Dozens of Columbia University students suspended for library pro-Palestinian takeover

NEW YORK — Dozens of Columbia University students were temporarily suspended arsenic of Friday for their alleged engagement with a brief takeover of the main field room successful a pro-Palestinian protest, the Daily News has learned.

At slightest 65 Columbia students were placed connected interim suspension pending further investigation, according to a assemblage official. Another 33 people, including students astatine affiliated institutions specified arsenic Barnard College, person been barred from campus, arsenic person alumni, the idiosyncratic said.

A Columbia webpage connected schoolhouse rules — launched successful the aftermath of pro-Palestinian protests connected field — said a schoolhouse official, known arsenic the “Rules Administrator,” instantly began an probe connected Wednesday aft students occupied Butler Library up of last exams.

“The Rules of University Conduct question to equilibrium protecting escaped look and accomplishment of Columbia’s world mission,” work the update connected Friday. “Disruptions to world activities are successful usurpation of the halfway principles of the Rules of University Conduct.”

Eighty protesters were taken into custody portion constabulary cleared Butler. A radical of demonstrators near the room earlier the NYPD entered nether the information students identified themselves.

The swift crackdown connected pupil protesters came arsenic Columbia is successful progressive negotiations with the Trump medication implicit $400 cardinal successful canceled grants implicit allegations it did not bash capable to support Jewish students from harassment. Among the national government’s conditions for resuming talks was “meaningful discipline,” which it defined arsenic expulsions oregon multi-year suspensions.

In the speedy action, Columbia and Barnard reportedly suspended a fig of pupil journalists, who were astatine the room to screen the protests, according to field paper Columbia Spectator. Those suspensions were reversed but could person an effect connected property state — with pupil reporters being the lone media regularly permitted connected campus, which remains closed to the public.

Columbia’s effect connected Wednesday marked a displacement successful strategy for the university, which required students amusement IDs earlier leaving the room oregon look arrest. Either way, Columbia could much easy place the protesters, overmuch to the vantage of disciplinarians looking to determination fast. It took astir 11 months for the assemblage to finish the disciplinary process for the Hamilton Hall occupiers.

Neither Columbia nor the NYPD shared however galore of those arrested were students, though the fig of suspensions suggested that galore had ties to the assemblage contempt claims of a “significant beingness of individuals not affiliated with the University.”

“The students were trying to permission the library,” said a Columbia library-goer, who spoke connected the information of anonymity. “The nationalist information officers wouldn’t fto them permission until they showed their IDs. They weren’t going to bash that.”

Final exams astatine Columbia started connected Friday.

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(New York Daily News Kerry Burke contributed to this article.)

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