‘Reprehensible’: Columbia Students Who Occupied Campus Building Let Off without Consequences Zach Kessel
Columbia University has failed to discipline students who broke into and occupied a building on campus, even after pledging to do so, according to a new House Education and Workforce Committee report.
Eighteen of the 22 students arrested inside Hamilton Hall after forcibly occupying the campus building remain in good standing with Columbia, according to the report. While the university had previously stated it would expel those who stormed and occupied the building, three of the 22 are on interim suspensions and one has been placed on probation. Twenty-seven of the students arrested outside Hamilton Hall the day after activists broke into the building have had their disciplinary cases closed despite their arrests.
Committee chairwoman Virginia Foxx (R., N.C.) said in a statement that the university’s decision not to follow its own procedures represents a surrender to the mob.
“The failure of Columbia’s invertebrate administration to hold accountable students who violate university rules and break the law is disgraceful and unacceptable,” she said. “More than three months after the criminal takeover of Hamilton Hall, the vast majority of the student perpetrators remain in good standing. By allowing its own disciplinary process to be thwarted by radical students and faculty, Columbia has waved the white flag in surrender while offering up a get-out-of-jail-free card to those who participated in those unlawful actions. Breaking into campus buildings or creating antisemitic hostile environments like the encampment should never be given a single degree of latitude — the university’s willingness to do just that is reprehensible.”
Students who disobeyed the university’s orders and refused to leave the encampment have apparently faced a similar lack of consequences.
Columbia initially placed 35 of those students on interim suspensions. It then nullified those punishments for 29, while 31 of the 35 students are currently considered to be in good standing with the university. Forty students were arrested in the first round of police action on the campus on April 18, and 18 have been restored to good standing through what the university termed an “alternative resolution” but remain on conditional probation. Twenty-one are considered in good standing before their disciplinary hearings. One of the 40 is on disciplinary probation related to a prior incident, Columbia told the committee.
The encampment briefly returned during Columbia’s alumni weekend in May, with 32 students participating. While three are on conditional disciplinary probation from a previous incident, all 32 remain in good standing.
The release of the committee’s report comes soon after former university president Minouche Shafik — who testified in front of the committee on April 17 as the encampment went up on her campus in New York — announced her resignation. Critics of Shafik who argued she should have taken decisive action on the encampment were joined in celebrating her departure by groups like the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which argued that she should not have called in the police at all. Shafik faced a vote of no-confidence in May, when 65 percent of the voting School of Arts and Sciences faculty supported the motion that centered on her decision to call the police.
Representative Elise Stefanik (R., N.Y.), who has been at the forefront of the House Education and Workforce Committee’s hearings with university leadership, described the information in the report as an abdication of responsibility.
“The refusal of Columbia University’s leadership to discipline students involved in the unlawful pro-Hamas mob which terrorized Jewish students and community members is an egregious failure of moral leadership,” she said in a statement to National Review. “House Republicans remain committed to using every tool available to us to rot out the root of antisemitism plaguing our nation’s colleges and universities.”
A Columbia University spokesperson told NR that the university is indeed working toward disciplining students.
“Columbia is committed to combating antisemitism and all forms of discrimination and taking sustained, concrete action toward a campus where everyone in our community feels valued and is able to thrive,” the spokesperson said. “Following the disruptions of the last academic year, Columbia immediately began disciplinary processes, including with immediate suspensions. The disciplinary process is ongoing for many students involved in these disruptions, including some of those who were arrested, and we have been working to expedite the process for this large number of violations.”
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