This will not end well - Yale U.

What's interesting to me is Columbia already engaged in heavy-handed enforcement, yet things are going to complete shit there.

 

They have put themselves in a trap for sure. They "have to do something" yet they cant really use even more violence on their students without ruining their credibility. I suppose they could try to meet the demands of the students, but then all the worst people (i.e. their richest donors and right-wing politicians) will be like "they are being weak/woke." They brought this on themselves, no sympathy from me.

 

They won't meet the demands of the students. It just won't happen. At best, they could offer some mild compromise to let the students feel like they got something.

 

Its amazing to me that they basically responded the same to the anti-war protests in 1968, claimed they learned a lesson because it set the school back like 20 years financially, and sort of point to it as something they are proud of their students for being right about after the fact. And they are just faceplanting in the same way again. Highly recommend reading Mark Rudd's memoir which covers the Columbia protest to anyone interested. Lots of parallels.

 

The idiots breaking into buildings and vandalizing property need to be rounded up and arrested. Completely unacceptable.

 

major breakfast club vibes from this video.

 

That movie was about domestic terrorism, so it tracks

 

FWIW, Humboldt is another university that sent police in after its students. And it didn't go well for them either. That's not to justify property damage. It's simply to point out that "bring in the cops" is not the solution to every problem.

 

Cops and troops are the only solution anyone in power has to anything in America right now

 

It doesn’t have to get ugly.
1. School authorities should be cleaning out dorm rooms as we speak.
2. Move in with enough police to arrest bystanders and man exit points from buildings.
3. Arrest all protesters on school property for trespassing. This won’t mean much so;
4. After their hearing, protesters can go to an off-campus location to pick up there belongings and paperwork for their expulsion, trespass warning and bill for damage/destruction from Columbia.
5. Non student protesters arrested for every trespassing and destruction charge possible. Processing and warrant search should be done at the absolute roughest jail facility in NYC. Care must be taken in this processing to make sure charges are accurate so warn protesters that they will be in the general facility for an extended period of time. I think a Covid outbreak among the staff should slow processing for an adequate period of time.

 

Mika Brzezinski drew an interesting and appropriate albeit somewhat surprising analogy between the Columbia University students who have occupied the building at Columbia and have committed acts of vandalism as well as violence in the process with insurgents who attacked the Capital on January 6, 2021. In both cases they believe that their "higher calling" justifies their acts of violence and interestingly their supporters albeit on completely opposites of the political spectrum have mischaracterized them as "peaceful protestors" or in the case of the insurgents "tourists".

 

"It doesnt have to get ugly"

(Proceeds to lay out ways to make it ugly)

 

Ah classic lib brain, I suppose some people's higher calling is to protest imperial institutions and their role in an ongoing war/genocide, other people's higher calling is to make Donald Trump president after losing an election by millions of votes, in both cases its the incidental damage of property and vandalism that is the real tragedy. Who will think of the buildings?

 

360 degree nonsense. Nothing peaceful or justified about either.

 

Columbia tried that. All it did was anger the student body (and faculty and staff) and cause more people to protest.

 

There's a very clear difference. The students occupying the building and committing acts of vandalism aren't trying to murder the Congressmen and women inside it and aren't trying to overturn an election they lost. It's a bit like saying there's no difference between a person who breaks into an unoccupied home to steal a cherished pet they lost in the divorce and a person who breaks into an occupied home because they've been stalking the woman who lives there and want to rape and murder her. I'll just call it a false equivalence.

That doesn't mean the students are in the right. They are clearly not. But it does mean that the two things aren't remotely comparable.

 

Then Columbia can start planning for Round 2 while they prepare for the expenses of damage repairs and lawsuits from Round 1.

They really didn’t try very hard before and my guess is that many of those there now were part of that first group. With their parents due to lose $50K each for the semester of no credit, having to find new schools and each spending 24 hours in the worst jail facilities in NYC, they might just get the hint that it’s time to grow up and understand both sides of an issue before you pick one to favor and attack the other.

BTW, you have made several references to “Chilling Free Speech”. Honestly, how do you define chilling, and why should a private entity like Columbia be concerned with the allegation of employing it as a tactic?