Dozens of pro-Palestine protesters took over a building at Columbia University early Tuesday morning, just hours after the school started suspending students who defied a deadline to disperse.
Footage on social media shows numerous protesters inside the Ivy League institution’s Hamilton Hall, with some blocking doors with wooden chairs and tables shortly before 1 am, The New York Post reports.
Another clip shows a demonstrator inside the building smashing two windows of an exterior door with a hammer, before fitting what appears to be a bike lock to secure to door.
Some X users have described the protests as “pro-Hamas” after they hung an “intifada” banner from one of the windows.
The Arabic word “intifada” means to struggle against e and is often used to describe periods of uprising, some of them involving the use of terrorism, by Palestinians in Israel and the Palestinian territories.
From coast to coast, demonstrators are sparring over the Israel-Hamas war and its mounting death toll, and the number of arrests at campuses nationwide is approaching 1,000 as the final days of class wrap up.
The outcry is forcing colleges to reckon with their financial ties to Israel, as well as their support for free speech. Some Jewish students say the protests have veered into antisemitism and made them afraid to set foot on campus.
The Columbia sit-in comes after student activists on the school’s Manhattan campus defied a 2 p.m. deadline to leave an encampment of around 120 tents.
If they left by the deadline and signed a form committing to abide by university policies through June 2025, officials said they could finish the semester in good standing. If not, they would be suspended, pending further investigation.
Instead, hundreds of protesters remained, marching around the quad and weaving around piles of temporary flooring and green carpeting meant for graduation ceremonies that are supposed to begin next week.
Student newspaper the Columbia Daily Spectator reports that the masked group in Hamilton Hall tossed their belongings on the floor after managing to get inside before barricading themselves inside the building.
It’s located along the campus’ South Lawn, where the school’s anti-Israel encampment has been for over a week.
According to the paper, protesters covered security cameras inside the building with tape and black trash bags, as protesters chanted “Hey hey, ho ho, the occupation has got to go,” outside.
A clip post to X showed four masked protesters unfurling a banner emblazoned with “Hind’s Hall” from a window overlooking the crowd as the throng of demonstrators cheered.
The move was apparently in honour of Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old Palestinian girl who was killed in Gaza alongside the two paramedics attempting to rescue her in January.
