10 CommentsCampus remains locked to most members of the community after the April 30 arrests. Follow live updates here.
Update made on Sunday, May 5 at 9:58 pm:
On May 3, the General Studies Student Council (GSSC) announced on their Instagram that they had held an Emergency Meeting concerning a possible referendum. According to an anonymous member of GSSC who spoke with Bwog, this CUAD-backed referendum would include questions about divestment from Israel, discontinuation of the Tel Aviv Global Center, and discontinuation of the Tel Aviv University Dual Degree Program. The representative told Bwog that many GSSC representatives agreed that the vote should be posed to the student body now because they feared it would not pass next semester due to the newly-elected president being an IDF veteran.
According to the GSSC Instagram post, none of the referendum questions passed the 3/4 majority required to be posed to students. “We ask that you respect the decision made by Council to not move this referendum forward,” the GSSC Executive Board stated on the post. They also wrote that although “this decision was not easy,” it was “appropriate” for GS at the time.
Bwog spoke to another GSSC representative via email, who attested, “Questions in the referendum were highly discriminatory, created a false polarization, and used racist and prejudice language.” The representative told Bwog that he believed the referendum would “create fear and intimidation” in the student body. He also claimed that the referendum did not pass due to the questions “harm[ing] our own students.”
Update made on Saturday, May 4 at 10:59 pm:
Campus access update
Access to the main Columbia campus for Sunday, May 5 will remain as it was today with only students in residential halls on campus, essential University employees, and Morningside campus-based faculty members having entry.
Update made on Saturday, May 4 at 5:50 pm:
The Guardian Student Council Op Ed
On May 4, the Columbia College Student Council (CCSC) published an op ed in The Guardian. This statement, which was passed by 22-4-2, details an account of the events of the past few weeks. I the op ed, CCSC claims, “By speaking over us, media outlets and politicians have created a distorted narrative – one which unfairly characterizes our community.” The article claims various instances of the Columbia administration “undermin[ing] shared governance,” citing the administration’s lack of consultation with the University Senate through an October change in event policy and authorization of the NYPD on campus.
CCSC also called the University’s Task Force on Antisemitism “inefficient,” remarking how it did not address Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian sentiment on campus. CCSC condemned the presence of Professor Shai Davidai, Professor Joseph Massad, and Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes on campus. The op ed stated that “media and politicians sensationalized [students participating in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment] as largely violent extremists,” attesting that the Encampment was peaceful. Lastly, CCSC condemned the events of April 30, stating that the NYPD “terrified, sickened, and traumatized” students.
“Right now we should be focused on our final exams,” CCSC stated. “Instead, the university’s actions have made it impossible for us to focus on anything besides our peers’ physical safety and access to food.” CCSC concluded its op ed by calling for media outlets to listen to students and turn attention towards the Middle East.
The same day as the op ed was released, School of Engineering University Senate Jalaj Mehta sent an email to SEAS undergraduates regarding the piece. Mehta stated that the article was written by many student council members, himself included, but was only passed by CCSC. He stated that the Engineering Student Council (ESC) “regrettably” did not reach a supermajority to pass the statement. Mehta attested that ESC did not pass this statement out of “concerns… regarding potential repercussions such as job offers being rescinded, as well as a desire for our council to remain neutral on matters concerning the administration.”
University Senate Plenary
On Friday, May 3, the University Senate held a special plenary in light of the week’s events, where they discussed launching an investigative task force into administration, a potential vote of no confidence against Columbia President Minouche Shafik, and campus safety, among other items. Read more here.
Update made on Saturday, May 4 at 11:19 am:
The Barnard Milstein Center will be open until 10 pm today, according to a sign posted in the building.
Update made on Saturday, May 4 at 10:59 am:
On Friday, the Columbia History Department released a letter signed by faculty regarding “recent events” on campus. The letter states that the signatories “condemn the use of police force against students, as well as the ongoing presence of the NYPD on our campus.” The letter advocates for “the rights of students and scholars to engage in nonviolent protest or public speech” and criticizes the “arbitrary disciplining” of those who have engaged in these forms of protest. The statement adds that the signatories are “dismayed” that the decision to bring NYPD on the campus “resulted from a decision-making process from which faculty were excluded.”
The signatories state that they “disagree about many of the issues being debated on campus this year” yet believe that “history shows how deeply damaging it is for a university to meet students’ protests with violence and criminalization.” The letter recalls the 1968 protests on Columbia’s campus, the last time police were brought to the campus “in large numbers,” and notes that the University “has worked hard to restore community, build shared governance, deal peacefully with protest, and maintain a culture of respectful debate.” The statement concludes by urging readers to “hold on to this legacy.”
Update made on Saturday, May 4 at 10:04 am:
Campus access updates
The Office of the President sent an email to Columbia students with several updates about campus conditions, such as new access for faculty members and extended library openings. The campus remains mostly exclusive to the same set of students who live in residential buildings on campus and essential campus personnel. They acknowledged the difficulty of the “loss of shared spaces” on campus, for which the University stated they are “truly sorry.”
Today, they announced that faculty members who work on the Morningside Campus will have access to it after being barred since Tuesday, April 30. There remains only one exit and entry to campus at the 116th and Amsterdam gate. Additionally, several libraries will be open today including Butler, Burke, Uris, and the Science and Engineering Library.
Lerner Hall and Ferris are open to all students, including those who do not live in the residential halls on campus. For transporation, they announced a Morningside Campus shuttle service that takes community members to the 116th and Amsterdam gate and pointed to the usual Evening Shuttle as an option for those walking longer distances at night.
Primal Scream
Students participated in what seemed to be another edition of Primal Scream, the Columbia tradition in which students gather on a Thursday night before finals and scream. On Thursday night this week, students gathered before midnight outside of the President’s house on Morningside Drive and screamed before holding a proxy protest where they chanted slogans such as, “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest” and “Minouche Shafik, what do you say? How many kids did you kill today?” The edition on Friday night happened around the same time with a smaller crowd who stayed for approximately six minutes before walking back to Amsterdam chanting, “Fuck you, Minouche.” The event seemed informally planned.
Amsterdam during a Wednesday night protest via Bwog Staff
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10 Comments
@GS-Alum A few thoughts on the referendum and the process as I understand it, which is imperfectly. First, the notion that a general student body referendum requires a 3/4ths majority of the GSSC to be posed is absurd. This is especially true for a situation where the referendum would have no real impact other than making it plain what the current student body thinks.
Second, since the dual degree program awards degrees through GS I think it is wrong of the students to propose it, and I agree with the statement of the representative saying it would harm some current students.
GSSC should be focusing its attention and bullhorn on the clear incompetence of Shafik and using what power it has to defend all students.
CCSC’s op-ed was basically perfect.
@Concerned Staff Member at Columbia Just like Black Lives Matter, you have those who aim to discredit this movement by warping it into something else. Anyone remember all lives matter? Or blue lives matter? As if the slogan of Black Lives Matter meant that ONLY Black Lives Matter. That it was an anti-Cop movement. And now you have people trying to say this movement is about hate against Jewish people. Flat out false. This is about stopping the atrocities occurring in Palestine where 10s of thousands of innocent people have been killed by the Israeli government in the name of defense with our tax money.
@Anonymous I think the letter from the History department strikes the right tone. However there are 2 problematic threads in the statement that I do not fully agree with:
1.Yes Columbia should indeed uphold the right to protest and to speak freely, I fully agree. But what are the limits? Columbia and nearly every other university in the US has pushed for over a decade the notion of a “safe and inclusive” environment for all students around speech which I think has detrimentally shielded students from speech that upsets them. By any objective measure various things have been said on campus during the protests (many more off campus-but that is a different thing) that clearly fall in this space. It is hypocritical only now to say-“we support free speech” when clearly some of the speech uttered by both protesters and counter-protesters would probably lead to discipline or other measures in the recent past.
2.The 1968 protests are viewed through approving soft focus these days by faculty and historians and the university itself, but it was a disaster for the university not only because of the final response but also for the events leading up to it. I understand that the point here is that the lesson is guidelines were put in place for collective governance that were thrown aside now. True. But the bigger issue is that these guidelines really are not effective ones. In 1968 there was a faction of students (almost all from the white student side) who felt that mayhem and violence were what was needed. When the black students voluntarily left Hamilton, this group of students was upset that some measure of “compromise” had been made, and they took over Low, set fire to an office, and held an administrator hostage. Not only is this not an effective way to make change, it will almost always result in an escalatory response. Although on a much smaller scale the same may be said about the recent Hamilton take-over. This is not free speech of course.
There are rules in place so that student life is not disrupted and all groups can peacefully exercise their speech. An encampment violates this. Taking over a building severely violates this. At this stage what is the right course of action? I have heard many faculty voice their dismay over calling in the police. I get that completely. But I have heard no realistic or reasonable proposals by faculty as to how they would have dealt with this situation.
@Alum 04 Spot on. It’s a common issue with the pro-Palestine groups the world over. They are very good at saying what Israel and Universities should not do, but offer no idea on what they should do instead. Oh, they should not have called in the police? Then what should they have done? Let it continue to escalate? First it was regular protests, then an encampment, and then a violent besiegement of a building. What would be next? You don’t get to complain and whine if you can’t offer a solution to the issue. Or rather, if you do whine yet offer no other solution, then the majority of people, especially those in power, will not take you seriously. These “protestors” have become a laughing stock the world over, and worse, they have made a laughing stock of our whole uni. They are a joke, and they are getting the treatment they deserve.
@Another Alum Sorry but the CU administration should have continued to negotiate with the lawn camp demonstrators and even the Hamilton Hall occupiers. They could have offered some sort of amnesty or moderation of the suspensions and expulsions (and, if Pres. Shafik is serious about “healing”, they should), and transparency or an assessment of investments in corporations deeply involved in human rights violations and whether there are practical remedial steps that CU could or should take. The series of administration missteps that only inflamed the situation is puzzling; a reasonable guess is that the administration was scared of the narrative that it was permitting antisemitism and/ or was under pressure from donors and alums who support Israel.
@Anonymous Very good chance that doesn’t work. In multiple places amnesty has been offered only to be rebuffed as it is not addressing a demand of the protesters, it is only addressing punishment related to their protest not the cause of it.
The notion that the university is scared of donors is also off the mark. Columbia’s endowment is @14 billion dollars. Donations are nice but they are a very small fraction of it. The bottom line is the following:
1.The divestment demands are meaningless for Gaza. An investigation recently by the Washington Post points out that endowment investments are way too complicated to pick through, but in the cases where the data is known-the amount invested in Israel is tiny.
2.The divestment demands are hypocritical-there are many things you can divest from. The civil war in Yemen has taken the lives of many more children than have died in Gaza. The US gives arms to the Saudis who are responsible for part of this. No protests or demands for divestment there. You can go down the list. Divestment is meaningless and unhelpful, and I haven’t even mentioned the complications of things like this:
https://ogs.ny.gov/executive-order-157#:~:text=Banning%20Investment%20in%20Institutions%20or%20Companies%20that%20Boycott,the%20Boycotts%2C%20Divestment%20and%20Sanctions%20campaign%20against%20Israel.
3.The specter of Title 6 is very real. The university has been hit with hundreds of individual Title 6 lawsuits. An investigation by the government (more likely if/when Trump wins election) is not unlikely. The notion that Columbia is “giving in to right wing pressure” totally misses the point. The point is by the letter of the law we are in violation of Title 6. If we are found to be in violation, than that is curtains for the university. No federal grant for the sciences. No Pell grants for poor students. You get the idea.
4.The protestors have lots of demands but are violating university “time, place and manner” rules blatantly. The have violated the free speech of other by blocking the possibility of assembly on the south lawn. They have no 1st amendment standing as they are on private property. Obviously that holds as well for taking over and vandalizing a building.
There are numerous issues here that no trustee, Israel-backing or otherwise, is going to put up with. The suggestion that “amnesty” would do it is exactly the kind of unserious proposal I am talking about.
@Anonymous This from 4 hours ago at the University of Chicago’s encampment:
““I know we are tired. I know we are angry. But we need to be here. We can’t leave until they accept our demands,” a UCUP spokesperson said. “It is better to be over prepared than underprepared.”
The preparation mentioned was building barricades as at UCLA. So I ask again-with protestors with absolutist demands who are severely violating university rules and endangering graduation short term and the university as a whole long term (Title 6)-what is a reasonable proposal for how to deal with such a situation? I’ve not heard one.
@Anonymous Genuinely asking: Given that the organizers stated that they would not accept less than what they demanded, and the university was clear that giving in to all their demands was a nonstarter, what would have been the point of further negotiations?
@@alum 2007 The university had to call the police because this was hateful and dangerous. 1968 was not about hate and isn’t a valid comparison .
@Anonymous https://apple.news/A-1oYH02ITY-uCERw4zIjiw