While we frantically called our parents in
fear, NYPD
trucks and correctional buses lined our streets, barring any escape
from Morningside Heights. Trapped in our dorms or outside in the rain,
the raid escalated. Police penned bystanders into nearby buildings and
steadily forcibly removed all remaining reporters from campus.
As
Columbia lay void and the occupiers strategically alienated, the NYPD
struck. The action, while in response to Rules violations, was
distinctly militaristic and disproportionate. Though NYPD footage
showed the officers, including Swat and strategic response teams,
significantly outnumber the protesters, they utilized flash-bang
grenades, swung batons, and drew firearms on the few dozen unarmed
students. The police continued to limit video documentation by flashing
lights at phones recording from the nearby dorms.
The
few clips available captured police pushing students down the stairs,
an unconscious student lying in front of Hamilton Hall, and hostile
engagements between officers and bystanders. A student was even denied
permission to leave a building to retrieve essential heart condition
medication. The administration claimed to intend to restore safety and order by authorizing these hundreds of NYPD officers to commandeer our school. Instead, they terrified, sickened, and traumatized us.
Right
now we should be focused on our final exams. Instead, the university’s
actions have made it impossible for us to focus on anything besides our
peers’ physical safety and access to food. The misrepresentation of
events perpetuated by administration has allowed them to justify extreme
police force and brutality against their own students. The
administration has betrayed us. As student representatives, we detest
this false, harmful portrayal of our community. It is only because of
student journalism, such as the Columbia Spectator and WKCR-FM’s 24-hour
radio coverage, that we have started reclaiming our narrative.
We
urge you to listen to us – not political figures, not the radical
fringes, and not misguided media. Across the country, non-violent
protests and encampments on college campuses have been touted by
administrations, media, and bad faith actors to be hateful without
proper investigative journalism. While this has been a major topic in
the news cycle recently, rarely do we see any student perspective
represented other than a few token quotes. When we, a group of 60 and
more elected to represent the student body, tried to share our voices
through this piece, we were turned down by publication after
publication.
We now ask you to give us, the
students, our voices back. Not to turn attention towards ourselves, but
towards where it rightfully belongs: the Middle East.