By Wednesday, May 1, NYPD had arrested 109 people at Columbia University, although it’s unknown how many of these are students. The police also cleared out Columbia’s protest encampment. New York Mayor Eric Adams didn’t pull any punches about police action, saying, “There is a movement to radicalize young people, and I’m not going to wait until it’s done and all of a sudden acknowledge the existence of it,” via CBS. He added, “We’re proud to say they [radicalizers] have been removed from the campus.” For her part, Columbia University president Nemat Shafik said she was “sorry we reached this point.”
Naturally, students and other groups remain divided on whether or not Columbia should have called in the police — again. On one hand, Barnard sophomore Lily Zuckerman told CBS that if the university cracked down hard enough on the first encampment, then the second round of NYPD arrests wouldn’t have had to happen. New York’s Council on American-Islamic Relations contrarily said, “It is sad but not surprising that Columbia University … would rather unleash the NYPD on their own students than simply meet their demand to divest from the Israeli government and its genocide in Gaza.” Arrested protestors, meanwhile, were met with cheering, music, and food from supporters when they stepped out from One Police Plaza after a night in jail.
At present, Columbia University is waiting until “disciplinary hearings” to decide the fate of protestor graduations, grades, suspensions, and such, per the Associated Press.
