An occupation of the Columbia campus could have ended without police, says the report

The move of Columbia University in the use of the police forces to free the demonstrators from a campus building last spring could have been potentially avoided, since some students urgently asked if they could voluntarily leave, according to a report published on Tuesday by the University Senate.

The students, who had entered the Hamilton Hall that morning and barricaded the doors, told the intermediaries of the faculty that they asked for the help of a Harlem shepherd to help them start safely. But university administrators, saying that the weather had expired, allowed hundreds of police officers to enter the campus to remove the demonstrators from the building.

The new details of the last hours of the employment of Hamilton Hall on April 30 were among the key revelations of the 335 -page ratio, which was written by a group within the senateA political body from Columbia which includes members of the faculty, students and administrators, with the majority faculty. The Senate is independent of the administration and has been critical of his response to the protest.

Called the “The southern relationship“It provides a play-by-play chronology of the events surrounding protests on the campus relating to the war in Gaza starting from October 2023.

Columbia’s manifestations and response put the school at the center of a national debate on how to protect students from harassment by the protesters, also protecting the freedom of speech and the rights of the demonstrators.

Last spring events led to a significant interruption of the MorningSide Heights Campus of the University and some critics of Columbia’s response have said that the administrators waited too long to act. The unrest culminated on April 30, when a smaller group of demonstrators – including some who were not affiliated with Columbia – detached themselves from a camp of the tent and took Hamilton Hall.

The report published Tuesday represents the last shot on the annual debate on the events and management of Columbia. While many members and students of the Faculty were to the right to protest in peace, some groups felt that the manifestations were tinted with anti -Semitism and threatening Jewish students.

The report argues that the university has made significant false steps.

“The main purpose of this relationship is to understand how instability has been introduced in the daily life of the university and what can be done to fix things,” says the report.

He arrives while Columbia supports with the move of the Trump administration to cut about 400 million dollars in federal research for the accusations according to which Columbia has not done enough to fight anti -Semitism and while the university undertakes to take further measures to curb the protests. Among the turbulence, the school is the third president in less than a year.

A spokesman for the university said that officials had not seen the report before his release on Tuesday evening and were examining it. Columbia leaders have repeatedly defended their decisions regarding protests in the last year and a half, including their decision to ask the New York Police Department to remove the demonstrators from the Campus La Night of the acquisition. During the subsequent arrests, a police officer accidentally discharged the gun, although nobody wounded.

“The students and external activists who break the doors of the Hamilton Hall, mistreating our public security officers and maintenance staff, and harmful ownership are acts of destruction, not a political discourse,” said the former president of Columbia, Nemat Shafik, in a declaration to the community on May 1st.

The report did not reveal who among the 111 members of the Senate participated in his creation, although the Senate website says that the effort was led by Jeanine d’Armiento, professor of medicine who is president of the Senate executive committee.

“There were concerns about the doxxing that had occurred, and it was voted on the executive committee that the names were not given,” said dr. Of harmony in an interview. Other members of the faculty outside the Senate were also consulted, he said.

Dr. D’Arbieto himself emerges in the chronology of the relationship as a key intermediary during negotiations between protesters and administrators. “The report was written by people involved in the Senate who were trying to bring protests to a peaceful resolution,” said James Applegate, astronomer of Columbia and member of the Senate executive committee.

The report concluded that the university administration had no longer managed to respond to the concerns of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators and, instead, treated them with suspicion.

He also said that the police actions on the Columbia campus last spring overturned a organic tradition of policy protest led by the students in the half century before. In 1968, Columbia protests largely stimulated by the opposition to the Vietnam War led to an aggressive police response. A panel known as Cox Commission, led by Archibald Cox Jr., professor of Harvard and subsequently the special Watergate prosecutor, criticized the school’s response, leading to the expansion of the power of the faculty to the University.

“Not once in five and a half decades from 1968 to 2024 were so large pressures and the integrity of the university so weakened that the university administration called almost 600 police officers heavily armed in the campus to repress an unarmed student protest,” says the report.

The senate of the University has declared that it had imagined a collaborative investigation conducted by an independent external figure, similar to Mr. Cox. Despite an initial agreement to help the report, the University refused to participate.

The report states that the only senior leader who agreed to answer their questions was Dr. Shafik, who resigned in August after the trust in his leadership was seriously undermined.

The administration’s decision to call the police without the consent of the Senate’s executive committee, which inflicted a requirement established after the 1968 protests, aroused particular criticism in the report.

“The guardrails that protect these crucial university functions have been affected and in some cases violated,” says the report. “The result was disorientation and alienation.”

The school of taking private investigators also accuses the school to monitor students and observe the faculty and to try to interrogate students in their apartments without a fair trial, feeding a “growing atmosphere of intimidation”.

Cas Holloway, Chief Operating Officer of Columbia, confirmed that the University had enrolled an external security company, says the report.

The report provides details within one of the most significant moments of the demonstrations, employment and compensation of Hamilton Hall. He suggests that the decision to call the police to remove the demonstrators – who led to the officers surrounding the buildings of the campus and climbed through the windows – could have been avoided.

That evening around 7:20, before the arrival of the police, the representatives of the demonstrators contacted the members of the Senate to ask if the students could leave the building without the police entering, says the report. Dr. D’Armiento called Dr. Shafik at 19:49 to transmit this information.

“Call them at 8:15 pm and they say that they remain half an hour,” replied dr. Shafik, according to the report.

With police helicopters in circle, Dr. d’Arbieto has reached Dr. Shafik at 8:03, but has not received a response, says the report.

The students also claimed to have promised assistance from a Harlem shepherd who was in contact with the office of the mayor Eric Adams and who “would help them leave Hamilton” without the police, according to the report.

At 20:31, according to the report, Dr. d’Arbieto asked Dr. Shafik another 30 minutes to work with the students. “I know that many of the students want the agreement and are trying to let others enter,” he wrote in one and -mail.

Dr. Shafik replied 35 minutes later: “The best is if they started alone now. Please, encourage them to do it for the good of all.” Twenty minutes later, at 9:26 pm, the police officers entered the building and made dozens of arrests.