Our Campus. Our Crisis.
Inside the encampments and crackdowns that shook American politics. A report by the staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator.
Written and reported by
Isabella Ramírez, Amira McKee, Rebecca Massel, Emily Forgash, Noah Bernstein, Sabrina Ticer-Wurr, Apurva Chakravarthy, Esha Karam, Shea Vance, Sarah Huddleston, and Maya Stahl
April 18: “Right after the first arrests, the police began guarding the lawn while hundreds of protesters and onlookers stood in shock.” —Spectator photographer Asha Ahn
Photo: Asha Ahn
This article is a collaboration between the Columbia Daily Spectator and New York Magazine.
On April 30, armed police officers swarmed the Columbia University campus for the second time in two weeks, shutting down a student occupation of Hamilton Hall and clearing what was left of the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. Students had first seized part of the South Lawn,
then the attention of the entire Columbia community, and then the
national political narrative, as imitation protests in support of Palestine erupted at colleges across America. By refusing to leave unless Columbia committed to divest from Israel
and cut ties with Tel Aviv University, among other demands, the
students were acting in the shadow of 1968, when protesters dramatically
took over buildings, including Hamilton, to resist the Vietnam War and
the university’s racial politics. Those events established Columbia’s
reputation as a hotbed of dissent where social and political change
takes root before spreading to the rest of the country — often at great
cost to the institution. As the school itself notes about ’68 on its
website, “It took decades for the University to recover.”
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The
encampment and the takeover of Hamilton represented a dramatic
escalation of months of activism on campus. Since the October 7 attack
on Israel and its subsequent war in Gaza,
which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, the school has been the
site of intense protests and counterprotests with bitter debates on
campus over antisemitism and Islamophobia, genocide, and free speech.
Overseeing it all was a new president, Minouche Shafik,
whose inauguration had come just three days before 10/7 and who had
scarcely begun to acquaint herself with the Columbia community when the
campus was thrown into crisis. With national political figures and
billionaires agitating for the removal of other Ivy League presidents,
Shafik was charged with resolving standoffs among groups with vastly
divergent interests: deep-pocketed donors used to getting their way,
faculty with the security of tenure, and students who believe Columbia
is betraying its legacy as an engine for progress. As the encampment
impasse played out, it became clearer than ever that people were living
in two different Columbias. As pro-Palestinian protesters built a
community of hope and solidarity around their support for Gaza, many
pro-Israel students reported feeling unwelcome and organized their own
counterprotests on and around campus. Some of the latter group packed
their bags and left, while many of the former were hauled off to jail
and suspended.
The staff of the Columbia Daily Spectator, the nearly 150-year-old undergraduate newspaper, has been covering every minute of this story. Recently, New York
Magazine asked us to create this report, leveraging our intimate
knowledge of the university and its people to tell the story from the
inside. Our reporters, writers, editors, and photographers polled more than 700 Columbians to better understand what happened, took more than 100 portraits of members of the community, and compiled this oral history of the two weeks that forever changed our university. —Isabella Ramírez, editor-in-chief, Columbia Daily Spectator
April 17: “The tents in the first encampment were
uniformly aligned in a systematic way. This was the calm before the
storm of the first arrests.” —AA
Laura, a senior:
It’s so hard to be here and to know that the tuition I pay is going to
fund the genocide in Gaza. I’d been doing marches and protests all year
in solidarity. But there was never a moment where I felt hopeful. Like, Joe Biden’s not going to care. And then — hearing that there was this escalation planned — it was like, Okay, we could be in a situation where we suddenly have negotiating power.
The
planning was super-confidential. If you wanted to let someone in on it,
you had to swear them to secrecy, one-on-one. I went to my professor’s
office, and I was like, “Put your phone on airplane mode. Disconnect
from Wi-Fi. This is what’s happening.”
Liam,* a junior: For me, joining was a bit of an impulsive decision. I was like, I just need to do it.
I take out $50,000 in student loans every single year, and it sucks. I
have to work 20 hours a week to pay off the interest. I hate sitting
here knowing I’m working my ass off only so my money can go to
supporting genocide. It boiled down to my integrity — we are the
students of this school, we are their funding.
K., a senior:
I had learned so much about the precedent of organizing at Columbia and
understanding that we have this massive history of protests and that
there are all these eyes on us. I have so much privilege being here. I’m
from a first-gen, low-income background. So I knew that if there was
ever going to be an escalation, it was something I wanted to be a part
of. I consulted a lot of my friends about it, and at first a lot of us
were questioning whether this would be a fully planned, well-thought-out
action, which in hindsight is ridiculous. It was incredibly well
planned. And it made sense that they had to withhold certain information
for safety and security.
Laura:
I finished my thesis on Tuesday and then I threw up because I was so
nervous. I spent the day emotionally preparing. I had some friends who
were going in with me, so that night we met at my apartment, packed our
bags, and went to campus around 1 a.m.
K.: At
first, all we knew was that we were occupying some part of Columbia.
Even on Tuesday morning, there was no set location we knew about. I just
assumed, Oh, for history’s sake, let’s occupy Hamilton, great, let’s camp out in the hallway. We’re gonna have a slumber party. I had no idea it was going to be an actual camp.
Columbia’s
policies forbid political demonstrations. Students gathered at various
points around campus with their gear, trying not to arouse suspicion,
and waited until it was time to move to the South Lawn in groups they
called platoons. The campus gates at West 116th Street on Broadway and
Amsterdam Avenue were wide open.
K.:
We were all sitting in a circle on the lawn wearing black. And we’re
just like, “There’s no way Public Safety’s not going to come up to us
and ask, ‘What are you doing?’ ” I don’t believe you can bring all these
supplies onto the main lawn without getting stopped by security. My
friend and I were joking, “What’s our cover story? Maybe we’re the
Barnard Outdoor Adventure Club.”
Laura:
It was so smooth and well coordinated. We immediately started pitching
tents, and within 20 minutes, it felt like there were 40. It was really
unbelievable.
K.:
At some point, they started assembling the first big white tarp. It was
really cute because it’s just a bunch of college kids trying to pitch a
big-ass wedding tent.
Steven,* a junior: The
organizers started to put together community standards for the camp and
a governing structure, in terms of like, “We’re meeting twice a day at
these times.” It was clear they knew how essential that was for the camp
to continue. We took a vote on Wednesday night on whether to continue
the encampment. And it was unanimous.
K.:
We racked up so many food donations it was ridiculous. We started
organizing all the food stuff because it was slowly coming in a bunch of
carts: Costco hummus, Honey Nut Cheerios, fruit, granola bars, Dunkin’
Donuts coffee, soy milk. I was like, “At least they have alternative
milk.” And then they said we had a camping toilet. I’ve seen those, and
this was not a camping toilet. It wasn’t even a bucket. It was like a
bucket with no bottom, and it had a little lip thing and these little
black trash bags that you put on there. You would do your thing, and
there were poo gels to make it smell better. And then you would close up
the bag and throw it in the bigger bag of everyone’s shit.
Steven: I
missed a lecture on Wednesday about literature and cultures of struggle
in South Africa. I was outside of my tent, and I heard my name. So I
went to the fence and two students from the lecture that I’ve never
talked to called me over and they were just offering to, like, bring me
food or whatever I needed. I obviously asked about class, and they said,
“You didn’t miss anything.”
April 17: “Organizing student groups had just put
out a call for the student body to picket around the encampment at the
start of its first night. I felt transfixed seeing so many community
members unite to protect their own community.” —GD
In
Washington, Shafik began testifying before the House Committee on
Education and the Workforce at about 10:30 a.m. The hearing’s title:
“Columbia in Crisis.” Two other Ivy League presidents, Harvard
University’s Claudine Gay and the University of Pennsylvania’s Liz
Magill, had appeared months earlier and flubbed a question about whether
calls for genocide against Jewish people were against their
universities’ policies. Both had to resign. Determined to avoid their
fate, Shafik spoke hawkishly, detailing disciplinary actions she had
taken against students and sharply criticizing members of her faculty.
Stacy,* a professor:
The terms of the questioning were just completely false. The question
of whether or not Columbia is willing to protect its students against
antisemitism has very little to do with whether students who are
concerned about genocidal military tactics should be able to speak about
that publicly. Those are two separate issues.
Adam Tooze, a professor: I realized, Oh dear. This is how she is going to cope with this? What is her response going to be? It turns out to be a technocratic hard line.
The
students’ occupation of the South Lawn overshadowed Shafik’s testimony
and became the center of attention on campus — as did the organization
behind it, a coalition of more than 100 student groups known as Columbia
University Apartheid Divest, or CUAD. While students who opposed the
war in Gaza were galvanized, many pro-Israel students continued to
bristle at the protesters’ use of slogans like “From the river to the
sea” and “Globalize the intifada.”
Henry Sears, a senior:
I had a lot of complex feelings around the encampment. I support their
right to free speech. However, some of the speech we were hearing out of
there was really horrible.
Rachel Freilich, a freshman:
About that time, when I would walk around campus, I would tuck in my
dog-tag necklace, which says BRING THEM HOME. I wouldn’t really walk
around with a Magen David — a Star of David — necklace, either. I didn’t
want to get harassed. I didn’t want to get hurt. And I don’t want my
professors to profile me because I’m a Zionist. It felt like I had to
hide an integral part of who I am.
Parker De Dekér, a freshman:
As President Shafik was testifying about the implications of
antisemitism, ironically, antisemitism was rapidly increasing at a rate I
had never seen before on our campus. I don’t mean the protesters
sitting on the lawns. Them sitting there and exercising their rights to
free speech and advocating for peace in the Middle East is not
antisemitism. What is antisemitism, though, is the numerous experiences
I’ve been faced with. Wednesday evening, I was walking from my dorm to
go to Chabad, a space for Jewish students at Columbia, and someone
yells, “You fucking Jew, you keep on testifying, you fucking Jew.” I had
clearly not been in Washington, D.C., that day testifying. I was not
involved in anything political. I was simply a Jewish student wearing my
yarmulke.
April 18: “All of the arrested students looked
traumatized as they walked away peacefully. Around me was the deafening
roar of students and community members screaming and crying.” —GGS
Laura: I’m
a senior; I’m supposed to graduate. I’m also a low-income student. A
lot was on the line. My parents had been sending all these messages:
“Please leave. You can’t afford to be there.” I’m really close to my
family, so it was heartbreaking: “There’s other students there who have
so much money, and that’s not you.” And “I’ve worked so hard at so many
jobs for you to go to this school, and now you’re throwing it all away.”
And “This is not going to matter. You being there or you being outside
doesn’t make a difference.” But I asked myself, What am I willing to give up? If people in Gaza can keep giving up everything, it’s not a big deal to be arrested for a few hours.
K.: We
had been briefed on what to do if we got swept by the police. The plan
was to form two concentric circles: people of color on the inside, white
people on the outside. We were informed that it’s harder for cops to
arrest you if you’re sitting. So the plan was, once we knew cops were
coming, to sit in your circle.
Laura:
It was really emotional to be sitting in the circle with all these
people — some of them my friends and some I barely knew. But we’re all
holding hands. The person next to me and I were holding hands really
tight.
K.: The cops had that big-ass annoying speaker blaring, “If you do not get up, you will be arrested.”
Steven:
I was taken with another person who was crying a lot. And as we were
walking out, our arresting officer was like, “Oh, it’s just summonses,”
which I thought was so weird because it was his attempt to comfort us,
right? It’s almost this admission that you have some awareness that what
you’re doing is wrong.
K.:
Our arresting officer was trying to make small talk. She was like,
“Come on, guys. You can talk to me. I’m also just a person.” Then she
goes, “But you guys know it was your president who told us to arrest
you?”
The
arrests shocked nearly everyone at the university and intensified
national scrutiny of Shafik’s handling of the protests. Now under
suspension, the arrested students found themselves alienated from
campus. Some were placed under a strange kind of house arrest: They
could remain in their dorm rooms but could lose access to housing if
they left. Students at Barnard, who are subject to a different
disciplinary process, were evicted from college housing and lost their
access to campus dining. (Within days, Barnard reached agreements with
most students to end their suspensions and allow them back on campus.)
Henry: The
arrests were difficult to watch. Even though these were people who I
very much disagreed with on many things, it was hard to see them, my
fellow students, carried off campus by the NYPD.
Elizabeth Ananat, a professor:
The students were left homeless in New York City. I never thought that I
would be part of an organization that causes people to be on the street
in the middle of the night. It was such an unnecessary cruelty and a
betrayal of everything.
Soph Askanase, a junior:
Barnard loves to tout itself as a progressive institution that builds
student activists, leaders of the future. They love to talk about the
incredible organizer voices that have come from the university in the
past, yet this is how they’re treating the organizers on this campus
now.
Chloe Katz, a junior:
One day at noon, we stood in front of Butler Library. We had
authorization. We put duct tape over our mouths to represent the women
who are being silenced in the media and on campus when they express what
happened to them or people they know — the horrific sexual violence
that occurred. We linked arms and had signs saying RAPE IS NOT
RESISTANCE and HAMAS WEAPONIZES SEXUAL ASSAULTS. We were near the
encampment, and soon after we began, they began their own protest. They
were chanting things like “Glory to our martyrs” and “Globalize the
intifada.”
Rachel:
We went to the Sundial protest on Saturday night, and we were playing
Jewish songs. We replayed this song “One Day” probably 20 times, just a
song of peace. And as we were singing, people were just chanting at us
and screaming slurs. In the moment, I didn’t think that I was in danger —
I was just surrounded by so many people and so proud to be a Jewish
person on campus. But when I got back to my room, I sort of broke down. I
was just like, Wow, I was really in danger.
Chloe:
When I saw that people were organizing a counterprotest, I immediately
wanted to join. But my father said, “Please don’t go, I don’t think it’s
safe.” And unfortunately, he was 100 percent correct. What I saw from
the videos is my friends expressing their opinions, singing peaceful
songs, holding up Israeli and American flags — and they had water thrown
on them. There was an attempt to burn an Israeli flag. One of my
friends was surrounded.
Eve Spear, a senior:
I saw a video of a student holding a sign that read AL-QASAM’S NEXT
TARGETS, pointing at Jewish students — my friends. When I got there, one
individual was leaning forward, taunting my friend to his face, and I
started videoing because I thought my friend was going to get punched.
You need proof — it would be hard enough to say that this happened. They
were screaming at us: “You fucking inbreds,” “Uncultured ass bitches,”
and “All you do is colonize.”
When
we walked off campus, a new person screamed at us, “Go back to Poland!”
I was physically shaking. We had one student who is six-five, and he
made sure we all crossed the road, but neither Public Safety nor the
NYPD ensured our safety. We all had to make sure one another got home
safely. I live in the dorms and we have campus security there and
usually I don’t lock my door. That was the first time I was like, I need to lock my door. I was worried: What if people are following us? Saturday night was antisemitism in its most blatant form.
Lily,* staff:
I consider myself Jewish. When I’ve been on campus, I have felt
uncomfortable with the things some pro-Israel protesters are saying, but
I have not felt unsafe. What I keep seeing is the conflation of not
being comfortable with being unsafe, and I think it’s kind of a cop-out
for the university to say this is about antisemitism. My opinions on the
college really changed when pro-Palestine protesters were sprayed with a
chemical. If it had been the Jewish or pro-Zionist students that were
sprayed, we would be in a very different timeline.
April 18: “I was surprised by how quickly the
second encampment started to form after the first was dismantled
following the arrests. You can really see how many students came to
support their community by the amount that hopped the fence to start
their own encampment.” —JG
Laura: It was autonomous and spontaneous. There was no organizing. They just jumped.
Sueda Polat, a graduate student:
The university’s response galvanized people in a way that was
surprising even to me as an organizer. I remember running through the
crowd trying to find friends, a megaphone. I’m trying to corral people
into doing something that they previously didn’t know they would be
doing. We jumped the fence and it felt like we were crossing a line that
we couldn’t come back from.
Liam: When I was sitting in the van going down to 1 Police Plaza, I’d been thinking, Man, we fucked up. We’ve been arrested. It’s over. Then coming back and getting on campus and seeing that it had been reinstated — it was almost a feeling of incredulity. People really want to do this again? We literally just got hauled off — aren’t you risking the same thing? And obviously, the answer was unanimously “yes.”
Jared, a graduate student:
They arrested a hundred people, and a thousand more sprang up in their
place. People were sending food from all over the world. They donated on
Venmo. Alumni showed up with supplies and blankets. An organization
brought a bunch of meals to Earl Hall, and I was running back and forth.
It took like three trips to bring everything in.
April 20: “At this point, protesters in the
second encampment had no tents for two days, it was raining, it was
really hot. And the supplies just kept coming. All of a sudden, there
were tarps and tarps full of supplies.” —GGS
April 20: “The dancing in the second encampment
was the strongest moment of camaraderie in all of the days of the
encampment. Press and onlookers couldn’t help but bop their heads and
smile.” —GGS
The
second encampment would remain for days to come. The situation was
something of a standoff: Shafik seemed to indicate that she would not
call for the police again, and while the protesters engaged in
negotiations with her administration, the university made no major
concessions. Campus life went on: Members of the faculty held teach-ins
on the lawn, a weekend for admitted high-schoolers came and went, and
Jewish students celebrated Passover. Meanwhile, Columbia became a magnet
for high-profile politicians, including Representatives Ilhan Omar
(whose daughter Isra Hirsi had been arrested and suspended), Alexandria
Ocasio-Cortez, and Virginia Foxx. The Speaker of the House, Mike
Johnson, was booed while giving a speech on campus condemning the
protests and telling students to “go back to class.”
April 22: “When the teachers who were protesting
came into Milbank Hall to deliver letters to Barnard’s president and
dean, students started crying and hugging them because they felt
relieved that teachers were speaking up for them.” —GGS
April 24: Students looking at the second encampment from Butler Library at midnight.
Elizabeth:
To watch Mike Johnson describe students as overprivileged when so many
of our students are first-gen or low income and are doing things at
great risk to themselves — to have that treated as if they are coddled
was offensive and infuriating.
Aharon Dardik, a sophomore:
The Friday night prayers, Kabbalat Shabbat, in the encampment were
beautiful. There was a real sense of community and resilience — and
attempts to fuse the love and joy of Shabbat with being in the
encampment even in the face of oppressive forces.
Jillian, an undergraduate:
We had dabka lessons, which is a Palestinian dance. We had the People’s
Library for Liberated Learning. There were books in there we could
check out. A main takeaway for me was applying the learning I’ve done in
my own classes, where we have talked about transnational movements
against imperialism, capitalism, colonization. There was a really strong
understanding that all of these struggles were intertwined.
Sueda:
It’s important to realize how grounded we are in Palestine. I see
Palestinian journalists who are my peers, the same age as I am, who have
had their universities destroyed, demolished by the occupation forces,
send us tweets saying they’re proud of us — when we’re in a relatively
safe area, nothing in comparison to the genocide they’re facing. It
reminded us that we can’t stop.
Jude Webre, a lecturer:
National media outlets have already written the narrative of what’s
going on, and they’re not interested in understanding the position of
the protesters on the inside. So they report more on what’s happening
outside the gates, which is a different thing. In my mind, the problem
isn’t the young people on the inside; it’s the adults on the outside who
really escalated the situation because of their own preconceived
notions of what’s going on.
Jared:
I made the decision to skip my family’s Passover and go to the Passover
Seder in the encampment because I kept seeing stupid-ass people online
talking about how this movement was antisemitic. To me, it embodied the
spirit of Passover, which is the liberation of oppressed people.
From left: April 26: The
electrolytes station was great to see because it was hot when I took
the photo. We’re all feeling a certain pain, and that’s usually when the
university is supposed to be there to help.” —GGSApril 26: “It
had been a week and a half of the second encampment, and people had
established different stations in tents, such as the ‘People’s Library,’
which were a symbol of the community that was emerging from the
encampment itself.” —SR
From left: April 26: “At
this point, everything was orderly. I looked at it and realized how
much everyone had gone through in the past couple of days that we still
hadn’t had time to process.” —GGSApril 26: “The
Passover setup felt really good because everyone was happily enjoying
the holiday together. People were constantly going back and forth taking
extra food.” —GGS
The
claim that “outside agitators” were fomenting unrest, made by Eric
Adams and others, fueled anxiety among many pro-Israel Jewish students.
On April 21, a campus rabbi wrote to nearly 300 Jewish students telling
them to leave campus for their own safety. The university also announced
that students could attend classes virtually in order to avoid campus
and “deescalate the rancor.” Columbia administrators barred a prominent
student protester, Khymani James, from campus after strikingly violent
remarks he had made on social media — including “Be grateful that I’m
not just going out and murdering Zionists” — resurfaced and went viral.
Shiri Gil, a junior:
At this point, I’m not saying I’m Jewish, I’m not saying I’m Israeli.
I’m barely on campus because I feel threatened. My friend was called a
Nazi and physically pushed off the lawn where the encampment is — a
space where everyone can be, a public place for everyone.
Parker:
If you are a Jew who has any level of support for Israel, then you’re
not welcome in progressive circles. In the lobby of my dorm, I ran into a
Jewish student who was leaving. He was flustered and frantic and had a
whole bunch of things that he needed help with. And as we’re trying to
get his stuff out of the Lerner Hall turnstile to get out to Broadway,
where his father is picking him up, people are beginning to stare at us
and getting visibly upset. And they say, “We are so happy that you
Zionists are finally leaving campus.” And another student goes, “You
wouldn’t have to leave if you weren’t a supporter of genocide.”
One
morning, I was walking out from the Amsterdam gate to an Uber, and this
individual on the street yells at me and says, “Keep on walking, kike.”
The hardest thing about it — I don’t think he was a student. He looked
like a fully grown adult. I really do appreciate that there are members
within CUAD who are advocating for students not to have to go through
this, who say this doesn’t represent their movement. That’s important to
me. The saddest thing is our university isn’t standing up for its
Jewish students.
Rachel:
I left campus Sunday afternoon. I just couldn’t be there anymore. I
didn’t feel safe. I had seen videos of people sneaking into campus
through the gates. We didn’t know what was coming into campus — we
didn’t know what was in their bags, we didn’t know who these people
were. And people were already getting violent outside the gates,
screaming “Yeah, Hamas” and “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground.” A lot of
family members have told me that I should transfer. But realistically,
I’m not going anywhere. It’s very important to stand our ground and show
them they can’t force Zionist Jewish students out of their campus.
Ege Y., a lecturer:
I am a Muslim faculty member, and I’ve definitely not felt welcome as a
Muslim. Provocateurs have approached faculty as we linked arms to
protect our students from harassment. They called us supporters of
terrorism. I also know colleagues who have been doxed and who’ve been
threatened by their own students.
Rebecca Kobrin, a professor:
There’s this narrative that it’s all anti-Israel and no antisemitism.
And there’s this other narrative that it’s all antisemitism and none of
it is about Israel. And I believe that we just have not modeled
listening to each other.
Henry:
I think it’s important to highlight that while Jewish students
definitely feel less safe on campus, it’s not just us. There have also
been actions against Muslim or pro-Palestinian or Palestinian students.
We’re all having to deal with this horrible campus environment.
At
the General Studies Gala, I saw a bunch of students who had their
keffiyehs ripped off and were called “terrorists,” “sluts,” and
“whores.”
Sueda: The
process of negotiations — no matter how much the university claims it
was in good faith, it was not. We were also being surveilled by the
university. We were told that the rooms we were caucusing in were bugged
as well as the room we were negotiating in. On several occasions, we
were followed. It felt like we were in a movie.
With
the deadline expiring at 2 p.m., hundreds picketed around the South
Lawn, chanting, “It is right to rebel. Columbia, go to hell.” With no
apparent move by the university to clear the camps, things were
relatively calm until just before midnight. In the early hours of April
30, a new encampment formed on the lawn in front of Lewisohn Hall with
at least a dozen tents; students climbed Alma Mater, the iconic statue
at the center of campus, to wrap her neck with a keffiyeh; and there was
more picketing. Suddenly, dozens of the picketers broke from their line
and charged toward Hamilton Hall.
After
breaching the building, the protesters sprinted up the stairs, lugging
wooden tables and chairs from classrooms to block the doors from the
inside. They taped black trash bags over security cameras, shuttered the
blinds, plastered windows with newspapers, and chained the doors shut
through shattered panes of glass. From a balcony, protesters hung a
banner renaming the building “Hind’s Hall,” after Hind Rajab, a
6-year-old Palestinian girl whose death became a symbol of Israel’s
destruction of Gaza. Outside Hamilton, other protesters formed a human
chain while erupting in chants and songs.
April 30: “I ran toward Hamilton because people
started entering and breaking the glass, and I was reacting based on
intuition because I hadn’t registered what was happening. Student
journalists in front of me were clamoring to see.” —SL
Carla Mende, a graduate student:
I was out there filming it with a documentary team. We had a hunch
something was going to happen. We were positioned all over campus like, Oh my God, they’re moving here. They’re moving there. What are they doing?
And at some point, the picket started, and then they started going to
Hamilton. It was all very quick. They immediately started picketing in
front of the building, linking arms, putting out trash cans and picnic
tables, all of that. The banners went up. And then a building was
occupied on our campus. It didn’t feel like real life.
April 30: “Around an hour after they had occupied
the building, protesters flooded onto the balcony and renamed it with
the “Hind’s Hall” banner. They seemed victorious, as if this was the
moment when it was clear that they had done it.” —HC
Alex Kent, a freelance photographer:
As soon as they reached the doors of Hamilton, they just went straight
in. There was a lone security guard who’s by the door who was really
taken aback. People behind me came out with barricades. It was 15 or 20
minutes before both the doors were shut down. It was very intentional
and purposeful, and even what was damaged, like the windows, was all out
of functionality. The protesters just wanted the Facilities workers
out. It almost was like they were pleading with them, like, “Please, we
need you to leave. You don’t get paid enough to deal with this.”
April 30: “I felt very safe getting close to the
students who were blocking Hamilton. Inside, I was able to see a
Facilities worker, a photojournalist, and people barricading the doors.”
—GGS
Administrators
put the campus on lockdown. By 8:30 p.m., hundreds of officers in riot
gear, some wielding batons and tactical equipment, marched down West
114th Street and encircled the campus. Columbia issued an emergency
message to students to “shelter in place.”
S.M., a junior:
I could sense the atmosphere of fear and anticipation from looking at
everyone. Protesters were whispering to each other like, “Are they
actually going to come?” It was all these people willing to sacrifice
themselves and use their physical bodies as barriers. And that’s exactly
what they ended up doing.
April 30: “Protesters began forming a human chain
in front of Hamilton Hall, and it seemed like they were all informed of
what was going on. I noticed some fear in their eyes but also a strong
sense of determination.” —SL
April 30: “I took this photo right after they
locked the doors and occupied Hamilton Hall. Student protesters were
locking arms so others couldn’t enter. For student reporters, there are
very clear personal stakes that we don’t fully comprehend until after
the fact.” —SL
April 30: “It was the first time that
demonstrators outside of Hamilton Hall were able to see inside the
building. It was an energizing moment, where those inside and outside
Hamilton connected with each other.” —GL
Kent:
Around eight o’clock is when the police started surrounding. They
started prepping the outside perimeter. And it was that eerie silence
before the storm where everyone’s waiting for the police to enter.
At
Shafik’s request, hundreds of police stormed campus. One group of
officers surrounded and entered the second encampment, searching tents
for protesters. Another line of officers used a mechanized ladder to
enter Hamilton Hall via a second-floor window facing Amsterdam Avenue,
while others flooded toward the building’s main entrance. Protesters
linked arms in front of Hamilton as police approached with raised riot
shields. As the human barricade gave way to arrests, protesters reported
numerous incidents of police brutality. In six minutes, cops used power
tools to breach a barrier made of bike locks and metal picnic tables
before entering with guns drawn. One shot into an office, apparently by
accident.
Cameron, a sophomore:
The police came in droves. Students ran and fled from them, screaming.
The police forced everyone — all bystanders, including myself, other
students, press, media, medics, and legal observers — into nearby
buildings. We saw the police push one individual down the stairs. We saw
them violently arrest students. I was barricaded inside John Jay Hall.
April 30: “We had stayed up all night in Butler
covering the occupation of Hamilton Hall. It was around 9:30 a.m. after
the occupation, and we had just found out three hours prior that we were
ostensibly locked into campus for the foreseeable future, so Spectator
staffers began sleeping wherever we could in the library.” —YS
Carla:
I was just watching streams and streams and streams of cops come in. I
would say that it was about 500 cops; it was insane. They were flooding
in with body shields and heavy machinery, like giant hammers — other
stuff that I don’t really know what it even was. It looked scary,
honestly.
Gillian Goodman, a graduate student: It’s
clear that their directive was to clear out the area of onlookers,
including people clearly marked as medics and basically all press,
within the span of about 15 minutes. When we really realized we were
going to be barred from campus, people started trying to stand their
ground more. At that point, the police behind me pressed their baton
into my back and pushed me out with it.
April 30: “Freshmen students watched from their
dorm as the police entered campus through the Carman gate. The Public
Safety officer had just told them they weren’t allowed to leave their
dorm building.” —GGS
April 30: “We were just forcefully shoved off the
street, and freshmen in their dorm were watching because it was a
historic moment. I don’t think your political views matter in that
moment because what was about to happen was so shocking that everybody
peered through their windows to watch.” —HC
April 30: “I noticed all of the students coming
to their windows in Hartley Hall to watch the police sweep. They had the
best view of Hamilton out of everyone, and it was someone in that
building who took the viral video of an officer throwing a protester
down the stairs.” —GGS
Sueda:
We were engaged in verbal combat with the NYPD. I was telling them,
“This is our campus, and you’re not keeping us safe; you’re endangering
us.” And one officer had the nerve to say, “We’re here to keep you
safe.” Moments later, they threw our friends down the stairs. I have
images of our friends bleeding. I’ve talked to friends who couldn’t
breathe, who were body slammed, people who were unconscious. That’s
keeping us safe?
S.M.:
We were all pushed into John Jay and then they ended up barricading the
doors with their batons. There were a lot of students asking the
officers, “Oh, could I please go home? How long are you going to keep us
here?” And through the locked doors, they’re like, “Oh, you guys are
gonna stay here a while.” The bathroom was shut down for maintenance, so
we didn’t have a bathroom for three hours.
Gillian:
There could have been a much higher level of violence. I think we’re
lucky that nobody was hurt in a way that they can’t come back from.
April 30: “There was a line of six students
peacefully sitting on the ground, and police were nearby. All of a
sudden, I saw the cops rush in with no notice, throw a barricade onto
them, and yank them apart.” —GGS
April 30: “I didn’t mean to take this photo. The
cops began to kettle us, threatening to arrest us. It was terrifying.
Moments ago, Wyatt, who was taking video, and I were standing and then
the next moment, they were moving toward us so quickly.” —GGS
April 30: “I felt her anger. Public Safety
officers had been smiling the whole night as the NYPD made arrests. It
was difficult to see the people that are supposed to protect you smiling
at students crying instead.” —GGS
Kent:
They were pushing protesters up against the gate and arresting them.
They moved everybody all the way back to the Sundial, and I was able to
photograph the NYPD sweeping the tent area; they used flashlights to
make sure there was nobody still hiding. At this point, they moved most
of the media so far back that the only way to see what was happening was
through a very long lens. And I saw them pull out protesters from
Hamilton Hall.
Gillian:
The protesters were entirely peaceful; they didn’t move, they didn’t
initiate any kind of violence or intimidation with the police. They
didn’t pick up a stone and throw it. They literally did not move, and
they sang until the police came.
April 30: “All the students cheered as the
protesters in Hamilton Hall successfully hoisted up their food. I think
it was a really personal moment because of the Hooda halal food, a
campus staple.” —GGS
April 30: “The WKCR team was huddled around
watching one of their journalists write a message that they hoped to get
up to the protesters inside Hamilton. They even shouted that they could
throw a microphone up to the protesters for comment.” —GGS
April 30: “I was next to John Jay Hall, camped
out for the day, when I heard clapping in the distance. It was a
symbolic moment to look up and see the flag flying from Hamilton Hall,
especially because I was used to the sight of helicopters and drones in
the sky.” —GGS
Tooze:
It was a moment of horror when I went up to the barriers — the physical
force of the NYPD, the menace and the threat that was there. It was a
horrible ending, which had, I think, a certain necessity to it. It’s
hard to see how this was going to go another way, as much as I regret it
and as much as I would have hoped and dreamed that the administration
would see reason and move to a more imaginative, different position.
Webre:
People were not shaken by the takeover of Hamilton Hall. They were
shaken by the police presence on campus. It was a huge overreaction. And
honestly, the first time was bad enough, but the police in the first
instance were quite professional and the whole thing was handled as well
as it could have been. The action at Hamilton Hall was so over-the-top.
Shafik has continually chosen escalation, and that’s a huge failure of
leadership.
Jillian:
The violence student protesters experienced at the hands of the police
is connected to the violence Israel is carrying out. We know that police
are sent from the United States to be trained in Israel by IDF
soldiers, and we know that they share military tactics and weapons and
technologies. This is not to say that what protesters experienced here
is at all comparable to what people in Gaza are experiencing right now.
But we understood that it was all connected.
April 30: “I was on Law Bridge surrounded by
students in their pajamas who had come outside to watch the police sweep
from above. Then the Correction bus with arrested protesters came by
and people started cheering for them.” – GGS
April 30: “I had just gathered the bravery to go
outside because I was worried about getting arrested as the cops yelled
at us earlier. Suddenly, the street filled with chanting, and I saw cops
bringing people into the bus. I could almost see their faces through
the window.” —HC
In
the aftermath of the sweep, under Shafik’s direction, the campus
remained sealed off to most students and faculty and heavily fortified
by police. A day after the mayhem, as a strange quietness and emptiness
filled the university, Shafik was seen emerging from the broken doors of
Hamilton, escorted by guards.
J.,* an administrator:
This whole experience, the last six, seven months, it’s going to stay
with me for the rest of my career, if not the rest of my life. Frankly,
it’s going to be one of those moments where people ask, whether it’s
five or ten or however many years from now, “Where were you when …?” And
we’re all going to have to have an answer.
May 1: “Even though the encampment was gone, I
could still see the traces of it. It shows more that something is
missing, rather than something that was ever there.” —SH
*
Some respondents asked to be identified by their first initial to
protect their identity. Others are using pseudonyms, which have been
marked with an asterisk.
Photographs
by Gabriella Gregor Splaver, Stella Ragas, Asha Ahn, Heather Chen, Gaby
Diaz, Judy Goldstein, Sydney Lee, Grace Li, Yvin Shin, and Heidi Small.