Columbia University’s “leaders’ will do anything to avoid looking like bad guys. Instead of firmly squashing pro-Hamas riots like the criminal actions they are, these wimps have locked down the urban campus, inconveniencing an entire neighborhood and probably breaking the law.
The lockout followed the mayhem of the Columbia protests and encampment, when pampered undergrads linked arms with an anarchistic mob of professional agitators to take over the school’s Morningside campus.
When Columbia finally had enough of impotently dithering over these spoiled brats — remember when they demanded to have meal-plan meals delivered to the occupiers of Hamilton Hall, lest they “die of dehydration and starvation”? — it called in the NYPD to restore order.
And it closed College Walk — the stretch of 116th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue open to pedestrians at least since 1953, when the city sold it to Columbia with an easement guaranteeing public access.
For over two years now, that has forced locals to go six blocks out of their way to get around the campus, a nuisance to all and a major imposition on the elderly and disabled.
Columbia is stamping its feet, claiming a right to insulate itself for the sake of campus quiet.
But all it’s doing is pushing chaos its own faculty and student groups cultivated onto the sidewalks outside its gates, imposing crowds and mayhem on the same neighborhood Columbia is already putting out by blocking a common thoroughfare.
The school says it has total discretion to close itself off, and that it offers locals a QR-code they can use — with state ID — to access College Walk.
But even if its actions were legal, the university is violating the spirit of its social contract with a community that it’s gradually gobbling up block by block.
Own up to your own responsibility to maintain order on campus, Columbia.
If outside agitators start causing trouble — trespass them.
If students set up tents or barricades — tear them down before they get comfy.
If 40-year-old Algerian sophomores like Mahmoud Khalil announce that they’re willing to “negotiate” the terms of Columbia’s surrender — expel them.
Don’t fear a mob of whiners and clowns just because they wrap kitchen towels around their faces and LARP as airplane hijackers.
If you want to demonstrate ownership of your campus, try maintaining order — instead of locking out seniors who need to get to the grocery store or the downtown IRT.
Open up the gates.
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