The pressure at the school has been building for months, and it isn't over yet.
In a matter of days, Columbia University’s campus has become a flashpoint for national political unrest—the site of impassioned youth protests over Israel ’s war in Gaza and U.S. support for it, which has in turn fueled vociferous backlash, a flurry of national media coverage, and more than a hundred arrests. And since it all began, with a handful on student protesters pitching tents on the lawn at 4 a.m.
“We’ve been covering in shifts,” Ted Schmiedeler, an undergraduate member of the station’s executive board, told me on Saturday morning as we toured the small studio at Broadway and West 114Street. It was a rare quiet moment during a week of nonstop action; out front, a dozen NYPD officers were setting up new metal barricades in anticipation of a surge of demonstrators.
In the studio, one student journalist was playing a field recording from that morning. Two others monitored the broadcast. Nearby, a folding table was strewn with snacks, and a futon and couch were piled high with pillows and blankets. “I just got done with a 3 a.m. to 10 a.m. shift reporting from the lawn,” said Georgia Dillane, another undergraduate member of the station’s executive board. She pointed toward the couch. “And that was where I napped.
On Saturday, when I returned, it was increasingly difficult for outsiders to get in. I ran into an old friend and J-school affiliate who helped spirit me into the campus, where the protest looked similar to the day before. Many of the students were drying out after spending a rainy night on the lawn—the no-tents provision had been abided by—and the blankets were drying out in the sun.
The numbers grew throughout the afternoon. That night, there was a screening of Newsreel 14, Columbia Revolt , a documentary about the famous anti-war Columbia student strike that occurred in the same place decades earlier. Comparisons to that year were being dropped quite a bit, both from protesters and reporters alike. The WCKR students were quick to mention their awareness of the history; the radio station, then too, had been a 24-hour fixture and an authority on the student demonstrations.
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