New York Magazine: Locked Out and Locked In at Columbia

On April 30, NYPD officers stand watch as they prepare to enter the campus of Columbia University. Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

The NYPD’s action on campus began with clearing reporters from the scene

At about 9 p.m. on Tuesday night, student protesters who had taken over Hamilton Hall at Columbia University began singing on the steps of the building. “Where you go I will go,” they sang in harmony, linking arms and swaying. “Your people are my people.” Some were in tears.

They had received an alert on Telegram that the New York Police Department would be closing in to arrest them within a few minutes. One protester with the Gaza solidarity encampment screamed, “We are victorious! They would not have called the police on us; they would not have used the tools of state repression if we had not been successful!”

I was a few steps away from the entrance to Hamilton, along with other student reporters from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism and reporters with The Spectator, the undergraduate student newspaper, and WKCR, the campus radio station. For weeks, many of us had been sleeping at Pulitzer Hall, the graduate journalism building, to cover what was happening at the Gaza encampment on the main quad, and we were, on some days, the only reporters on the ground. As dozens of police vehicles rolled up, we could only assume that the NYPD was preparing to enter Hamilton by force, and that we would be able to report on what happened.

Read more on Curbed, the City Section of New York Magazine.