Columbia students seize building, smashing windows and lowering 'Intifada' banner

NEW YORK — Student protesters at Columbia University seized an academic building on 116th and Broadway late Monday night, breaking windows and using outdoor campus furniture to barricade themselves inside. 

“They started streaming towards Hamilton Hall,” said Lily Zuckerman, a sophomore at Barnard College who witnessed the move. “At some point, I can’t say when, they smashed the windows with a hammer, got into the building, and they started bringing in the picnic tables outside the building inside to barricade the doors.”

The rioters also covered security cameras, Zuckerman told the Post.

PROTESTORS SMASH WINDOWS, BREAK DOORS, BARRICADE HAMILTON HALL AT @COLUMBIA TONIGHT. “WE WILL NOT LEAVE NOT LEAVE UNTIL COLUMBIA COMPLETELY DIVESTS” https://t.co/rTQotOZ4l7

— Jessica Schwalb (@jessicaschwalb7) April 30, 2024

At the same time, other students moved tents from the site of the main encampment into a new area on the other side of the campus, apparently as a distraction, and at some point during this period masked men in all black entered John Jay residence hall from windows on 114th Street.

“People live in that building,” said a distressed Avi Weinberg, a student at Columbia’s School of General Studies, “people go to sleep in that building. And now there are masked people climbing through windows. And the university refuses to call the police!”

Jessica Schwalb, an RA in the John Jay dorms, said she is in contact with some of the students under her charge, but that many of her residents stopped talking to her once she became outspoken against antisemitism on campus. 

It is absolute anarchy @Columbia We have professional burglars on campus. They are endangering the safety of ALL OF US. pic.twitter.com/VdDEiCJQBB

— Jessica Schwalb (@jessicaschwalb7) April 30, 2024

“I thought I was finally done with work,” said Alexander Dobensky, a Jewish student who expressed dismay at the state of the campus. “I was finally going to bed, and I started to have a drink, and then I was bombarded with a whole bunch of text messages, saying there was a riot on campus, that people were being assaulted, windows being broken, people being brought in wearing all black from the outside.”

“We tried to touch base with Jewish students,” Dobensky said, “to check if there was anyone on campus that had been caught up in this, because they’re just doing whatever they want. There are no consequences here."

Addressing the developments of the last few hours, Dobensky told me, “they basically feel emboldened to do whatever they wish,” adding, “We don’t know, technically speaking, if anyone is still in the building who just happened to be there.”

INTIFADA banner unfurled on occupied building

On Broadway and 116th Street, one could hear the chanting from inside Hamilton Hall— re-named by its occupants "Hind Hall," in memory of a six-year-old Gazan girl who was killed in the Israel-Hamas War along with two paramedics when an Israeli tank round appears to have struck their ambulance. 

“Raise the banner of revolution!,” students shouted in Arabic. “From the water to the water, Palestine is Arab!”

Other photos posted to social media show another banner, reading “INTIFADA” in red letters. That word, which means “uprising,” or “shaking off” in Arabic, is mostly associated with a series of terror waves against civilians in Israel. The term has been a calling card of the campus protests— “There is only one solution: intifada, revolution!,” and “Intifada, intifada!” are common chants at the ongoing demonstrations.

The first official communication from the university arrived on students’ phones about four hours after the break-in, notifying them of protest activity at the building and advising them to stay away from the area, with no further comment. As of 5:00 New York time on Tuesday, this was the only word from the school administration. 

Outside campus, a few students who disapproved of the breaking-and-entering loitered outside, chatting with a few bored-looking police officers. “I guess I don’t have my work study job there anymore,” one student said.

NYPD has not been requested on the private university campus, and are thus unable to enter unless there is an imminent threat. 

It’s a policy that has been stressed on a number of occasions by both the NYPD and the city government, and that a number of students who spoke to The Jerusalem Post on Monday had endorsed, asserting that bringing police to campus only raises the temperature. 

Zuckerman was unmoved. “They smashed the windows with hammers,” she said. “Someone is going to get hurt, and the cops being there right now could prevent that from happening.”

"An uphill battle with no end"

Chanting seemed to die down as the night drew on, at the same time network reports began to gather outside the Columbia gates. Students outside estimated they’d seen a crowd of about 200 to 300 students in the area surrounding the encampment, and loud chants could be heard from 116th Street and Broadway. 

As dawn broke, what came next was clear to nobody. One of the disaffected Jewish students speaking to the Post that night identified one common cause between the pro-Israel community and the protesters and rioters on campus: their mutual lack of respect, he said, for university president Minouche Shafik. 

"It's been six months of this," said Alexander Dobensky. "I don't know how to respond, after six months. It's just an uphill battle with no end."

Less than twenty-four hours before Hamilton Hall was seized, the university had issued an eviction notice to the student encampment, warning that anyone who did not evacuate the site by 2pm could be subject to arrest. The deadline came and went, and the following day, Hamilton Hall was in their hands.