On Monday, New York Magazine published a six-page piece on Harrison David, one of the five Columbia undergrads arrested in Operation Ivy League. Both David and Miron Sarzynski, the dealer who lived downtown, were interviewed, as well as many anonymous sources alleged to be clients, friends, and classmates of the students. Some important lingering issues were addressed:

Gravity of the arrests: “David and the four other students who were arrested weren’t running an organized drug ring so much as catering to various niches of the marketplace, police say, in a loosely coordinated way.”

The ‘drug ring’: “Like Macy’s and Gimbels in Miracle on 34th Street, the five friends would allegedly send customers to one another now and then—but if this was a cartel, it was extremely low-key (no one has been charged with conspiracy). “It wasn’t like people were saying, ‘If you want this drug, go to this guy,’” says one customer. “You had to know in order to know.””

The NYPD’s methods: “The busts weren’t without glitches—they got Klein’s room at Psi-U wrong, because he’d traded rooms with someone on his floor. For a moment, frat brothers have been heard saying, the wrong man had an NYPD gun pointed in his face.”

Undercover cops: “The police sent an undercover officer to try to make some buys—a young-looking guy with long dirty-blond hair who went by the name of John. Friends of the accused students don’t seem to remember John. He apparently wasn’t posing as a student and didn’t attend classes or have friends at the school.”

The university’s involvement: “According to the city’s Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget Brennan, the university was unaware of the entire operation until shortly before the bust. The police, it seems, didn’t want to have to get Columbia involved in helping to establish his cover.”

The university’s reaction: “The university has yet to take action on the five students’ enrollment status.”

David’s financial troubles: “David says he got $37,000 in financial aid each of his first two years, but needed to pay $54,000 in tuition and living expenses … Drug dealing helped close some of the rest of it.”

“Why do you think I have to do this shit?” he told police when they picked him up. “My dad won’t pay tuition.” (His father has subsequently said he has contributed “since day one.”)

David’s links with Sarzynski: “Sarzynski says it was through an NYU student dealer who had a high opinion of David, and a source close to David says it was via a close friend of David’s at Columbia. In any case, they met in June, when David was living in Hell’s Kitchen.”

“Had David not stepped up the level of his enterprise or run into Sarzynski, it’s unlikely the police and Columbia would have ever been involved, however opportunistic or unprotective their subsequent actions may have been.”

Typical punishment: “Typical bail in a first-time nonviolent drug offense is usually around $5,000. But David got $75,000, Coles $40,000, Klein and Wymbs $35,000, and Vincenzo $30,000. A few of their lawyers privately floated conspiracy theories—not just that Manhattan Supreme Court Judge Michael Sonberg wanted to make an example of some Columbia kids but that the judge was feeling political pressure because of a case from a few weeks earlier.”