At 8 pm tonight, the Tommy Robinson talk organized by CUCR began in Roone Arledge Auditorium. Tommy Robinson is the founder of the right-wing English Defense League, and is widely considered to be a white supremacist. He was expected to speak about “Europe and mass immigration.”

Protests began over an hour before the event started, with students marching from 125th Street and Broadway towards Lerner Hall. They congregated around the entrance to Lerner, chanted, and read out tweets from Tommy Robinson, as well as Mike Cernovich, who will be a CUCR speaker later this month. Speakers at the protest have included the President of the Columbia MSA, President of Black Lives Matter of Greater NY, and several other students and organizers.

When the event started at 8 pm, protesters pushed into Lerner. Students inside at the event also caused disruptions. One student was livestreaming on Instagram @yosangrl; according to her stream and according to sources we’ve talked to outside Roone, students inside are being detained until they give administrators their IDs. Protesters inside Lerner (outside Roone) are now calling for those inside to be released without having to fork over their IDs, and are calling for other students to join them in Lerner.

We will update this post with further developments as they occur. Please email us at tips@bwog.com for any corrections or any information we missed.

Update, 9:20 pm: Protesters inside of Lerner are offering conflicting reports as to whether or not those within Roone can leave without presenting their IDs. Confusion about the event grows as more students gather around Lerner.

Update, 9:45 pm: Protesters were released as of about fifteen minutes ago; their IDs were not taken.

Bwog has been livetweeting this protest since about 6:30 pm. See a selection of our tweets below: