COLUMBIA AND CAMPUS PROTESTS
Columbia Students Occupy Hamilton Hall, Echoing 1968 Protest
In what seems to be an escalation of the encampment protest beyond Monday's deadline, student protesters have occupied Hamilton Hall at Columbia University, just like their fellows did in 1968.
Around midnight in the early Tuesday morning, a group of students left the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the South Lawn at the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University and barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall in an occupation that carried the echoes of a previous act in 1968. In solidarity with one of the victims of the Gaza War, five-year-old Hind Rajab who was killed by the Israeli military, the students symbolically renamed Hamilton Hall after her with a banner waved from one of the large windows.
Hundreds of students formed a human chain in front of the building to protect their comrades inside while the occupying students stuffed the entrance door with a vending machine, chairs, tables, and other available materials to block the campus security’s access.
