At half-past-midnight yesterday, I received a text from a Columbia undergraduate friend: “They are attempting to occupy Hamilton Hall.”
It goes without saying that things inside were hectic.
A couple students I know closely attempted to block the protesters from breaking into Hamilton, an audacious last stand that ended with them being shoved, grabbed, and later threatened anonymously.
Other friends dialed 911, troubled by ongoing vandalism and the very real possibility of an all-out brawl.
Outside, I saw your typical sign-waving, starry-eyed students, along with another darkly-clad cohort of protestors surveilling campus.
Their black balaclavas and combat boots made it clear they weren’t Columbians.
I first ran into a group of them fumbling with a chained campus gate.
Upon inquiring into their lock-shaking activities, I was met with a series of nasally-voiced expletives.
As un-intimidating as they sounded, I thought it would be a good idea to tell somebody.
This turned out to be a difficult task.
Since the beginning of the South Lawn “liberated zone,” Columbia has outsourced border control to third-party contractors like Allied Universal and Apex Security.
Though there are plenty of guards, most of them sit around on their phones, headphones plugged in.
As it turns out, if you report suspicious behavior to them, they’ll tell you to find someone else.
Thus I made my way around the school to a Columbia Public Safety booth, passing another balaclava-wearing band on Broadway.
Unfortunately, I was too late: online, videos were circulating of these outsiders climbing through the windows of John Jay Hall, a first-year dormitory.
Though Public Safety initially denied the break-in, students inside knew better and were panicking on social media.
The intruders reportedly fled after some time, but the university has refused to release a statement on the matter.
How assuring.
I spent the remainder of the evening talking to the handful of police officers stationed around campus.
Having arrived from all over the five boroughs, they were largely uninformed of what was happening inside.
When I told them about 911 calls made by the student body, they insisted their dispatchers were silent: on-campus pleas for help were being diverted elsewhere, presumably through the nebulous bureaucracy that composes my alma mater.
Given Columbia’s utter inaction that morning, it seems they were ultimately ignored.
The only reprieve from my growing dread was the police’s willingness to follow me to those open John Jay windows.
By that point, however, the darkly-clad intruders were no longer around.
In hindsight, all of this was quite predictable.
Over the past few weeks, Columbia has proven itself to be politically impotent and bureaucratically inept, utterly incapable of resolute decision-making.
Pressured from all sides — from within and without — Columbia’s leaders have sought to balance force and toleration, from suspending student protestors without arresting them, to hiring private security instead of involving law enforcement.
But we shouldn’t be too compassionate.
As evidenced by the remorseful, ever-reluctant wording of the president’s day-to-day statements, Columbia’s concern for propriety merely prolongs the conflict at hand, putting students and the surrounding community in increasing danger.
Protestors have been calling the university’s bluff, escalating things with no risk of immediate retaliation.
And, in keeping the police ill-informed and outside campus, there is little to deter outside agitators from sneaking in.
As if to concede to the chaos, Columbia shut down dining halls and libraries, leaving students’ final exams and graduation ceremonies up in the air.
In sum, my alma mater is barely functioning as a university, a fact now painfully obvious to the entire nation.
This is a very Ivy League tragedy: in seeking to preserve its reputation, image, and prestige, Columbia has rapidly depleted all these things.
As a first-hand witness of such self-destruction, I hope the embarrassment is lasting enough to elicit change.
Luke Seminara is a Columbia University ‘23 graduate working at an educational nonprofit in New York City.