Columbia protesters broke the rules. Now they’re suing the school because they didn’t want to face the consequences.
Three students filed a suit against the university last week, complaining that Columbia “went to extreme lengths to quash protests after the school’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment ignited a global uprising” last spring.
Catherine Curran-Groome, Aidan Parisi and Brandon Murphy whine about being wrongly suspended and arrested during protests — even though they were brazenly defying school rules and breaking the law.
They, apparently, are utterly incapable of understanding that rules are rules.
“These students are learning the hard way that their actions have consequences,” Columbia alumni association president Ari Schrage told The Post. “If they really believed in what they were doing, why are they suing?”
The three are seeking undisclosed damages, alleging that Columbia “departed from its established rules and policies to unlawfully target and punish plaintiffs… to silence and de facto expel [them].”
But their argument is just flat-out nonsense.
While these students might like to think of themselves as martyrs for their cause, they weren’t actually disciplined for their political beliefs. If they were, I would defend their free speech — even though I disagree with their point of view.
Nobody hunted them down because they were pro-Palestine. They literally plopped themselves down in the middle of the quad and had a tantrum when the school repeatedly asked them to pack up.
These students got in trouble for engaging in disruptive and illegal protesting activity that unambiguously violated school rules. Columbia’s “outdoor space policy” has existed since students last pitched an encampment to protest South Africa’s apartheid in the 1980s.
A simple glance at the student handbook or school website places last spring’s protesters on the wrong side of school rules: “All tenting must be ordered through Columbia Facilities Events Administration.”
This isn’t viewpoint discrimination. If pro-Israel students decided to set up their own tent city and scream and shout in the middle of campus, they surely would have been cleared out, too.
No student has the right to cripple campus life and forcibly occupy their college’s private property.
But the Columbia administration was well within its rights to request NYPD’s help in clearing out the encampment after student protesters repeatedly ignored polite — perhaps too polite — requests from the school to vacate the premises.
Murphy and Parisi were among those arrested when the first encampment was dispersed in April.
I was there when the NYPD gave participants multiple opportunities to clear out on their own accord, and then arrested those who ignored orders.
Protesters can try to rewrite history, but that was not some dystopian crackdown. It was basic enforcement of private property laws, and a whole bunch of kids having an absolute temper tantrum and screaming, “NYPD, KKK, IDF, you’re all the same.”
The plaintiffs, who are graduate and postgraduate students, all would have graduated in May but complain in their lawsuit that they got one- and two-year suspensions instead.
“I find it quite ironic that members of this protest movement would accuse the school of getting in the way of their graduating when all they did for the past year and a half was prevent others on campus from being able to access the learning environment fully and safely,” Lishi Baker, a junior at Columbia, told The Post.
He’s right. What about all the other students who had to take their classes online and strain to study through shrieking chants from the quad?
The fact that these students even feel entitled to sue shows the fundamental flaw that plagued the pro-Palestine student encampment movement.
Kids wanted to have their cake and eat it, too. They wanted to cosplay as freedom fighters, but also evade all consequences of civil disobedience.
“It’s become blazingly clear in my career that many students don’t know the difference between protected speech, which students shouldn’t be punished for, and civil disobedience,” Greg Lukianoff, president of the campus free speech organization FIRE, told The Post.
When Martin Luther King, Jr. bravely led sit-ins at lunch counters, he fully expected to be arrested to get his anti-segregation message across.
When Columbia students pitched tents and smashed windows, they figured they’d still waltz scot free to graduation.
All they wanted was the air of civil disobedience — street cred for being brave.
There’s real dignity in taking punishment with your head held high for the sake of what you believe. And there’s real indignity in running crying to a law firm when the consequences come back to you.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
