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Dozens of Columbia University students who were arrested for occupying a campus building as part of a pro-Palestinian protest will have their criminal charges dropped, prosecutors said.
At a court hearing Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney’s office said it would not pursue criminal charges for 31 of the 46 people initially arrested on trespassing charges inside the administration building.

Students and their allies seized the building, known as Hamilton Hall, on April 30, barricading themselves inside with furniture and padlocks in a major escalation of campus protests against the Israel-Hamas war.
At the request of university leaders, hundreds of officers with the New York Police Department stormed onto campus the following night, gaining access to the building through a second-story window and making dozens of arrests.

At Thursday’s hearing, prosecutors said they were dismissing charges against most of those arrested inside the building due in part to a lack of evidence tying them to specific acts of property damage and the fact that none of the students had criminal histories.

Stephen Millan, an assistant district attorney, noted that the protesters wore masks and blocked surveillance cameras in the building, making it difficult to “prove that they participated in damaging any Columbia University property or causing harm to anyone.”

All of those students are still facing disciplinary hearings and possible expulsion from the university.

Prosecutors said they would move forward with charges against one person involved in the building occupation, who is also accused of breaking an NYPD camera in a holding cell and burning an Israeli flag during a protest.

Thirteen others arrested in the building were offered deals that would have eventually led to the dismissal of their charges, but they refused them “in a show of solidarity with those facing the most extreme repression,” according to a statement by Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition group representing protesters. Of that group of arrestees, most were alumni, prosecutors said, though two were students.

Nine other defendants who were arrested for occupying another building at City College of New York have also rejected proposed deals with prosecutors, according to the group. Prosecutors said Thursday that they would drop charges against nine others who were involved in the City College occupation.

Inquiries to an attorney representing many of the arrested protesters were not returned.

The building occupations came on the heels of a tent encampment at Columbia University that inspired a wave of similar demonstrations at college campuses across the country.

At Columbia, the group representing protesters have called on the administration cut ties with Israel and to grant amnesty to protesters, vowing that demonstrations would continue to “throughout the summer and beyond.”

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Originally posted by Sig2340:

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Originally posted by V-Tail:

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Originally posted by Sig2340:

I'd like to buy that father a beer.

Agreed. Also, make the kid clean the monument with a toothbrush as part of his sentence.

I wouldn’t let that shitbird within 10 miles of the monument.

Make him remove graffiti in the worst sections of the Bronx.

For about 10 years.

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Photos of text messages sent during panel captured by attendee provide a glimpse into administration's attitude toward the plight of Jewish students on campus

On Friday, May 31, alumni descended on Columbia University's Manhattan campus to celebrate their class reunions. In addition to eating and drinking, the festivities included several panel discussions featuring professors and administrators.

One, focused on Jewish life on campus, was particularly newsworthy. Student protesters who had broken into and occupied a university building during the academic year had reconstituted themselves to disrupt reunion festivities, and, as the protesters were preparing to erect a new encampment, the university held a panel discussion about the past, present, and future of Jewish life at Columbia.
The event featured the former dean of Columbia Law School, David Schizer, who co-chaired the university's task force on anti-Semitism; the executive director of Columbia's Kraft Center for Jewish Life, Brian Cohen; the school's dean of religious life, Ian Rottenberg; and a rising Columbia junior, Rebecca Massel, who covered the campus protests for the student newspaper.

In the audience, according to two attendees, were several top members of the Columbia administration. Given the sensitivity of the subject— the eruption of anti-Semitism on campus in the wake of Hamas's Oct. 7 terrorist attack on Israel put a national spotlight on the school, and Columbia recently settled a lawsuit with a Jewish student who accused the school of fostering an unsafe learning environment—the administrators' presence made sense.

The administrators included Josef Sorett, the dean of Columbia College; Susan Chang-Kim, the vice dean and chief administrative officer of Columbia College; Cristen Kromm, the dean of undergraduate student life; and Matthew Patashnick, the associate dean for student and family support.

Throughout the panel, which unfolded over nearly two hours, Chang-Kim was on her phone texting her colleagues about the proceedings—and they were replying to her in turn. As the panelists offered frank appraisals of the climate Jewish students have faced, Columbia's top officials responded with mockery and vitriol, dismissing claims of anti-Semitism and suggesting, in Patashnick's words, that Jewish figures on campus were exploiting the moment for "fundraising potential."

"This is difficult to listen to but I'm trying to keep an open mind to learn about this point of view," Chang-Kim texted Sorett, the dean of the college. "Yup," he replied.

The text messages, which were captured by an audience member sitting behind Chang-Kim who photographed the vice dean tapping away on her phone, also used vomit emojis to describe an op-ed about anti-Semitism by Columbia's campus rabbi.
Chang-Kim's messages and those of her colleagues are clearly visible in the photographs. The Free Beacon verified the authenticity of the photographs with the person who took them.

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